Ten residents in Lowell, Massachusetts, are suing the state's environmental regulator and the company behind a large data centre over an expansion that would bring the facility's total to 27 industrial-scale diesel backup generators and 16 cooling towers. The lawsuit challenges the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection's approval of the expansion and alleges that residents were not given a proper opportunity to challenge the project. Markley Group's 352,000-square-foot data centre sits in a densely populated neighbourhood, with homes close to its infrastructure. Residents have raised concerns about diesel emissions, industrial noise, cooling-tower mist, dust and other impacts. The case comes as communities across the US increasingly question the environmental costs of expanding data-centre infrastructure to meet rising demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
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