Residents of Dowagiac, Michigan, just filed a lawsuit against a data center that allegedly generates a high-pitched whining sound — and has done so 24/7 for the past two years.
The data center, which is owned by Alliance Cloud Services LLC, a subsidiary of Hyperscale Data, used to be an industrial building that sat behind a row of pine trees across the street from the most affected residents, according to ABC-affiliateWXYZ. The site started development in 2018 and was eventually turned into a cryptocurrency mining center in 2021. But in 2024, something changed drastically when the building started emitting noise pollution around the clock. Residents say it sounds like a vacuum cleaner in their living room, and the company has offered to buy up homes from unhappy residents.
More reasonable: roll back to before the datacenter was permitted for construction, find substantially equivalent houses in the general area - 20% more square footage, 20% higher value per square foot, and track their values over time until the present, and whatever the peak was, offer 20% more than that plus moving expenses… effectively 175% of “fair” value + maybe $20K.
Why be “reasonable” with unreasonable people?
Being “reasonable” with unreasonable people is unreasonable. Be reasonable.
So far what they’ve done sounds like they’re trying to be somewhat reasonable. They bought a bunch of acreage as a sound buffer zone and they offered to buy people’s houses at a price we don’t have information on. We don’t really know how unreasonable they’re going to be.
Most reasonable: burn down the data center and build low cost housing on the ashes.
Plus .5% of all future profits.
Always get a part of the gross, there’s no net!
So… An extra $0?
Yeah, 0.5% was what I was offered as Director of 50% of new startups… 0.005% is more realistic - and could range from 0 to outrageous.