‘It’s all you can hear’: New Jersey lawsuit takes on datacenter’s noise pollution

Lawsuit alleges sound is nuisance for up to one mile around datacenter as residents experience noises from DataOne

It's a sound Steve Brown, a 63-year-old Vineland, New Jersey resident, literally hears in his sleep: BGRRRRRRRRRRR.

It drones, oscillates, growls - these are machines at industrial scale. Are they generators? Pumps? Fans? Brown does not know what equipment causes the sound or why. He only knows two things: he's tired of it, and it's coming from DataOne - a 350MW datacenter under construction a little more than a mile from his home of 25 years.

This article was amended on 28 August 2026. A previous version referred to the Michigan law firm Liddle Sheets PC as Liddle Sheets Coulson.