The war over artificial intelligence is mostly invisible, with debate over how the potentially society-altering technology should be deployed largely playing out over social media, on conference stages and in think pieces.
But in Lowell, Massachusetts — the site of the commonwealth’s largest data center — the fight is personal.
For months, tension over a 352,000 square-foot facility owned and operated by the Markley Group has been nearing a crisis point, with the Boston-based data and telecommunications company facing mounting community opposition and a cascade of legal challenges.
The expansive black building, wrapped in a stark, 10-foot metal black fence, sits squarely in a residential area, immediately adjacent to several homes. People who live next to the facility — nicknamed “the dungeon” by some locals — have filed a series of lawsuits and organized protests aimed at preventing the center from expanding its presence in the city.
“The people of Lowell do not want this data center,” said Lowell resident Amada Moundele, one of roughly a dozen advocates who rallied outside of Lowell City Hall Tuesday evening.
Moundele and other protestors urged city councilors to update Lowell’s zoning laws in order to prevent Markley from expanding its facility, which has been a fixture of the city’s Sacred Heart and Back Central neighborhoods for more than a decade.
A constant presence
Unlike many of the data centers that have sparked controversy across the country over the past year, the Markley group’s facility predates the AI boom, and it’s located in a densely populated residential and urban neighborhood, rather than a rural area.
The center sits on a 14-acre plot of land that once housed a spaghetti factory. The Prince pasta plant operated from the late 1930s until the mid-1990s, when it was bought by a private investment firm. The site then sat vacant for two decades.
Markley moved into the facility in 2015, encouraged by tax incentives. Lowell’s City Council unanimously approved a tax agreement and a personal property tax exemption that’s estimated to save the Markley Group $77 million over its 20-year term.
In the years that followed, Markley became a constant presence in the area — a mysterious, hulking building that generated an air of mystery, but not much controversy.
“No one ever knew what it was,” said Moundele, a lifelong Lowell resident and member of Lowell’s chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, an anti-capitalist political group that’s organized several recent protests against the facility. “You would literally see it, and you’re like, ‘What is that?’”
That all changed in the past couple years, as the generative AI boom has led to a sudden spike in demand for massive facilities capable of housing the computational power needed to train and run complex models and house their data.
As companies raced to construct and expand these facilities, a wave of opposition grew across the country. Opponents have raised concerns about skyrocketing utility bills, massive water consumption and noise pollution. A national day of protest against data centers on July 18 saw 142 protests across 42 states.
Much of the frustration has been directed toward so-called hyperscale data centers — monstrous facilities that contain at least 5,000 servers and are built explicitly for handling the data of big tech and artificial intelligence giants. According to the Harvard Kennedy School, hyperscale centers “use as much electricity as small cities (driving power rates up), emit diesel air pollution from standby power generators, consume millions of gallons of water a day, occupy hundreds of acres of land, require high-tension power lines and electrical substations, and generate noise pollution that disrupts communities.”
While the Markley Group’s Lowell facility is the largest of its kind in Massachusetts, it is not a hyperscale center; it’s significantly smaller. In fact, it’s less than a fifth the size of Google’s Council Bluffs roughly 2 million square foot data center in Iowa.
Still, anti-artificial intelligence sentiment and growing awareness about the potential environmental, health and economic downsides of data centers has led to a swell of resistance to Markley’s presence in Lowell.
A cascade of lawsuits
In March, facing rising community opposition, Lowell’s City Council unanimously passed a 360-day temporary ban on the construction, development and expansion of new data centers in the city. It halts new zoning applications to give the city time to study environmental and infrastructure impacts.
In response, Markley filed a legal challenge that led to an agreement with the city earlier this month allowing the company to move forward with expansion plans that pre-dated the moratorium.
For some Lowell residents, including Sienna Herbert, the agreement has sparked fears that Markley will be able to expand unchecked and move in the direction of hyperscalers.
“This will essentially make us a corporate town,” Herbert said. “The moratorium is essentially null and void. It affects future data centers but not this one. Many of Lowell’s city councilors agree with us, but they have no recourse.”
Some people living near the facility have sought their own recourse in the courts. In addition to the moratorium, Markley is facing two resident-led lawsuits surrounding alleged negative effects of the data center on the community.
The residents involved in the suits argue that for years, Markley has harmed their neighborhood with constant roaring from existing emergency generators and cooling fans, plus chemical odors and cooling-tower mist settling onto neighborhood yards.
One of those lawsuits is a class-action suit over noise pollution; the other is an environmental and administrative lawsuit over air quality permits for new diesel generators Markley plans to install.
On Wednesday, a group of residents involved in the environmental and administrative suit and their lawyers appeared in Middlesex County Superior Court, urging a judge to institute a preliminary injunction to prevent Markley from operating and constructing additional diesel generators and cooling towers.
They argued that the state failed to fully study the project’s combined impacts, adequately address noise and health risks, consider cleaner alternatives to diesel power, or give residents a fair hearing.
“When you live in a neighborhood where someone is putting a large industrial facility, and they’re looking to expand that facility in ways that are going to impact you with noise and emissions that come out of diesel generators and into your homes, the people who live in that community should be able to have a transparent process and an opportunity to get their questions answered,” said Adam Reynolds, a legal fellow with the Conservation Law Foundation, in an interview with GBH ahead of Wednesday’s court appearance.
Inside the data center
From Markley’s perspective, residents’ concerns represent a vocal minority in the community and are largely overblown. The company argues that it’s brought a massive economic investment to the city, and has worked tirelessly to mitigate any negative impacts of their facility.
The company declined to arrange an interview with company executives ahead of publication, but invited GBH for a tour of their facilities and a rare look inside their data center. (The company did provide written statements to GBH regarding the ongoing litigation against the company.)
The Markley representatives allowed GBH to film certain areas within the facility, although it prohibited filming and photos in some parts of the plant for “security reasons.” In order to enter the facility, GBH had to go through security gates and was escorted to the building’s entrance.
From the outside, the Markley data center is an imposing site — a large black box that towers overhead.
But from the inside, it looks and feels more like a Silicon Valley office. The design is sleek and contemporary, with bright but warm lighting and large glass doors between wings that slide open as you walk through. The company has an “in-house artist” who painted portraits of the company’s employees that adorn the walls.
To get to the actual data infrastructure, you have to walk through a series of doors — one white hall after another that eventually leads to massive rooms with black devices that blink with green lights.
The Markley representatives told GBH that while the office space was mostly empty during the tour, the company has more than 100 employees who work on-site. A slide show told the history of the company’s grounds, such as how Markley revitalized an existing industrial site that sat vacant for a decade, and was often used for drug use and dealing.
During the tour, a company employee agreed to answer one question on the record: What does a data center actually do?
“This is basically where all of Massachusetts’ digital infrastructure lives,” said Jaclyn Casey, a marketing manager for Markley. “So when you think about your daily life, how many things you do online — whether it be mobile banking, streaming a video, sending a text message — all of those basic, small things that you do every day that you don’t think about, that requires a data center.”
The company highlights the fact that it houses data for several public research institutions and hospitals, though it does not publish a full list of its clients to protect their privacy and security.
Markley has planted more than 2,000 trees on and nearby its property in an effort to improve air quality and beautify the neighborhood. The company said it’s hoping to attain official status as an arboretum.
Company representatives demonstrated their diesel backup generators, the primary source of complaints from residents and the subject of ongoing legal action. They told GBH the generators are only turned on for roughly five minutes weekly for tests. Aside from that, they remain off, available in the event of a power outage, according to the company.
The generators created a hum of noise that was audible, but not deafening. The Markley representatives told GBH that the demonstration marked the loudest noises the generators would ever create.
What happens next
It remains unclear when any sort of ruling could come from the two lawsuits over Markley’s facility. Adam Reynolds, with the Conservation Law Foundation, said it will likely be weeks before a judge decides whether or not to prevent Markley from installing new generators at its Lowell facility.
Markley, for its part, is confident that it will prevail in court. In an emailed statement to GBH News, the company’s chief legal officer, Devon Cutchins, said the allegations in the class-action suit over noise pollution “simply aren’t true,” and that the suit aimed at preventing the installation of new generators is “without merit.”
Cutchins also said the company has spent more than $650 million on community investments and efforts to mitigate noise pollution and reduce emissions.
“We’re always looking for more ways to positively affect the neighborhood and the city,” he said.
As for the company’s expansion plans, it appears Markley is moving forward with installing new diesel equipment, despite the city’s moratorium and residents’ concerns.
“When the moratorium was put in place in March of this year, it was made clear that it did not apply to prior permits,” Cutchins said. “The generators are not a surprise.”
Diesel generators, the company argues, are a net-positive for the community. In the event of a blackout, they will help keep the facility running and allow the businesses that rely on the center to remain online.
“People don’t realize that if the city didn’t have a data center, it would be a bar to many businesses moving here,” Cutchins said.
“Markley provides the critical infrastructure that supports hundreds of companies, including hospitals, universities, financial institutions, and government services, including many right here in Lowell, like Lowell General Hospital and UMass Lowell.”
