Phones came out, someone pressed play, and a continuous mechanical hum rose inside the Carroll County Fiscal Court chamber. Officials kept the proceedings moving. That contrast was the whole point.
Residents said the recording captured a 5-megawatt data center operating in Florence, Kentucky. It was a demonstration of what this category of facility sounds like, not a prediction of what Carroll County will experience.
A decibel figure in a planning document cannot communicate what an uninterrupted mechanical hum feels like at 2 a.m., seven days a week. The recording can.
Two Projects, Not One
Carroll County is considering two separate hyperscale proposals, and keeping them distinct matters for understanding the full scope of what residents face.
Poe Companies and PowerHouse Data Centers are pursuing a roughly $9.6 billion campus on approximately 550 acres near Greens Bottom, with a projected power draw of 800 megawatts.
Separately, Deca Companies is pursuing a project south of Ghent, near Route 47 and Sharon Road. A fiscal-court magistrate said Deca discussed an eventual capacity of roughly 800 megawatts across more than 1,000 acres, though Deca had not confirmed those figures to the reporting outlet.
Together, the two projects would represent an industrial transformation of rural Carroll County. The county’s existing governance structure was not designed to handle that scale.
What the Developers Say
Both developers have offered noise-reduction assurances, but those assurances remain unverified.
The Greens Bottom developer has argued that projected facility noise would reach approximately 65 decibels, below the 70 to 80 decibels typically generated by nearby interstate traffic. A 500-foot buffer, the developer argued, would reduce impact on neighboring homes. Deca’s project website identifies setbacks, landscaping, and site placement as its primary noise-mitigation measures. These are developer claims and have not been independently verified.
Sixty-five decibels measured at a boundary line is one thing. Sixty-five decibels, continuous, without interruption, every hour of every night, is something a single number does not fully capture. That gap is exactly what residents are trying to make officials feel.
Beyond the Noise
Noise is the sharpest edge of the residents’ argument, but it is not the only one.
Concerns raised at public meetings include round-the-clock lighting, increased truck and construction traffic, the conversion of agricultural land, pressure on local electricity infrastructure, and potential effects on utility rates. Residents and officials have also pointed to a broader lack of transparency from both developers about project specifics.
The Governance Problem
Without a county planning-and-zoning body, Carroll County’s only real leverage may be what it negotiates before construction begins.
Carroll County has no county planning-and-zoning body. Officials have focused on negotiated community-benefits agreements as the available mechanism, covering noise limits, setbacks, utility obligations, traffic management, pollution controls, taxes, and fees.
That structure places enormous weight on the quality of negotiation before a single foundation is poured. Once a hyperscale facility is operational, the leverage shifts considerably. A county cannot simply persuade a developer to seize your land because neighbors are unhappy with the hum.
Residents fear the facilities could operate continuously, day and night, without interruption. Carroll County officials need to decide what protections they can actually enforce before construction begins, not after the sound has already moved in.
