What was a public nine-hole course in October 2024 is now a 350MW AI campus covering roughly 2.4 million square feet of industrial infrastructure. Nebius Group, a Microsoft partner under a reported $17 billion computing deal, contracted developer DataOne USA by March 2025. Construction accelerated quickly. At 350 megawatts of planned capacity, this ranks among the largest AI datacenters on the East Coast. Cumberland County cited DataOne in March for violating nighttime noise ordinances. The hum, apparently, preceded the paperwork.
When Compliance Isn’t Enough
The county’s own record shows both a “fully compliant” finding and a formal noise citation — issued months apart.
Regulatory compliance and human experience don’t always share the same address. Michael Gentile, a Vineland resident, called Cumberland County’s health department roughly 20 times complaining about sound and vibration — vibration he says he feels standing on his porch. Each time, he was told the department lacked tools to measure it. DataOne initially claimed county measurements showed the site fully compliant. Then the county issued a formal Notice of Violation for nighttime noise in March. The county record reflects both.
“Once you hear it, it’s all you can hear.” — Steve Brown, Vineland resident and named plaintiff
Steve Brown is 63 and lives just over a mile from the site. At 2am, he started getting woken by what he describes as “BGRRRRRRRRRRR” — a droning, oscillating growl that doesn’t stop. He and two neighbors are named plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking class-action status covering approximately 1,013 residential homes within that one-mile radius. Michigan-based environmental firm Liddle Sheets PC is handling the case; attorney Laura Sheets currently has four active datacenter noise suits in litigation, with more being prepared. An earlier federal class-action filed in May 2026 was voluntarily dismissed in June — preserving the right to refile. The current lawsuit is the restructured follow-through.
The Regulation That Forgot Noise Existed
A federal court ruled in July 2026 that the EPA had unreasonably delayed mandatory noise obligations for over four decades.
Congress passed the Noise Control Act in 1972. The EPA ran regional noise programs. Then the Reagan administration defunded them in 1982, and the law sat on the books like a smoke detector with a dead battery — technically present, functionally silent. In July 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in Quiet Communities, Inc. v. EPA (Case No. 23-cv-1649) that the agency had unreasonably delayed mandatory noise obligations for decades, granting partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs. Consultants note that “nothing changes today” in terms of immediate thresholds — no new limits are set yet. The pressure, however, is building.
Noise is the “forgotten stepchild” of environmental harm from datacenters. — Jamie Banks, President, Quiet Communities Inc.
Low-frequency sound — the kind cooling systems and diesel generators produce — doesn’t behave like ordinary noise. It travels farther, penetrates walls more readily, and often registers as vibration before your ears fully process it. Eric Zwerling, director of Rutgers’ Noise Technical Assistance Center (the only remaining EPA regional noise center in the country), warns that poorly designed facilities can have impacts on nearby residents that are “virtually catastrophic.” Surgeon General William H. Stewart flagged noise-related cardiovascular and stress responses back in 1968. That’s not a new finding — it’s one the regulatory system simply stopped acting on.
The Hum Isn’t Stopping
DataOne is building mitigations and the Planning Board approved the next phase anyway — residents in Vineland are still awake at 2am.
DataOne spokesperson Naomi Race says the company is:
- Building a northerly sound wall
- Adjusting construction timing
- Planning to replace diesel generators with quieter fuel cells
- Hiring a sound-mitigation specialist
Nebius VP John Sutter pledges “open engagement” with the community. The company has also offered weekly baskets of organic, non-GMO produce to underprivileged Vineland residents — the gap between the scale of the disruption and the scale of that remedy was not lost on residents. In August 2026, the Vineland Planning Board voted 8–1 to approve the next phase of the DataOne campus. The Microsoft deal needs servers. The servers need to run. And somewhere in Vineland, a man is lying awake at 2am, listening to the sound of the future.
