If there’s one point of agreement regarding a proposed data center campus in Shalersville Township, it’s that the installation would increase noise.
How much, and what kind, gets complicated.
Bitdeer Technologies Group, the Singapore-based bitcoin mining company, claims that the noise level at the property line of its proposed Shalersville campus would be under 50 decibels.
Shalersville Township trustees want solid data. On Aug. 18, they authorized a $9,000 contract with Thornton Acoustics & Vibrations, a Pittsburgh-based sound study company, to monitor ambient noise for a week in six to 10 locations across the township, some of them close to the Ohio Turnpike and some adjacent to the proposed campus.
“This gives us a starting point,” Trustee Jack Bias said. “We want to get a snapshot of our current noise levels so if the proposed data center goes in, we can see the changes.”
Thornton Acoustics will do more than just measure sound.
According to an Aug. 10 email company principal William Thornton sent to Bias, the firm will review Shalersville’s existing zoning code and documentation relevant to the proposed campus, provide technical guidance to develop and implement a “fact-based community noise ordinance” and review, assess, rebut and critique any noise studies or models the developer provides.
Bias said Thornton’s work should be completed before the township’s moratorium on data centers expires in early November. If it’s not, the trustees said on Aug. 18 that they would extend the moratorium for another six months if needed, he said.
How loud is too loud?
If successful, Bitdeer would construct a 15-building data center campus on land owned by Portage County developer Geis Companies near the Ohio Turnpike interchange. The data centers would consist of computers running around the clock, processing information in exchange for digital currency called bitcoin, now worth close to $70,000 apiece.
Bitdeer Industrial Chairman and Senior Project Manager Paul Hanson told The Portager on June 16 that the noise level already coming off the turnpike is about 55 decibels, equivalent to “a quiet office, moderate rainfall, or a running refrigerator.”
That same day, during a presentation to the trustees, Bitdeer officials said the data centers would add 52-56 decibels at the nearest homes without mitigation and 43-48 decibels at the nearest residential property lines with full mitigation, which they defined as 30-foot sound walls, earth berms and vegetation.
The trustees have repeatedly asked Geis reps for the source of their figures, but the company has not responded, Bias said.
A 2008 Ohio Turnpike Commission noise mitigation study states that homes near the turnpike experience 65+ decibels on a daily basis. That’s about the sound of a normal conversation.
Bias also noted that Geis' attorneys want the trustees to agree to a noise level of “10 decibels above existing” at the nearest residences. Seventy-five decibels would approach the sound of a vacuum cleaner.
That’s all day, every day, and it’s not what the trustees want.
“We would like to freeze the level where it’s at. We don’t want to add to it,” he said.
The trustees have the county in their corner.
“I want to see a noise level that is what it is today,” Portage County Regional Planning Commission Director Todd Peetz said. “They shouldn't be adding any noise to the neighbors. None. Zero.”
The Regional Planning Commission has its eyes — and ears — on what kind of uses belong in land zoned for light industrial use, Peetz said. The township’s current zoning code defines light industry as manufacturing that is “relatively clean, quiet, and free of objectionable or hazardous elements such as smoke, noise, odor, or dust.” It must operate and store materials within enclosed structures and generate little industrial traffic and no nuisances.
To Peetz, that means activity that cannot be heard, felt or smelled.
“You shouldn't hear noise coming out of the buildings,” he said, adding that just because Shalersville doesn’t have land zoned for heavy industrial use doesn’t mean the proposed 750-megawatt data center campus can be sited on land zoned light industrial.
The Regional Planning Commission, which on Aug. 12 tabled proposed tweaks to Shalersville’s zoning code, is expected to present what it deems acceptable language on Sept. 9.
Portage Residents for Responsible Development
Jessica Winchell, the force behind the Facebook group Portage Residents for Responsible Development, said her biggest concern with the proposed project is Geis’s plan, aired during the trustees’ Aug. 18 meeting, to install 300 diesel generators, each one capable of producing 2.5 megawatts of power.
If PJM Interconnection, the company that coordinates and directs the power Ohio Edison produces, should for any reason curtail or cut off power to the data center campus, those generators would kick in, she said.
“Bitdeer will turn on all 300 of those generators, and run them until PJM says there’s enough power to go around again,” Winchell said. “They will also have to test all of those generators on a regular basis.”
Despite Geis’s June 16 pledge that the generators would be in Level 4 (heavy duty) sound enclosures, they can’t be entirely sealed because they have to have ventilation to operate, Winchell said.
“Generators are by default very noisy. They don't get less noisy the larger they get, and these generators would be quite large. They would reasonably create quite a bit of noise,” she said.
Peetz agreed with Winchell’s assessment, saying it would be difficult to entirely mitigate the noise coming from the generators.