A St. Joseph County Council committee tonight will start considering an update to the county’s noise control ordinance to protect neighbors of industrial sites like data centers. It comes too late to help people living near the Amazon data center but it could apply to the data center that Microsoft plans for Granger.
The county’s noise control ordinance now limits the sounds an industrially zoned operation can emit that we hear, but this revision would also regulate low-frequency sound, the vibratory energy that you can feel and that rattles the window panes in your home.
The bill’s author, Democrat Bryan Tanner, says he took inspiration from an ordinance in Prince William County, Virginia, an area that’s been dubbed Data Center Alley. Here, he says companies that have obtained building permits before the bill is signed into law would be grandfathered or exempt. The Amazon data center already has seven of its shells operating and expects to have two more up and running by the end of the month.
But the data center Microsoft is planning for Granger, where there are many more homes nearby than the Amazon site, isn’t as far along. I asked Tanner whether he’s heard any opposition to this change from industry or developers.
”I did have a local representative as a consultant for the Microsoft data center project reach out and ask if this was an indicator that I was opposed to their project moving forward," Tanner says. "It was more of the perception of what this meant rather than the content of the ordinance itself.”
The council’s Land Use Planning Committee meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. in the County-City Building Council Chambers.
