Construction Impact to Residents

Data center construction is invasive and long-running. It starts with 3 months of all day pile-driving that can be heard and felt 2 miles away, and the project schedule from start to operational can be 4 years long. Understanding what is in the 1- and 2-mile radii of the construction site is imperative to understanding impact to the nearby residents.

This image is Mount Pleasant WI’s 1-mile radius from the center of development. Circled in red are a handful of farms and at the very edge of the radius it just crosses over into residential areas. Anecdotal reports from the farms were not favorable: “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy” and “I’m selling. I can’t take it any more.”

Despite the handful of nearby farms, it appears that the location was either chosen to ensure a large buffer to residential areas or it was cleared of any residences that predated the construction.

And in Mount Pleasant construction schedule for two data centers will be 7-8 years. Ironically, the amount of noise, dust, and traffic produced by the construction vastly exceeds the restrictions of the zoning, but because it is considered a construction period, the residents must tolerate it.

For your own locale, how many homes are within the 1-mile radius. What is the median home value? What is a reasonable loss of value during the construction? Often, people have life events that necessitate selling. Having to sell in the middle of that construction schedule results in a permanent loss of asset value — an uncompensated taking by the govt transferred to a large corporation. Zoning exists to protect that kind of impact.