A rare look inside the largest data center in Massachusetts

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: If you watch a movie, send an email, or put your photos in the cloud, as most of us do, there is a data center involved. [00:00:05] Speaker 2: And the rise of AI means there's more need for data storage. That means more power and more water. So more Massachusetts communities are saying they don't want them. For tonight's Question Everything, I get a rare tour inside of a data center in Lowell and ask, do we really need to worry about the future? This is a bird's-eye view of the largest data center in Massachusetts, the Markley Data Center in Lowell. It's a mammoth digital warehouse storing everything from your text messages to your medical files. It was once a Prince Spaghetti factory. And the thing is, people love pasta. Data centers? Not so much. So, that building was always there, but it was not that color. Jake Fortes might be its biggest critic. This blue house is his childhood home, and he doesn't just call Markley a bad neighbor. He's got another name. [00:01:03] Speaker 3: It's nicknamed by a lot of residents in the neighborhood, the Dungeon, because it seriously is just this black building that looms over us. [00:01:10] Speaker 2: The building has 27 emergency generators with smokestacks. Jake claims they send fumes toward his home, and he says the rows of air conditioning units on the roof are always humming. [00:01:22] Speaker 3: You'll hear the AC units. That's a constant. [00:01:25] Speaker 2: From Lowell to Los Angeles, there are coast-to-coast concerns about what these data centers can do to the environment, from the massive amount of energy they use, to the incredible amount of water they need to keep all of the equipment cool. But the owners of this data center say it is not a drain on resources. So, all of this is basically air conditioning. I asked Markley for a tour of that data center, which they never do. And it's to keep things from overheating? Correct. That's Adam Burnham. He's the corporate vice president for Markley and our tour guide. There are long, stark, white hallways here, leading to rooms full of machines taking in, transforming, and distributing huge amounts of power throughout the building. How much electricity? Well, Markley doesn't say. Most data centers don't. But its Boston location boasts up to 30 megawatts of power, which is comparable to what tens of thousands of homes could use at any given time. How many servers do you have here in this building? [00:02:30] Adam Burnham: There must be thousands from hundreds of different customers. [00:02:33] Speaker 2: And how much data is stored here? [00:02:35] Adam Burnham: It would be hard to even quantify it. To use technical terms, it would be petabytes. What kind of bytes? Petabytes would be a big number. [00:02:44] Speaker 2: Okay. Many petabytes. Many petabytes from many customers. So, how much data are we talking? Well, just one petabyte is equal to roughly 250 million photos, or the storage capacity of 250,000 smartphones, or 13 years' worth of continuous high-definition movies. We can't bring the cameras in this room. But what kind of things are we going to see? [00:03:09] Adam Burnham: So, you're going to see in here servers, routers, switches, equipment from all different types of companies. Financial companies, life science companies. You're going to see universities. [00:03:20] Speaker 2: So, what was inside? Well, this is what a rack of servers looks like at WBZ. Picture thousands of them. To keep them cool, some data centers use up to 5 million gallons of water every single day. Here? So, are you using millions of gallons of water here? It's possible. I don't know the numbers. [00:03:38] Speaker ?: Okay. [00:03:39] Speaker 2: So, you might, on a daily basis, use millions of gallons of water? [00:03:42] Adam Burnham: Yeah. I'd have to get the numbers for you to look. [00:03:45] Speaker 2: Another criticism of data centers is that once construction is done, they don't create a lot of jobs. Well, Markley actually brought a representative for the Electrical Workers Union, IBEW, to our chute. Lou Antonellis would answer questions about job creation. And how many employees do you have working here? Right now, it's a little bit of a slow period. Probably about a dozen. That's it? Yeah. Antonellis said he really wants Markley to expand, to create construction jobs. And they are buying up nearby homes and land, including this old power plant up the road. But Lowell just recently voted for a one-year moratorium on data centers. No building, no expansion. Back to our tour. The final stop was to listen to the emergency generators that neighbors like Jake had complained about. So, we're going to stop for a second and listen. You're saying this is as loud as it gets. [00:04:39] Adam Burnham: So, it's not under complete load, but this is the typical noise you're going to get. [00:04:44] Speaker 2: They weren't under full load, he said. So, what were they at? 20 percent? 50 percent? 80 percent? They said they couldn't tell me. But you think it's not making the noise that the neighbor is complaining about? Correct. You think he's exaggerating? I think they're exaggerating, yes. But the neighbors feel very strongly about it. You heard the vice president there of the company saying that he didn't know if they used millions of gallons every single day, because a lot of data centers actually do. They told me they would get the numbers. That was last Thursday. I got the numbers late this afternoon. They said on average over the past year, the building used between 70,000 gallons per day to 120,000 gallons of water per day. They also said that there is plenty of water available in Lowell, which gets its water from the Merrimack River. I've seen some of the water bills sort of behind the scenes, and I can say the numbers do match up at this point. [00:05:41] Speaker 1: So, they did get back to you. This is a conversation that's playing out all over the country. I just read today that 40 percent of homes in the United States are within five miles of a data center. So, these questions, conversations about noise and whether that noise exists and water use, those are taking place, as you mentioned, everywhere. [00:05:56] Speaker 2: One more interesting fact. Gallup did a poll. They found that 71 percent of people did not want to live near a data center. Only 53 percent didn't want to live near a nuclear power plant. So, it goes to show you how people are feeling about these things. No question. Good story. If you have a question you'd like us to answer, send us an email, questioneverything at cbsboston.com.