Janet Garrison – Infrasound
One of the plaintiffs in the second lawsuit against the Mason County data center is Janet Garrison, who claims that infrasound emitted by the facility will cause her physical harm — sleep disruption, anxiety, and cardiovascular effects among them.
This deserves a careful look, because it sounds scientific. It carries medical terminology. And without context, it will alarm people.
So let’s provide some context.
Data centers do generate low-frequency hum from cooling systems. That is true. What credible peer-reviewed research does not support is the claim that data center infrasound at normal operating distances causes the specific harms Ms. Garrison alleges. Studies claiming dramatic health effects from industrial infrasound — particularly those tied to wind turbine opposition — have been extensively reviewed by public health agencies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The consistent finding: the claimed effects are indistinguishable from the nocebo effect. That is the clinical term for harm caused by expecting harm.
Mason County already hosts large underground mining operations, multiple heavy industries, mobile and stationary farm equipment, highway traffic, and railroad operations. If infrasound at ambient rural levels caused what Ms. Garrison describes, we would not need a lawsuit to tell us — we would already have a community health crisis on our hands. We do not.
What we do have is a plaintiff asking a court to block a several-hundred-million-dollar economic investment on health claims the broader scientific and public health community does not support — claims that, not coincidentally, would leave Mason County exactly where the Yearners want it: frozen in place, waiting for a rural economy that is not coming back.
Mason County deserves an economic future built on facts. Not on fears dressed in medical language to protect a memory of a lifestyle that — whatever its virtues — is gone.
Ms. Garrison also claims fear of water pollution from the facility. What she does not mention is that data centers — like every other industrial and commercial operation in Kentucky — are already subject to state and federal water quality law. The Kentucky Division of Water, the EPA’s Clean Water Act permitting requirements, and stormwater regulations exist precisely to protect every property owner, including Ms. Garrison. Those protections do not disappear because a data center moves in. They apply on day one and every day after.
The folks behind this lawsuit have deep pockets and can afford to base their future on yearning for a time before Mason County lost tobacco, dairy, and several major industries. This second lawsuit proves large legal bills don’t faze them as they yearn for an economic foundation that was — but is no more. Will you speak up and let them know not everyone in Mason County can afford to live in the past?
Lets review the relative size of the data center project to keep the size of the project in perspective
