Lowell residents file Massachusetts’ first lawsuit against a data center

Lowell residents have filed a lawsuit against a data center and state environmental regulators, alleging the facility has harmed their neighborhood and that officials unlawfully sidestepped public oversight during its approval process.

The complaint, filed April 27 in Middlesex County Superior Court, targets the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the data center’s owner, Markley Group. The 10 plaintiffs — members of a grassroots group known as Honest Future for Lowell — say the facility’s growth has disrupted life in the city’s Sacred Heart and Back Central neighborhoods, both long designated as environmental justice communities.

At the center of the lawsuit is a 352,000-square-foot data center that residents say looms over nearby homes, with cooling tower mist settling on properties and diesel generators contributing to noise and emissions. The filing alleges industrial generators sit behind a neighborhood little league field and that surveillance cameras monitor surrounding streets and backyards.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the lawsuit is the first against a data center in Massachusetts, potentially setting a precedent as similar facilities rapidly expand nationwide alongside growing artificial intelligence infrastructure.

What the lawsuit is about

The residents are represented by attorneys from Yale Law School’s Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic and the Conservation Law Foundation. Their legal challenge focuses on the DEP’s approval of a July 2025 air quality permit for the site and what plaintiffs describe as an “unlawful” administrative agreement that allowed construction during an ongoing appeal.

Stephanie Safdi, a Yale Law School professor representing the plaintiffs through the school’s Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic, said the lawsuit challenges both the DEP’s approval of an air permit for eight new diesel generators and the agency’s issuance of an “administrative consent order” that allowed construction to proceed before the appeals process concluded.

“We think it is unauthorized or unlawful permission for the company to go ahead and undertake these activities without going through the full permitting process,” Safdi said.

The dispute began in 2025, when Markley applied for an air permit to add eight new diesel generators at the site, bringing the total to 27 generators and 16 cooling towers. The DEP approved the permit on July 3, 2025. The residents appealed weeks later, but it was denied in August, according to the lawsuit. They were told they could continue the appeal individually as “aggrieved persons,” leading to the April 2026 lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to revoke both the DEP’s air permit approval and the consent order, arguing the latter exceeds the agency’s authority. 

Alexandra Enrique St. Pierre, vice president for the Conservation Law Foundation’s environmental justice program and a representative for the plaintiffs, framed the case as being about power imbalances between Markley, the state, and the community.

“This case is about fairness to a community that is simply trying to go about their lives in a place that they’ve called home for years and have a say in what that looks like,” St. Pierre said. “Pretty much everything that DEP and Markley have done in this case has been designed to exclude residents.”

She called the consent order a “secret side process.”

“Without telling anyone, they had entered into an administrative consent order to allow Markley to proceed as though the permit had already been granted,” she said.

The lawsuit comes amid growing scrutiny of data centers nationwide, as demand rises with the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. In Lowell, it also follows a recent city council vote to impose a temporary moratorium on new data center construction and expansion.

How residents are impacted

For residents, the lawsuit reflects years of frustration.

Plaintiff Mary Wambui, who has lived in Lowell since 2002, became involved after learning about plans to add more diesel generators to the data center.

“I decided to start going to the city council meetings and adding my voice,” she said.

Her concerns deepened when residents discovered construction activity during the appeal process. 

“We were like, how did this happen in the middle of an appeal?” Wambui said.

Another plaintiff, Jacob Fortes, lives in a home that lies along the facility’s southern border where four diesel engines sit behind his house, the closest one being 84 feet away.

“How that was ever allowed to happen … is a fundamental breakdown,” he said.

Fortes said on a windy day, fumes from the diesel engines will come into the second story of his house, calling it “the nightmare situation of which I’ve been in for 10 years.”

“At the end of the day, I just want a balance of power between residents, companies, and state bodies,” Wambui said.

The Markley Group did not respond to Boston.com’s request for comment.

For the plaintiffs, it’s a cautionary tale for other communities facing data center development.

“The larger world needs to see what is going on in Lowell, Massachusetts,” Fortes said.

Lowell residents v. MassDEP, Markley

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.