LOUISA COUNTY, Va. — Austin Newsome has taken up an unexpected new hobby — using a decibel reader to record the noise level of trucks constantly moving in and out of a data center construction site across from his Louisa County home.
"Trying to get as much data as I can to show the county what they say is acceptable versus what it really is," Newsome said.
Since construction began across the street roughly one year ago, Newsome says his family's life was turned upside down.
"So this is just constant — all day, every day, you can just see the haze of the dust floating through the air, and it never stops," Newsome said. "And the noise that comes out of this place 24 hours. At night time is just a loud pitch, humming, buzzing noise all the time."
Newsome shared video he said he captured April 24 at 3 a.m. that he says depicts disruptive overnight work at the Amazon Web Services data center on Jefferson Highway. In the video you can hear a loud buzzing noise.
Newsome said he bought his house 12 years ago because he wanted to live out in the country. Now, he says nobody wants to buy it because of the data center across the street.
"Every person that comes and looks at it like, 'Oh, we didn't know it's across the street from a data center,'" Newsome said.
A few weeks ago, Newsome said he filed a complaint with the county after large amounts of dust were spewing out of the construction site. Newsome's neighbor provided us with video of the event.
"It almost got to the point where you could barely see to cross the road or cars stopping in the road because they couldn't see to drive through it," Newsome said.
Louisa County confirmed it received a dust complaint. When investigators came out to look into it, they found the dust was associated with a utility project. When asked whether that utility project was directly related to the construction of the data center, the county did not directly answer the question. The county said the work fell within the limits of disturbance for the construction campus and referred further questions to Dominion.
A Dominion spokesperson said the company was doing work on a line feeding the Amazon Web Services campus, but that work was completed within two days.
The county says the construction company handling the project implemented dust mitigation techniques and is continuing to monitor conditions to ensure appropriate measures remain in place.
Just after CBS 6 left on Monday, Newsome sent a photo of a truck spraying water on the road.
For Newsome, those mitigation measures are not enough. Now he is advising others to get informed.
"Fight it, fight it very hard, do everything you can, go to the meetings, pay attention," Newsome said.
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