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Paris Data Center Not Too Noisy, After All (datacenterdynamics.com) 77

Posted by samzenpus from the I-can't-hear-you dept.
judgecorp writes: A Paris court has ruled that a suburban data center can continue to operate, reversing an earlier decision to close it down after protests from residents. The data center's owner, Interxion, cited noise impact studies form 2014 which showed the site was operating within authorized limits, and also within the levels it predicted in its planning application
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Paris Data Center Not Too Noisy, After All More

Paris Data Center Not Too Noisy, After All

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  • Don't court cases normally take months if not years to appeal?

  • I'm sure they'll go on strike over this.

    Oh, hang on - it's in Montreuil - nobody has a job there anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hughbar ( 579555 )
      More to the point, Montreuil is full of poor people, some of them communists (it used to have a communist mairie, as I recall?), so they can **** off.

      I would guess the people in work are probably on shifts as well, so they won't want the rattle of AC and possibly standby generators. However 'industry' usually wins these things now, as in the UK and aircraft noise. If it's 'growth' we now no longer care about quality of life. Sad that this attitude has come to France, but it's on the edge of Paris, not re

      • Montreuil has a lot a gentrification currently going on. So, even if there still quite a lot of poor people, and a huge Malian community, there is also more and more wealthy people there. And quite a lot of jobs too, with all the offices of BNP Paribas.

        But, in fact, it's not really relevant here, Montreuil is where the court is, not the datacenter. The later is in La Courneuve. I know less well this city, but there it seems there is also quite a lot of gentrification and (new) jobs there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hughbar ( 579555 )
          Yes, thanks, La Corneuve is a long way from the Mairie de Montreuil. This is my old department, le neuf-trois, an epicentre of fun and disorder. Not surprised that the populace are being subjected to something that wouldn't be acceptable in 75016 or 75008 for example.

      • Not always. Auto race tracks that have been operating for decades are told to enforce sound limits or shut down completely because some new development opened 5 years ago nearby.

        But on the flip side, no one wants airplane noise, but everyone wants to benefit from being within 30 minutes of an international airport and getting their package from the other end of the country in 2 days. That doesn't happen by truck or train. So, lots of hypicrisy and NIMBY thinking, and an industry standing up to some of th

        • Realistically, lots of people benefit from the airport, but considerably fewer have major noise problems. NIMBY is a reasonable response sometimes. Many people moved into the flight area before the local airport got lots more busy and opened another runway, and really didn't expect the noise they got.

  • Misleading headline (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If the residents are protesting and the plant is within regulation, the regulations allow too much noise. If the datacenter was "not too noisy after all" then nobody would have complained/protested.

    • Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jklovanc ( 1603149 ) on Friday November 06, 2015 @04:05AM (#50875535)

      If the datacenter was "not too noisy after all" then nobody would have complained/protested.

      For some people any perceptible change in noise it too much noise. That is a subjective standard. The area is probably zoned for a certain noise level and seems to be within that objective standard.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by khchung ( 462899 )

        If the datacenter was "not too noisy after all" then nobody would have complained/protested.

        For some people any perceptible change in noise it too much noise.

        Worse, for some people with hidden agenda, even imperceptible noise is too much noise.

        It wouldn't be hard for budding politician to make an issue out of nothing and come out "for the neighborhood" as a knight in shining armor driving away a "noisy datacenter", and then appearing for the next election nearby. These things happen all the time where ever there are local elections.

        • I would be more concerned about the extra radiation from the DC rather than the sound.

          Whenever I see networking WiFi equipment I get headaches. I couldn't imagine having to see a DC all the time. I'd be able to feel myself getting cancer.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Do you also get headaches when you don't see the WiFi equipment?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by X-chan ( 782883 )
      This is France, we're famous for protesting and going on strike for about everything under the sun.

      That said, while I can't judge this specific case, the noise overall in Paris is bad. Of course you eventually get used to it and you phase it out, but I don't know how I'd live without double glazing. Nothing to do with datacenters, just cars and other motorized vehicules. So anything that add extra noise on top of it is not going to be welcomed by residents.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If the residents are protesting and the plant is within regulation, the regulations allow too much noise.

      We've had people complaining from headaches caused by a cell tower.. which was never switched on.
      So I would not take people protests as a consistent sign that regulations must be changed. These protests sometimes just mean that something HAS changed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by marciot ( 598356 )

        We've had people complaining from headaches caused by a cell tower.. which was never switched on.
        So I would not take people protests as a consistent sign that regulations must be changed. These protests sometimes just mean that something HAS changed.

        According to Wikipedia, even the Eiffel Tower was highly objected to when it was first proposed. Here is the petition, which is quite fun to read, in retrospect:

        "We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection ... of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower ... To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous to

        • Was it Dumas that said he liked to do his writing in a restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only place in town where he couldn't see the thing?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by marciot ( 598356 )

            Was it Dumas that said he liked to do his writing in a restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only place in town where he couldn't see the thing?

            Guy de Maupassant, according to the same wikipedia article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Or they are just a bunch of people that like to complain.

  • Roughly after the start of it. That means at that time it could indeed have a low noise during the study. The question is not whether it did respect the law back then, but what is the noise assessment today, and whether the fuel tank are properly secured. But i am not surprise the appeal court overturned the decision. Stopping the center and withdrawing allowance was stupid. In such a case you do a study first and recommend measure to stop or lower the noise. You don#t stop the shit out of the company.

  • La Courneuve is a relatively poor area near (not in) Paris. If this were in, say, Neuilly-sur-Seine, which is also near (not in) Paris but happens to house, among others, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, it would never have been built to start with.

    La Courneuve Wiki
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Neuilly Wiki
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I sympathize with the residents (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The issue with noise is that is very subjective and i can see why the locals are upset.
    Their street was probably very quiet and now it probably a constant humm, day and night.
    it doesn't have to by loud, 50-60 db, witch is probably within legal limits, but never the less can be annoying.
    I can give you an example: I've recently moved from one end of an apartment building to the other, 100m or so away.
    The building is parallel to a noisy street but one end is closer to a stop so cars begin to stop there and the

    • Planning and zoning get some. Idiots keep on trying to build walkable cities but do not understand that means everybody is living right next to commercial space.

      I live in a nice suburban town nearly all the industry is on the other side of a hill we can not hear anything short of an explosion . It's realy not that hard residential next to light commercial and industrial/heavy commercial past that with the highway past them. High open space vs building zoning means we have buffers not lots that amount to

  • If the datacentre came along AFTER the residences were built and populated, and if the majority of local residents say it's too noisy, then it IS too noisy. Never mind 'authorized limits', planning applications, and the like.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Thank goodness things don't work that way. If the majority of people didn't want a cafe with a large gay clientele should they boot that out?
      So you want everyone to be subject to the voting of the local community?
      You are the flipside of the extreme libertarian view of "you can do anything you want on your property".
      Both plans are terrible.

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