Michigan: We Need to Talk is a weekly live call-in program launching in summer 2026 from Michigan Public, Bridge Michigan, and journalist Stephen Henderson. Hosted and produced by Henderson, the show will bring together voices from across the state for thoughtful, live, unscripted conversations about the issues shaping life in Michigan. It airs statewide on Michigan Public at 8p.m. ET.
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Before each live episode of Michigan: We Need to Talk, we’ll post the show’s opening reported segment here in the podcast feed, giving you time to hear the story, think about the issue, and get ready to join the conversation when the phone lines open.
This week, Stephen Henderson starts in Dowagiac, Michigan, where residents say the noise from a nearby data center has changed daily life in their neighborhood. It’s a story about artificial intelligence, economic development, public safety, local control, and what happens when a community feels like decisions about its future were made without any input.
The live call-in show airs Thursday at 7 p.m. on Michigan Public. After the broadcast, we’ll post the call-in portions of the conversation here on demand.
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Data centers provide opportunities for large corporate investment in Michigan, but many residents don't want them in their backyard. There's also a growing frustration among data center opponents that public officials are ignoring their concerns. How should Michigan make decisions when the benefits of a project are spread broadly, but the costs are concentrated in one community?
In this opening segment, Stephen Henderson introduces the first conversation on Michigan: We Need to Talk: the debate over data centers in Michigan, and what one southwest Michigan community can teach us about the tradeoffs behind new technology and economic development.
The question at the heart of the episode:
When a project promises progress, who gets to decide what that progress costs and who has to live with it?
Listen to this segment before the live broadcast, then join the conversation Thursday at 7 p.m. on Michigan Public.
What if this noise were right out your front door? Twenty-four hours a day, seven days away. I mean, literally. You're sitting on your front porch, you're gardening, maybe you're playing with your kids, whatever you're doing. This is the soundtrack under everything.
SPEAKER_06
It's around three in the afternoon now. I wouldn't say that this is the peak of how loud it gets, but this is pretty loud and pretty consistent with the problem that I and my wife and all of our neighbors have been reporting to the city.
SPEAKER_01
And this is what we have to listen to 24-7, and part of why we can't really use our property.
SPEAKER_03
That was Mitch Gorley and his wife, Lindy Valenzuela. They're standing on the back porch of their house on the north side of Dewajak, a small town of about 6,000 people in southwest Michigan. Now that's the same block where an AI data center was built right across from their home in 2023. And it makes that noise. That high-pitched whirr over a low hum, that steady vibration that disrupts every single second, it makes that noise all the time. So Mitch and Lindy can't enjoy being outside their home at all. And they don't really know what to do about it. Their house isn't just any house. It's a house that Mitch inherited from his grandparents. And he says it's been in his family for a couple of generations. It's where he and Lindy plan to spend their lives and raise their children. They've got a three-year-old son already and a new baby. They know this is unbearable, this constant noise, but they don't want to move. And so far, no one has been able to convince the owners of the data center to stop the noise. That's a pretty profound loss for Mitch and Lindy and for all their neighbors. I mean, you can hear this data center, not just on their street, but on the next street over. And the next. And the next. In their neighborhood, this noise is inescapable. Wherever you go in Michigan right now, people are eager to talk and argue and really get after each other about these data centers. Are they gonna use too much electricity? Will they take up too much of our fresh water? But the questions become much more personal when you're talking about how these developments affect the people who may have to live right next to them. What do we owe to the places we call home when change arrives and disrupts in this way? Especially where change is inflicted on a neighborhood in the name of economic development. Now think about all the places that happens in big cities, small towns, and even rural areas here in Michigan and across the country. How do we make sure these communities are okay? How do we make sure that they not only can survive, but thrive. I'm your host, Steven Henderson, and this is a weekly call-in conversation where we'll bring reporting, context, and importantly, your voice to the issues and conflicts that come up in our state over and over again. You can join our conversation at 734-412-7155. Again, that's 734-412-7155. You can also email us at We NeedToTalk and then the letters MI at gmail.com. Again, that's We Need to Talk and then the letters MI at gmail.com. This week, our discussion begins in Dawazia, where the conflict over the AI data center on the north side of town is reaching a fever pitch.
SPEAKER_01
We do not believe anything you say will promise. Prove to us that you really want to be a good name and be quiet.
SPEAKER_05
What's the actual timeline for Amy's significant decrease in the current sound and vibration? While you answer the question, what are you going to do? I'll wait. We'll all wait.
SPEAKER_03
Those were Duajak residents who were invited to attend a city council meeting in late July. Will Horn, the CEO of Hyperscale Data, now that's the company that built and operates this data center in Duajak, he was at the meeting to address their concerns about his business and to listen to what people who live near the data center had to say about what their lives are like. Now, we could play about an hour's worth of comments like the ones you just heard. Person after person came up to the mic and really gave CEO Will Horn a piece of their mind. Their anger is about the sound, of course. But it's also about the process that brought this data center to their neighborhood, and about the oversight role that they expect City Council to be able to play over all of this. Turns out this data center just kind of appeared in Duaziac. There were no hearings, there was no notice to neighbors or anyone else that it was happening. About five years ago, Hyperscale bought a warehouse that had existed in a north side neighborhood for many, many years. And at first, they just installed a Bitcoin mining operation at that site. Neighbors say that brought a little bit of noise, but then two years ago, Hyperscale added this data center to the site, and the noise just got out of control.
SPEAKER_04
It kind of sounds like uh maybe a bunch of diesel engines running, or maybe a uh a small airplane engine or something constantly going and going and going. Yeah. We've had people come over and step out of their cars and say, boy, what is that noise? How can you guys stand living where that noise is? And of course we don't have a choice but to live where the noise is.
SPEAKER_03
That was Billy Finn. He's a neighbor of Mitch Gorley and Lindy Valenzuela, so this data center is in his yard too. He lives in a house that his wife inherited from her parents, her grandparents, and her great-grandparents. That's the kind of town Duajak is. People come, they stay, they build a family, and then they pass on the fruits of their lives to the next generation. I want you to remember what Billy Finn said there about not having a choice but to live where this noise is. A little later in the show, that tension between staying and going is going to become more important to our discussion about the conflict between industrial and residential interests. But before we get there, I want to go back to what Billy Finn and others in Dwajak learned from City Council about what can or should be done to address this data center and its disruption. The City Council says it's responding to the noise complaints, and it has cited the data center for violating the city's noise abatement ordinance. But hyperscale is actually disputing those citations, so right now nothing is really changing. Beyond that, council members said they don't really know what else they can do to regulate the data center. It kind of exists in a loophole where local government may not have all the tools it needs to address a data center's existence or nuisance once it's already operating. And this data center opened, remember, where there was already a warehouse. So there was no zoning change or other oversight really necessary for it to open. Now, for his part, hyperscale CEO Will Horn spent a few minutes at the meeting explaining Hyperscale's side of the story and trying to assure residents that his company wants to be, as he put it, a good neighbor.
SPEAKER_07
We knew that the future of American technology could be built here. Not on some faraway coast, but right here in Southwest Michigan by people from Southwest Michigan. That's something we are proud of, and I think that the entire community can be proud of.
SPEAKER_03
At first, Horn seemed open to the idea that the data center was making too much noise. He said Hyperscale could try some things. They could insulate some things on the outside of the data center, and they could experiment with turning fans or other equipment on or off inside the facility to make it less noisy. But then Horn seemed to get a little defensive, and he turned the narrative in a way that was pretty dismissive of residents' complaints.
SPEAKER_07
It's between 65 and 70 decibels. That's louder than what the facility is.
unknown
No way.
SPEAKER_07
Currently.
SPEAKER_03
Now you can hear people in the background starting to get agitated by what Will Horn is suggesting here. The idea that this sound, this noise, maybe isn't all that bad. But what got them really upset was when he suggested that if they didn't like the imposition of this data center on their neighborhood, hyperscale would be willing to buy many of them out. That didn't go over particularly well.
SPEAKER_02
If somebody's got their boot on your head and you're underwater, when they lift their boot off your head, they're not a hero. Um, you know, so offering to buy people out of a neighborhood that they're ruining uh is not a kindness.
SPEAKER_03
That was Peter Gibbons. He was the very last Dajak resident to speak at the city council meeting. What you hear in his voice is not just frustration, it's also exasperation, a sense of futility or being dismissed, that his concerns just don't matter enough for hyperscale to really take them seriously. It's like shouting at a mountainside or tilting at a windmill. Whatever you do, you can't win. There's something familiar about that feeling in all kinds of communities around Michigan that are confronting the possibility or the reality of data centers. Whether it's Detroit or Celine Township outside Ann Arbor, Lowell outside Grand Rapids, or Dwajak, people are struggling almost everywhere to figure out how to protect their communities from essentially being run over by these developments. And for the most part, they're not really being unreasonable. At the Dwajak City Council meeting, several people got up and said, Hey, we understand that AI is the future and that we need to lean into the idea of this kind of development in our state. But what they want is respect for their communities. They want respect for their lives, and they're not getting it from people like Will Horn. And there's something about that happening in this moment here in Michigan. Right as we make difficult and divisive political decisions when we're split so bitterly about so many things and so focused on how we're unalike, data centers are affecting just about everyone.
SPEAKER_00
It doesn't matter your race or your um you know your annual salary or where you voted. Um, no one is happy about these things being plunked down in their backyard, again, without any sort of um studies or seeming care or concern for how it's going to impact people.
SPEAKER_03
That's Laura Sheets, a lawyer from Detroit. And for 30 years, she's been going to communities where industry and residents are clashing and trying to equalize the balance of power. AI data centers are a new and growing frontier in her work. And now she's trying to certify a class action suit in Duajak against hyperscale.
SPEAKER_00
Our cases always have two goals. We look for compensation for the people who have been impacted for experiencing this nightmare and having their property values depreciated by the existence of this noisy facility. And then we are also most definitely seeking improvement measures or changes to this facility to greatly decrease the output of noise that's going on or being experienced by the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_03
She said it's not uncommon in her experience for companies like hyperscale to try to essentially win by just getting rid of the neighbors who are complaining, buying them out. It's an insult, she said, to the way people in places like Dewajiac have built their lives.
SPEAKER_00
I mean, most people have, you know, their home is their biggest investment. They've got money tied into it, they've got hopes and dreams tied into it, and they're committed to schools or they're committed to their family being nearby. But to say just leave, who are they going to sell their homes to? Especially when, quite frankly, these companies aren't just there. And being a bad neighbor, they're making a ton of money while also disrupting these people's lives.
SPEAKER_03
She says government needs to step it up too. There's nothing wrong with local officials getting excited when somebody wants to invest in their town or develop there. And maybe they don't have all the tools they need to make sure that they can crack down on polluters. But they can make the residents feel like they matter. And they can do that from the very beginning. When we come back, we're going to be joined by Ben Green. He is an assistant professor in the Schools of Information and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. We'll also get going with you on the phones and via email. Tell us about your experience with data centers. Do you live in a community that has a data center or is thinking about welcoming one? What's that experience been like? And what do you think the people who operate these data centers owe to those of us who live in the communities where they want to locate? The number here is 734-412-7155. That's 734-412-7155. You can also email us at the letters miWeNeed2Talk at gmail.com. That's miweedotalk at gmail.com. We're also building an online community around our show. If you go to miweeed to talk.org and hit join the conversation, you can subscribe to our newsletter. Get information and previews and other opportunities all centered around your role in our show. We'll be right back with more Michigan We Need to Talk.
