CyrusOne is warning residents near its data center in Aurora that it will soon be doing another round of repairs to the facility’s electrical equipment, which previously had a significant impact on nearby residents.
During similar repairs in April, the use of backup generators for multiple days straight caused consistently loud noise in the surrounding area, which some residents told The Beacon-News was “unlivable” and “horrible.” CyrusOne has since put in place a temporary sound wall blocking the site’s generators, with a permanent sound wall currently under construction.
The latest round of repairs, set to take place on Tuesday, Aug. 12, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., was announced Friday on an official webpage set up by CyrusOne to communicate with residents about the ongoing sound issues surrounding the facility, which is located at the corner of Eola and Diehl roads on Aurora’s far East Side near Interstate 88.
“Delay of this work will run the risk of potentially longer emergency generator runs in the future,” CyrusOne’s website said. “We remain committed to transparency and being a trusted community partner.”
CyrusOne officials confirmed to The Beacon-News that backup generators are set to be used during the latest round of repairs, but that the temporary sound walls will be in place to mitigate the noise and that the number of generators used will be limited to only what is necessary.
Aurora Ald. Shweta Baid, 10th Ward, who represents many of those impacted by the noise, said she hopes this is the final fix the facility needs to complete. She will be walking the nearby neighborhoods to personally let people know about the upcoming repairs, she said.
In April, a critical issue was found with one of the data center’s main power transformers, which is “essential for the safe operation of our electrical systems,” according to the webpage set up to share information with residents. The issue needed a specialized repair, so the backup generators that are only used when absolutely necessary to maintain power to the facility were turned on, officials said on the website.
A temporary fix was put in place so the generators could stop running, the website said, but a permanent repair would still be needed. Officials promised they’d give advance notice before running the generators again to make the final fix.
Laura Evans, a resident of the nearby Palomino Springs neighborhood, said that she and some of her neighbors would describe the noise coming from the data center during the repairs in April as being like a helicopter was landing on her roof.
Paul Jaskowiak, who lives in the same neighborhood, said it sounded to him like a diesel truck was idling just outside his house, but it just never went away.
“You could even feel the house rattle a little bit from it,” he said.
The situation prompted multiple community meetings between residents, CyrusOne and city officials. In those meetings and on the official webpage set up to communicate with residents, CyrusOne officials apologized for the disruption and said they were working urgently to fix the issue.
Many of the residents who attended the meetings spoke not only of the disruptive noise from the generators but also of noise from chillers situated on top of the data center. CyrusOne has since put in place temporary sound mitigation around both the generators and the chillers, with permanent solutions for both on the way.
The temporary sound wall around the generators was installed May 20, according to the CyrusOne webpage. The permanent wall, expected to be completed in September, is set to be 23 feet tall, made of concrete and designed to meet Illinois Environmental Protection Agency standards, officials said on the website.
The latest update to the website about the permanent sound wall project shows on July 23 that the wall’s foundation was under construction.
Temporary walls have also been set up around the chillers that sit on top of multiple buildings on the data center campus, the webpage shows. Plus, CyrusOne officials have said they would be upgrading the acoustic wraps on the chillers, and that a more permanent solution was being designed to mitigate the chiller noise.
Despite the temporary measures on the chillers, nearby residents say the noise is often still disrupting their daily lives. Jaskowiak said he has been using his yard less because of the chiller noise, which was a growing problem even before the generator issue in late April. Evans made similar comments, saying the noise wasn’t horrible in the house but makes it so she can’t really sit on the porch or sleep with the windows open.
Although the problem hasn’t yet been fixed, Jaskowiak said his biggest disappointment is with the city of Aurora, not necessarily with CyrusOne, for allowing the company to put off noise mitigation until something happened.
Ald. Baid said she feels that the sound issue has been dragged out for a long time and needs to be resolved without further delay since it is disrupting residents’ lives. She promised to continue pushing for a fix, which she said needs to happen as soon as possible.
The city and CyrusOne are trying to come up with a solution together, Baid said. She mentioned that she has met with residents individually, helped organize the meetings between the company and residents plus pushed for the creation of the webpage communicating with residents about the sound issue
Responding to a question about the issue at a town hall meeting late last month, Mayor John Laesch said Baid has been “all over this issue” and made his office aware of it. The data center was given only a temporary permit to operate and open, so the city has the leverage of holding the facility’s final occupancy permit, he said.
“We’re working hard with both the permitting department and the legal department to address it,” Laesch said of the sound issue.
In a statement, city officials said that CyrusOne has been cooperating with code enforcement efforts “to ensure that the sound barriers and landscaping required by its zoning entitlements are timely installed,” has worked with the city to be transparent with residents and has stayed on schedule to complete sound barriers by the end of September.
As soon as the city’s legal department knows what next steps are going to be, the timeline for those and how it will hold CyrusOne accountable, that will be shared with the public, Laesch said during the town hall.
He also noted that the sound issue is one that he inherited, and he said the city should be giving out temporary occupancy permits “a little bit more carefully.”
rsmith@chicagotribune.com