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Clinic Lawsuit Challenges Data Center Expansion in Lowell, Massachusetts

A data center towers over a residential neighborhood and street
The Markley Group’s data center, painted black in 2021, rises behind a residential street in the Sacred Heart neighborhood of Lowell.

Public officials collaborated with a data center developer in Lowell, Massachusetts to unlawfully circumvent permitting processes, according to a lawsuit filed on April 27 by the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School on behalf of 10 Lowell residents. The lawsuit comes just weeks after residents in Lowell won a historic moratorium on data center development in the city.

The lawsuit, filed by the residents’ group Honest Future for Lowell in Massachusetts Superior Court, challenges the expansion of a 352,000 square foot data center in the city’s Sacred Heart and Back Central neighborhoods. Both neighborhoods have been designated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as “Environmental Justice populations” on account of their large minority communities. The 14-acre data center is bordered by residential homes and a public park and ballfield. A public preschool for children with special needs sits just one block away. According to the complaint, the data center owned and operated by the Markley Group, LLC, has “disrupt[ed] daily life for residents with air pollution, industrial noise, dust, odor, traffic, and other impacts.”

“This is an important step forward in getting the respect our neighborhood has not had for the past 11 years. It didn’t have to come to this, but Markley refused to listen to the neighborhood or respect state laws,” said Jacob Fortes, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, addressing the Markley Group’s arrival in the neighborhood in 2015. Fortes’ home sits at the data center fenceline. 

A data center building sits next to a baseball field
A bank of Markley’s industrial diesel generators (left) sits behind the neighborhood baseball field.

The Markley Group now aims to expand its operations at the site to a total of 27 industrial diesel generators and 16 cooling towers to support data storage and computing services. Honest Future for Lowell challenged Markley’s permit last July with the state agency charged with enforcing state air pollution control laws, but the group argues that they did not receive a fair hearing. The complaint alleges that instead officials at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) quietly signed an agreement with the Markley Group to sidestep laws that would protect their neighborhood from pollution and allow Markley to operate under the contested permit before going through the full public process. 

According to the complaint, Honest Future for Lowell found out about the agreement — referred to by MassDEP as an “Administrative Consent Order” — six months into their ongoing appeal after questioning the Markley Group about unpermitted construction activities residents had observed at the site. The lawsuit asks the court to vacate the consent order and “prevent Markley and MassDEP from making an unlawful end-run around the state’s air pollution control laws and permitting requirements.”

“It’s scandalous,” said student attorney Gil Damon ’28. “Behind closed doors, these Massachusetts officials collaborated with the Markley Group — whose data center they were legally required to regulate — to expose Lowell residents to even more diesel fumes. This kind of conduct undermines trust in government.”

The consent order denied the community procedural justice, said Mary Wambui, a member of Honest Future for Lowell. “By shutting out Environmental Justice residents, the department allowed decisions that affect our health and daily lives to happen without us,” she said.

A child's picnic table and benches sit in a school playground
At the Cardinal O’Connell School, a public preschool that caters to students with special needs, children play across the street from the Markley facility.

Known as the “City of the Spindles” for its extensive 19th century mills, Lowell has a long history of resistance to industrial abuse, according to Honest Future for Lowell members. Now, residents believe that they can set the stage for a safer approach to data centers nationwide.

According to the complaint, the Sacred Heart and Back Central neighborhoods are overburdened by air pollution and other environmental stressors. The census block group that houses the data center ranks in the 97th percentile in the country for nitrogen oxide emissions and in the 90th percentile nationwide for proportion of adults with asthma, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s former Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool EJScreen.

The lawsuit charges MassDEP with failing to consider the contribution of the data center expansion to these existing health and environmental burdens, or to put in place appropriate safeguards. The World Health Organization has long classified diesel engine exhaust as carcinogenic to humans. The challenged permit would allow Markley to emit up to 42.92 tons per year of nitrogen oxide from the diesel generators — a number that the complaint alleges is understated because the Markley Group operates its diesel generators in excess of permit limits. It would also allow the data center to emit up to 3,276 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalents from its generator operations — equivalent to the year-round greenhouse gas emissions of 749 U.S. households from all electricity use, according to court documents. The complaint further charges the department with violating the law by failing to consider clean energy sources in lieu of on-site diesel generation, failing to conduct the cumulative impact analysis required in Environmental Justice populations, and failing to ensure that the data center would comply with noise regulations and other protections.

According to the complaint, the data center already exceeds noise regulations and is often “so loud that it can sound like a jet engine.” The complaint also cites the potential for the cooling towers to breed legionella bacteria responsible for outbreaks of Legionnaire’s disease. Mist from the cooling towers settles onto nearby homes and yards and prevents residents from spending time outdoors, the complaint alleges.

Security cameras on a tall pole point into a neighborhood street filled with children's toys
Clusters of surveillance cameras point into the neighborhood beyond the data center fenceline.

“The lawsuit challenges every aspect of Markley and MassDEP’s efforts to ram the data center expansion through the agency approval process,” said student attorney Mehrdad Dariush ’26. “It alleges that MassDEP violated the state’s Administrative Procedure Act by committing a number of legal and factual errors when it approved Markley’s permit, and that the consent order violates the plaintiffs’ rights to a fair hearing and exceeds the agency’s statutory powers.”

The lawsuit comes just after Honest Future for Lowell helped to secure a temporary moratorium on new construction and development of data centers in the city — the first such moratorium in Massachusetts. “The moratorium showed Lowell is finally waking up to the risk of having a data center so close to homes,” said Fortes. “Problems like what we are experiencing here in Lowell are playing out in communities throughout the country.”

According to the complaint, the temporary moratorium has not stopped the Markley Group from expanding into and beyond Sacred Heart and Back Central. The lawsuit details purchases of homes around the neighborhoods by business entities registered to Markley Group officers and attorneys. Last December, the Markley Group also acquired a retired 85-megawatt peaker plant in Lowell, powered by a natural gas-fired turbine and diesel fuel stored at the site. Until it was closed in 2024, the facility was the largest diesel fuel storage site in Lowell, according to the complaint. 

“For the last decade, this community has shown remarkable persistence in the face of consistent pollution, noise, dust, odors, and traffic right outside their homes,” said Alex St. Pierre, vice president for environmental justice at Conservation Law Foundation, co-counsel with the clinic in the litigation. “Even as the years passed and the facility grew more disruptive, they continued to raise concerns — only to be dismissed and denied a fair hearing. They deserve to be heard and respected, and CLF is proud to work alongside them.”

A birdhouse sits in a field in front of a data center
Residents say that Markley’s exhaust stacks spray diesel fumes toward their homes, while cooling towers release a dirty mist.

Honest Future for Lowell is jointly represented in the lawsuit by the clinic, the Conservation Law Foundation, and Alessandra Wingerter YSE ’17 with Fitch Law Partners in Boston. Student attorneys Maya Nitschke Alonso ’28, Gil Damon ’28, Mehrdad Dariush ’26, Ava McKallip ’28, and Bobby Treadwell ’27, supervised by Professor Stephanie Safdi ’13, drafted the complaint and represented Honest Future for Lowell in administrative proceedings that gave rise to the lawsuit.

The Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School provides an opportunity for students to participate in full-service legal support for community groups, Tribal Nations, and nonprofit coalitions seeking to advance environmental justice and related concerns such as Tribal sovereignty, environmental protection, public health, civil rights, and participatory environmental governance.