I moved to Lowell, Mass., in 2010 as a young adult. The community hosted movie nights at the baseball field and organized events at the park, which have sadly stopped. I live by myself, so neighbors were the number one thing I looked to. Then Markley [Group] purchased an abandoned spaghetti factory. All of a sudden, it just appeared: A big black building. I didn’t even know what a data center was. It didn’t affect my everyday life until 2023 [when] I was coming off a year of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That experience changed the way I look at my health, what was happening around my home, and what I was breathing, hearing, and seeing every day.

One of my routines is walking through my neighborhood with my dog. Those walks became a way for me to reconnect with the community and appreciate how far I had come. But the neighborhood was changing. The trees were being removed and replaced with concrete. A tall black fence went up. On the other side of that fence was the industrial operation that continues to grow. I hear the noise. I see the diesel smoke. I see the changes to the landscape and the impact the development has on the homes we all live in.

“I didn’t even know what a data center was.”

It isn’t just one generator, one day of construction, or one individual incident. It’s about the combined lasting impact of the operation growing alongside the residential neighborhood. I attend city council meetings. I reach out to neighbors. I know my cancer diagnosis gave me courage and perseverance to speak up. Growing up practicing Catholicism taught me the moral sense of caring, protecting others, especially the vulnerable. We just want to speak up on a neighborhood that feels so small next to a large, powerful company.

Holly Flynn spoke with Sojourners associate editor Josina Guess.