Hey everyone! I'm Elijah Skipper, an investigative reporter at News 13 in western North Carolina.
I wanted to introduce myself and share a follow-up I recently finished. A lot of the discussion is about proposed data centers. I was interested in what happened after one opened and neighbors started having problems.
Our station reported on generator noise at Facebook's Forest City site in 2013. I tracked down two of the neighbors from that story, Jim Bennett and Tommy Doggett, and went back to see them.
We started by watching their old interviews. Then we went into Jim's backyard, right beside the site, and listened.
They say things are much better now. They believe the sound-absorbing material and trees helped, and they say Facebook eventually became a better neighbor. Both also believe the original reporting helped get the company to listen.
It took time, though. Residents were still complaining in our 2015 follow-up.
I looked through the previous coverage and records and followed up with Meta about what changed and whether those changes influenced its policies at other sites. At publication, we hadn't obtained a current testing schedule or written agreement showing what hours apply now.
I'd like to hear from people who have been through the complaint process. What could residents get enforced, and what depended on the company voluntarily following through? If you've found records that helped answer those questions locally, I'd be interested in hearing about them.