How Loud Is 70 Decibels, Anyway?

So here's a question I've never had to think about before.

How loud is 70 decibels?

I know it matters.

I know Perry Township decided it mattered enough to write it down in a noise ordinance back in October of last year.

But I genuinely had no idea what the number actually meant until I started tracking the Faircrest Data Center project and kept running into this figure.

Seventy decibels.

That's the cap.

That's what Perry Township says you can't exceed if you're running a data center near a residential property, near an abutting property, or near certain businesses with liquor licenses.

But what does that sound like?

I had to look it up.

Trying to Make Sense of a Number

Turns out 70 decibels is approximately as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

Or a washing machine.

Or a busy traffic intersection, if you're standing right there on the curb.

It's louder than normal conversation, which runs around 60 decibels.

It's quieter than a lawn mower, which is closer to 90.

So the township drew a line somewhere between "washing machine" and "lawn mower."

Now, here's where I have to admit I don't know enough about acoustics or data center operations to tell you whether 70 decibels is a reasonable limit, a tight limit, or a loose one.

I don't know what a data center actually sounds like when it's running.

I don't know if that number reflects what other communities chose, or what industry standard is, or any of that.

I just know that in October 2025, Perry Township adopted this specific ordinance, and Stark Civic Monitor has it logged as independently verified fact, sourced to reporting from Zaria Johnson at Ideastream Public Media and Abreanna Blose at the Canton Repository.

The document exists.

The rule exists.

And somebody at some point decided 70 was the right number.

But Here's the Bigger Picture

This is the kind of thing that doesn't make headlines.

A township passes a noise ordinance.

It's not dramatic.

It's not a controversy.

It's not someone winning or losing anything obvious.

It's just a line drawn on a piece of paper.

But that line means something specific if you own property next to where a data center is being built.

It means something if you're trying to figure out whether that facility meets the rules or violates them.

It means something if you're a developer trying to understand what the local regulations actually are before you invest in a project.

And it means something if you're just a resident trying to understand what happens when heavy infrastructure shows up in your township.

Most people never see these ordinances.

They're not the kind of thing that goes viral.

They're not the kind of thing you stumble across unless you're specifically looking for what the rules are.

And yet the rules are what actually govern whether a project is legal, whether it has to change, whether neighbors have any recourse.

The rules matter more than the arguments about whether the rules should exist.

The Puzzle I Keep Running Into

Here's what troubles me, honestly.

I can find the ordinance.

I can verify it exists.

I can tell you the number.

But I can't tell you what it means for this specific project or any other one without understanding a whole lot more than I do about acoustics, equipment, site planning, and probably things I don't even know I don't know.

And if I started guessing at what it means, I'd be doing the one thing I promised not to do: pretending to expertise I don't have.

The ordinance says 70 decibels.

A data center produces sound.

Either the facility will comply with the ordinance or it won't.

But whether it does or doesn't, whether that's good or bad, whether 70 was the right number—that's not my job to figure out.

That's exactly the kind of judgment call that people in this community need to make for themselves, with the actual documents in front of them.

Why This Matters for Tracking

This is exactly why Stark Civic Monitor exists.

When something big is happening locally—when a major facility is proposed, when townships are passing new rules, when permits are being filed, when public meetings are scheduled—the documents pile up.

The ordinances, the applications, the meeting minutes, the news coverage.

They're all real.

They're all public.

They're all scattered across different websites and PDF folders and local news outlets.

And if you want to understand what's actually happening versus what people are saying is happening, you need to see them side by side.

The ordinance.

The permit application.

The news coverage.

The meeting minutes.

What did the township actually write down?

What does the application actually say?

What did the reporting actually find?

What did the officials actually say on the record?

When you line those up next to each other, the picture gets clearer.

Not because I'm telling you what to think about it.

But because you can see what's actually there.

And 70 decibels is a lot easier to understand when you know what a vacuum cleaner sounds like.