The Nashville Zoo wants to stop a 69,000-square-foot data center from being built steps away from its facility, which houses more than 3,000 animals.

The popular animal attraction received more than 524,000 signatures on a petition that urged city leaders to intervene with construction of DC Blox’s proposed data center.

Zoo officials fear the center will negatively impact the already-strained stormwater retention system and hurt the animals, suggesting “exposure to unabated, tonal noise and infrasound coming from this data center will have detrimental impacts on the well-being of the animals at the Zoo” in a blog post on June 24.

The zoo stated that there are not enough studies about how the center could impact the environment.

Locals echoed the zoo’s concerns during the public comment section of the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s meeting in Nashville on June 25.

Some members of the public said they were worried about how gas generators could cause air quality problems while another speaker suggested there’s no reason for an out-of-state company to build a data center in Tennessee.

“It does concern me that we already seem to be giving ground to a group that, for the life of me, does not seem to have any kind of benefit to Nashvillians,” resident Zach Mansfield said during the public comment section of the meeting on Thursday.

DC Blox has 23 data centers operational or in development, including one in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to its website.

Doug Sloan, the attorney who represents DC Blox, attended Thursday’s meeting and said noise would not be an issue.

Sloan said that sound from the center wouldn’t be louder than other businesses in the industrial park, such as the CSX rail yard, which sits approximately one mile away from the zoo.

“DC Blox will not make more than 65 decibels worth of noise at the property line,” Sloan said during the meeting on Thursday. “The limit in the code is 80 decibels. It is quieter than any other business in that area.”

He said that generators will only be used “once every two months for 20 minutes” and then will run for four hours once a year.

Sloan, who previously worked as the vice president and chief legal officer at Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, accused local lawmakers and the community of “being driven by fear and not facts” as he said on Thursday that either way, the center was coming to Music City.

“This building is vested,” Sloan said. “They’re going to build it there. We already have the permits in hand. We just want to work with the community to find a solution.”

The Epoch Times contacted DC Blox for additional comment.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have questioned whether the data center should be relocated and debated restrictions or even a temporary moratorium on all data centers.

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, a Democrat, said he supports a moratorium on new data centers coming to the area, while Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, suggested that leaders and DC Blox “revisit” putting the data center near the zoo and consider building it somewhere else in Tennessee.

“Let’s be careful on this placement,” Blackburn said in a pre-recorded video on June 13.

The controversy even got country music singer Brad Paisley to call the proposed facility a “nightmare scenario” and urged people to sign the petition made by the zoo.

“It doesn’t belong there,” Paisley said. “It would be an enormous monstrosity, an absolute eyesore and detract, in every way, from not only the zoo, but that area.”

The Nashville City Council is set to discuss the data center’s future during a meeting on July 7 at 6:30 p.m. CT.