Constant Noise Pushes Granbury TX Residents To File Lawsuit Against Bitcoin Mine

In Granbury, Texas, residents can hear the sound of money being made at all hours of the day, but it’s not making them rich. Instead, neighbors in the town southwest of Fort Worth say that the persistent low hum emanating from the Bitcoin mine operated by Marathon Digital has caused them stress, loss of sleep and other unexplained ailments. They filed a lawsuit in Texas state court Friday in Hood County alleging that the noise from the Bitcoin mine creates a nuisance that has ruined their quality of life. The environmental law group Earthjustice is representing a group of neighbors organized under the name Citizens Concerned About Wolf Hollow. The suit is seeking a permanent injunction to stop operation of the facility unless it can operate without producing disruptive noise.

The 300 megawatt Marathon Digital facility is located alongside a gas-fired power plant called Wolf Hollow II. Residents recently spoke out against a proposed expansion to upgrade the natural gas facility currently providing electricity for Bitcoin mining and releasing up to 760,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide per year. Texas has become the epicenter of a rise in Bitcoin mining, with companies flocking to the state for its low taxes, vast land, minimal regulations and multiple ways to profit from connecting directly to the electric grid. While some attention has been paid to Bitcoin by politicians worried about the increased power demand from crypto mining on an already stressed grid, noise pollution has come into focus as having the most direct effect on communities.

A Bitcoin, currently worth about $62,500, can be purchased on a cryptocurrency exchange such as Coinbase using digital wallets. To keep transactions secure, a computer algorithm assigns a unique identifying code to a set of transactions known as a block. Bitcoin “mining” is when computers, operated round-the-clock by Bitcoin miners like Marathon, generate an endless series of random numbers before guessing the correct code to validate the block. Each time they do this, the miner such as Marathon receives 3.125 Bitcoins as a reward.

At the Granbury facility, a mix of liquid immersion and fans prevent more than 20,000 computers from overheating. But those fans are loud enough that neighbors say the noise has disrupted their lives, and according to Earthjustice, more than two dozen individuals “suffer direct health impacts due to the constant noise pollution,” including vertigo, hearing loss, migraines, fatigue, anxiety and tinnitus.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04102024/texas-bitcoin-mine-neighbors-file-nuisance-lawsuit/