Earthjustice attorneys plan to request a jury trial to decide whether the Bitcoin mine qualifies as a private nuisance by infringing on homeowners' rights to free use and enjoyment of their property. A judge would then decide whether to issue the permanent ban.
“If you're constantly being denied a good night's sleep, or if you're constantly dealing with noise in the background, that's an unfair impact,” Rodrigo Cantú, senior attorney at Earthjustice, told Inside Climate News.
Marathon Digital said it has already converted 30 percent of the computers at its Granbury site to silent liquid cooling and plans to convert half of the computers by the end of the year. In an email, a company spokesperson said that “noises from our operations are within the normal range that we experience every day from a variety of sources.”
In addition, the company is “not aware of any scientific basis for concluding that our activities cause health problems,” the spokesperson said.
But for the neighbors closest to the facility, the noise continues to cause significant disruption.
Danny Lakey, 55, lives about 550 meters from the Bitcoin mine. “We used to sit outside on the porch every day and watch the sun go down,” he says. But now he and his family members can no longer relax this way because it is too loud, he added.
Inside the house, Lakey can still hear the fans humming. His sleep quality has suffered and he worries that the stress caused by constant noise is having a multiplying effect on his wife's diabetes, worsening her overall health.
Lakey renovated a mobile home on the property for his daughter. But after moving in with her husband and their son, Lakey said his grandson suffered four ear infections that they believed were caused by the Bitcoin mine's fans. It was so bad that his daughter moved her family to Missouri, and Lakey said his grandson hasn't had an ear infection since.
“We wanted to renovate the house so our children could live there, which they can no longer do,” Lakey said.
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.
