Last October, Sawicky organized a week-long protest with environmental activist group Greenpeace, waving anti-bitcoin signs at anyone who entered the Riot facility. Only a few other people showed up to show their support, leaving Sawicky disheartened: “I couldn’t have been more disappointed and disgusted by my fellow human beings,” she said when we first spoke earlier this year.
Sawicky is unashamedly brutal; she has abandoned artistry and cunning, she claims, in favor of brute force. “I'm unpleasant. I'm in your face,” she says. Her methods have prompted even close allies to question her. “I love her to death. [But] “She has an unfortunate knack for alienating people,” says John Blewitt, a friend of Sawicky’s who doesn’t often attend TCAC events. But Sawicky insists that “raising hell” is what’s needed to provoke a reaction.
While Standridge says the petition incident was not a reflection of the city's attitude toward Sawicky, other local officials have been outspoken about their feelings about TCAC. “The protesters sit there in the front row and boo the whole time. Like children, they hardly let them talk,” says David Brewer, a commissioner with the Navarro County Commissioners Court, referring to the meet-and-greets Riot has held. “I know of no one in county and city government who pays attention to them.”
But a few counties away, near the city of Granbury, a major bitcoin mine is already causing some of the problems Sawicky predicts will happen to Navarro County residents if her warnings are ignored.
When I pulled On a Thursday afternoon, Cheryl Shadden pulled into her driveway, leaning over a bed of plants surrounded by two large flowering shrubs that framed the front porch of her home. She turned to greet me, displaying, like Sawicky, a slogan in all caps across the front of her T-shirt that read, “STOP BITCOIN!!” As I opened the car door, I was greeted by the sound: part hum, part rustle of wind.
In 2022, bitcoin mining company Compute North set up a facility next to Shadden’s property, leasing the land from the operator of a gas-fired power plant already on the site. By late 2023, Shadden claims, the noise coming from the mine had become unbearable. “It’s like being invaded by aliens,” she says.
Shadden, an anesthesiologist, has lived for 27 years in a modest bungalow on a patch of land in Granbury, Hood County, that consists of several fields and pastures separated by chain-link fencing. She has a collection of animals, including cats, birds, horses and a pack of enormous Great Pyrenees.
On the day I visited, the hum of the mine’s fans didn’t penetrate Shadden’s walls; a phone app set the sound outside at about 70 decibels, comparable to a vacuum cleaner. But some days, Shadden and other locals say, the noise is much worse. When the facility is at its loudest, some have to evacuate the area. “My heart almost starts beating out of my chest,” said Chip Joslin, the new commissioner for neighboring Somervell County.
Shadden blames a range of health problems on the noise exposure, including insomnia, nausea and tinnitus. In late June, Shadden was diagnosed with tinnitus and sensorineural hearing loss, a type of damage that can be caused by both aging and noise exposure. Other locals report similar problems: “First it was tinnitus, then it went downhill. I now have headaches and high blood pressure … When I listen to it, I get sick — really sick,” said Geraldine Lathers, who lives in a bungalow neighborhood next to the facility.
