Earthjustice’s lawyers are planning to request a jury trial to rule on 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 injunction.
“If you’re constantly being denied a good night’s sleep, or you’re constantly having to deal with the noise in the background, that’s an unreasonable impact,” Rodrigo Cantú, senior attorney at Earthjustice, told Inside Climate News.
Marathon Digital said it has already converted 30 percent of computers at the Granbury site to quiet liquid immersion cooling and intends to convert half of the computers by the end of the year. In an email, a company spokesperson said that “sounds from our operations are within the normal range experienced every day from a variety of sources.”
Moreover, the company is “not aware of any scientific basis to conclude that our operations are causing any 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 600 yards from the Bitcoin mine. “We used to sit out on the porch and watch the sun go down every day,” he said. But now he and members of his family cannot relax in this way anymore because it’s 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, making her overall health worse.
Lakey renovated a mobile home on the property for his daughter. But after she moved 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 suffered an ear infection since.
“We wanted to remodel the house so that our kids could live there, which they can no longer do,” Lakey said.
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.