Following the establishment of a Bitcoin mining facility run by MARA Holdings in Granbury, Texas, local residents are experiencing health-related issues they attribute to the incessant noise emanating from the site. Granbury, located southwest of Dallas, has seen many of its inhabitants, including retirees and long-standing residents, voice their distress over the constant disruption.
This was made known in a video shared by More Perfect Union, a nonprofit advocacy organization. Reporter Dan Lieberman had conversations with residents who live less than a mile from MARA’s 300-megawatt Bitcoin mining site. The residents described their living conditions as “hellish” due to the relentless noise.
An elderly resident lamented, “The noise never ceases, the headaches never cease.” The loud hum of the Bitcoin mining operations formed a backdrop to her complaints. MARA Holdings took over the mining facility, situated close to Granbury’s outskirts, in January 2024. Compute North initially broke ground on the site in 2022 but filed for bankruptcy later that year.
Mandy DeRoche, a Deputy Managing Attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, highlighted the unique challenge of the situation. “It’s a different kind of noise pollution. It’s not comparable to truck traffic or similar disturbances. It’s a persistent, low-frequency noise specific to these operations.”
In October 2024, a group of residents who had been enduring the noise for months, and some for years, filed a lawsuit against MARA, then known as Marathon Digital. They alleged that the noise from the Bitcoin mining was causing “sensory, emotional, psychological, and health impacts,” and even worsening pre-existing conditions.
More Perfect Union’s interviews revealed that residents blamed the conditions for hospitalizations, “constant headaches,” and potentially even the death of a horse. Neither MARA nor Earthjustice had issued a response when contacted by Cointelegraph.
MARA recently announced plans to issue up to $1 billion in convertible senior notes. They plan to allocate a portion of this towards Bitcoin purchases.
The impact of crypto mining on local communities could influence future US elections. Many crypto mining executives had met with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, which seemed to have led to his public endorsement of Bitcoin mining. These endorsements were incorporated into his campaign promises at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville.
A resident of Granbury voiced his regret over voting for Trump in 2024. “I don’t have a problem with the industry. My issue is with the harm it’s causing to people here, which I believe is being overlooked,” he said. Under Trump, the Republican-led Congress did not pass specific legislation related to Bitcoin mining. However, the administration did move forward with three bills related to stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and digital asset market structure.
