A Small Texas Town Takes on Crypto Noise Pollution

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Maximillian Alvarez: Sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that harm life itself. Intense, relentless, torturous noise can be the main thing that’s actually hurting people, and that’s what Andrew R. Chow, a technology correspondent for Time Magazine, found in the town of Granbury on an evening in December 2023. Chow writes:

43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. ​“It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed,” she says. ​“That pain was worse than childbirth.”

Rosenkranz’s migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz’s 5-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a ​“red beam behind her eardrums.”

It didn’t occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. … None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area — and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis.

In a statement to NBC News, the company said they are doing nothing wrong, that they are the best of corporate neighbors, that they are abiding by existing laws and that there’s no proof they’re the ones causing harm to the community.

I am so grateful to be joined today by our four guests. Danny Lakey is a resident of Granbury, and he joins us today, along with Karen Pearson and her parents, Nick and Virginia Browning, all longtime residents of Granbury. Can you all tell us a bit more about who you are, what you do, and what your life was like before this Bitcoin mine came to your town?

Virginia Browning: We’re fighting it. Everybody out here is fighting it. But, you know, a big corporation, they seem to be able to just get their way, and we are left behind in the rubble of everything.

We wanted to be here with our children and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but we don’t get that peace anymore. It’s miserable. It’s absolutely miserable. And when we have to go in and out of the hospital all the time, doctors all the time, that’s an invasion on us too.

Karen Pearson: Just to dovetail a little bit off what mom and dad have said, oftentimes at night they don’t sleep. Their bedroom is upstairs, and so that noise just penetrates their bedroom at night, so that makes their days rough.

This is not what they intended for the second part of their life. I was given a great first part of my life by my parents, and part of my goal was to give them the best quality of life in their second part. That’s not happening out here. 

Danny Lakey: My wife and I, four years ago, sold everything we had. We wanted to move out to the country, get some place where it was quiet, and get away from the big city. Little did I know that it would be louder where I live now than where I came from.

Nick Browning: We sold our place in Santa Fe Texas, right out of Galveston, because this was nice and quiet out here. [The Bitcoin mine] moved in on top of us. We didn’t move in on them. The mine is right across the street from my property, and I’ve had 83 decimals on my front porch, and sometimes at night, I’ve had more than 83. A vacuum cleaner is only 55, and who in the world is going to go to sleep with a vacuum cleaner running all night long in their house?

Maximillian Alvarez: How have things unfolded in your lives, from the time you first heard about this Bitcoin mine to now? When did you start sensing that something was deeply wrong here?

Danny Lakey: We started hearing some things late 2023, and it was getting louder. Nobody really knew what it was. And then somebody finally took a picture and said ​‘it’s Bitcoin,’ and then showed another mine from another area of the same type of machine. So then we knew what it was, and we started paying a little more direct attention to where the noise was coming from. Up until then, we just thought that the electric plant that had never had a noise problem was having these crazy fluctuations, and didn’t know what to think about it.

It continued to get worse. The highest [decibel count] I’ve ever gotten is 82. The day it was 82, I was walking in my backyard, and then I felt like I got punched in the chest. For the next two days, I had a heart arrhythmia.

I mean, you don’t understand what kind of an impact that has on you, the constant barrage of noise. If you look at rules from OSHA, if you’re exposed to certain noise levels, the louder it is, the longer you have to be away from it. Well, we exceed all of that on a daily basis and unfortunately, we can’t get away from it. 

Nick Browning: We noticed it in 2022 and 2023 and right on up until today, I’ve never in my life had any heart trouble, and I started having high blood pressure.

Karen Pearson: We were a bit surprised that they were allowed to even come into the area without us knowing what was going on. None of us were notified publicly that they were going to be expanding to a Bitcoin mine company.

All of a sudden, it’s just upon us. And then when you start hearing about your neighbor having some of the same stuff that you’re having, it’s not a coincidence. There’s too many people out here, just within a couple of mile radius, all experiencing some of the same stuff.

Man, this brought the community together very rapidly. 

Maximillian Alvarez: When you and your neighbors started realizing what was happening in your town, what did you think all of this was for? Did you know anything about Bitcoin? What is it like to know that you’re going through all this for Bitcoin mining?

Danny Lakey: Bitcoin mining is part of Greg Abbott’s grand plan to get enough power to cover the state anytime we have peak issues. If they bring in the Bitcoin mines that drive the power, then they build more power plants that get to sell their power on a regular basis, then they have more power on the grid for when there’s an emergency. But if you are not in an incorporated city of some kind, there are no regulations.

It was very disheartening, because you’re no longer fighting the Bitcoin company. You’re fighting Greg Abbott’s master plan. And then we found out it was a data center that does AI, and that they’re tying AI into our national defense. So now we’re fighting the federal government, the state government, and these stupid mining companies. 

Virginia Browning: The day that will be read in the newspaper that all of this out here didn’t concern Granbury because we were not in the Granbury city limits – that was a slap in the face. We’re out here floundering by ourselves. It’s like you’re in the boat in the middle of the ocean with no oars. That’s what we feel like.

Karen Pearson: These companies, they’re not contributing to jobs in the area, they’re not contributing to the local economy out here where they’re located. I bet not even five of their employees live here in Granbury or Hood County. All at our expense, they’re making money.

Maximillian Alvarez: What is being done and what needs to be done to help you guys get out of this hell that you’re living in?

Danny Lakey: We’ve gotten a lot of help from national media, some international media, and anybody that wants to come out and talk to us. We really, really, really appreciate just people putting eyes on it, because that’s about the only place we’re going to get some help.

Maximillian Alvarez: Any final messages you wanted to send from out there in Granbury to the folks listening?

Karen Pearson: We’re not stopping and we’re not giving up. And you can intimidate us as big as you want with your money or your corporation, but we’re not going to go away. And I would say that to any community that’s fighting like we are, stand up for your life. Because no one else is going to do it for you.