A Texas Town’s Misery Underscores the Impact of Bitcoin Mines Across the U.S.

[philipma1957]

You know that this comparison is not right either.

I know I'm going to piss a lot of people on this but when you have 18 million people eating, going to work, playing, producing stuff, doing sex, watching tv, washing clothes and microwaving popcorn, averaging each year around the same GDP as the BTC market cap and still consume less than a system that supports 400k transactions a day it's not really a fair comparison.

That is a valid argument but you can counter it by saying BTC provides more than just 400k transactions, it provides self-custody and breaks away from the centralized monetary systems, that is the actual value of Bitcoin and not the number of transactions, it would still be worth as much even if it was doing only half the transactions.

Again, even hot showers are debatable, to someone who has no access to hot water they consider that a waste of energy, but fine, let's exclude all household activities including the non-essentials, how much power do weapon manufacturies use?or those fake-ass expensive brands that only the rich buy, you will find a lot of useless industries that burn a lot more power, but then again, to many others, that won't be useless, so it is all subjective.

As you said, BTC power consumption will be self-reduced over time, there is no need for the crying that anti-bitcoiners perform everyday, some of them lobby against Bitcoin for it's environmental "damage" and don't say a word about all the militiary activites that destroy lands and nations, it is ironic.

I think this thread is getting derailed. It is supposed to be about how mining is affecting innocent peoples' everyday lives. Ruining their peace and quiet and things like that. I hope some of the people in Granbury Texas can come on this thread and update us about if the noise is still a big problem in their daily lives. From this article on Feb 7, 2024, it obviously was a huge problem...
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/noisy-bitcoin-mine-puts-granbury-residents-on-edge/

Texas Standard: I think some people know about where Granbury, Texas is – small town about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. Can you tell us a little bit more about this Bitcoin mining operation? When did you come to town? What’s it like?

Andrew Chow: It set up shop early last year. You can kind of think about it as a giant computer server farm, where they have dozens of computers running on full blast 24/7. So it creates this enormous hum.

I talked to residents who likened it to sitting on a runway and just hearing jets take off one after another. Another resident likened it to, you know, you’re just at home and there’s a vacuum cleaner running right outside your window all the time.  




Well, you mentioned that some locals have been raising concerns with officials. Are they having town meetings now? What’s happening there in Granbury?

They held a town meeting last week that became standing-room-only – about 75 people coming from around Hood County just complaining viciously about the noise. And a representative of the owner of the Bitcoin mine was there, and they pledged to do better run, run tests after this – see what they can do to mitigate.

But last year, the previous operator of the plant set up this giant wall that cost over $1 million that would hopefully deflect some of the noise, but it actually just made the noise louder and kind of funneled the noise towards different parts of the region. So it’s pretty unclear what kind of mitigation efforts have been successful.

so there you go. walls dont do ANYTHING.  

i am going to google earth them maybe i can see what wall they built.


i can assure you  

_______________

mine here
________________


wont work



but        a solid wall surrounding the building and at least 10 feet higher than the building would force all sound upwards.


so basically they likely did a half assed method.


i agree completely that it must suck for that town.


edit

i have goggle images

i see massive set of fans which i bet are the noise issue.

and i am certain they could fix the sound bigly by making a wall that fully surrounds the mine.

the mine is 100 by 600 feet with 12 super fans pointed to the sky

to use walls amd make them work they need to be a larger rectangle say 150 by 650 by 150 by 650. and they may need to be 40 feet tall.

then noise goes upwards losing much of the sound. one wall is a joke give me time to get on a decent pc I will screen shot the mine and my idea.


here is the mine inside the power plant note the fans are massive close to 50 feet a fan and 12 of them


it think it is the 12 fans in a 100 by 600 foot building


as for a 24 wall to stop sound I guess they did this but the writing about the wall and both bing and google do not show the wall





they would need the full wall surround to work and maybe 36 feet see below






now if they did a full surround with a 36 foot wall and still had non legal sound  it would mean fails of a different kind but in all cases it is just poor engineering.


your argue that the issue is btc is stupid

it would be arguing that boats and bridges are bad





and this accident occurred due to bad bridge so no harbor bridges ever


the fact is:

bridge had issues
boat had issues
and the harbor knew and did not send out 2 or more escort tug boats protect the boat and bridge


the mine in Texas has a shit design
the fix was a wall not 4 walls

in both examples greed and corner cutting was the problem

not btc or boats or bridges


that's right baby

 bbb is all good

and I bet you were missing the point on bridges and boats so I pointed it out. 

[larry_vw_1955]

i am going to google earth them maybe i can see what wall they built.

you don't have to do that. all you have to do is watch the video on this article:

https://time.com/6982015/bitcoin-mining-texas-health/

as you can see in the video the wall seems to go completely around the facility but it's not that high maybe only 10 or 15 feet i would say. google earth probably visited that area way before the mine came into existence, aka in happier times.

but        a solid wall surrounding the building and at least 10 feet higher than the building would force all sound upwards.


so basically they likely did a half assed method.

yeah the wall looks kind of flimsy and it doubt it's higher than 15 feet.

i agree completely that it must suck for that town.

yeah i mean it's industrial noise pollution and that mining company doesn't even seem to care at all. words are cheap. they need to show some actions.

but i appreciate you feeling some compassion for those folks even though you're a bitcoin miner. that's cool.  

also apparently they got find $500 per pop for going over 85 decibels and fined about 36 times. but instead of just paying up, they lawyered up! 

[stompix]

That's not it Phil, those are the turbines from the powerplant, the farm is up north, see the Mara pin



this is a zoom in option:


you can see the houses on the right, probably not even 50 meters from the first of them.

But looking at the picture, I would say that a fence is a bad idea, why not go for a cheap earth wall, they have the room, they have the earth, and no sound wall has the same blocking effect as 5 meters of compacted ground and you can easily rise that to 5-7 meters, put some trees on it and nobody is going to complain about it one bit, even the green eco guys will keep their mouth shut.

[larry_vw_1955]

you can see the houses on the right, probably not even 50 meters from the first of them.

that company just came in there and started making a bunch of noise and to hell with the residents. they didn't even stop to think if it might disturb those people living so close by just across the road??

But looking at the picture, I would say that a fence is a bad idea, why not go for a cheap earth wall, they have the room, they have the earth, and no sound wall has the same blocking effect as 5 meters of compacted ground and you can easily rise that to 5-7 meters, put some trees on it and nobody is going to complain about it one bit, even the green eco guys will keep their mouth shut.

honestly, i think their cheap attempt at putting up a wall around their facility was more about giving themselves privacy so no one could see what they are doing than it was to try and protect people from all that noise. what an awful company. they don't deserve any bitcoin!

[mikeywith]

If the nearest house is 50 meters or so, there will be nothing they can do to help people in that house go to sleep peacefully, at 50 meters even a single miner at 7000 rpm will be clearly heard.

Also, walls, no matter how thick, they won't cut it completely، sound travels at all directions, it would still go up and then back to the direction of the houses.

[larry_vw_1955]

If the nearest house is 50 meters or so, there will be nothing they can do to help people in that house go to sleep peacefully, at 50 meters even a single miner at 7000 rpm will be clearly heard.

Also, walls, no matter how thick, they won't cut it completely، sound travels at all directions, it would still go up and then back to the direction of the houses.

what an awful place to have to work at. it must be even worse there than it is in the neighborhoods surrounding it. so if that's any consolation to all those residents being affected by the noise, at least the employees have to deal with the same thing but its probably even worse for them! not a moment of silence. just constant noise.

job description: alot of noise
requirements: listening to a lawnmower running 24/7

[philipma1957]

About 150 containers and at least 40 more that look offline.

if you want quiet for that it would need 20 meter burm of earth that was 5 meters wide and could have a double row of stone pines on the top.

That is a lot of earth to move.

The brum would need to be able withstand freak rain storms and not wash out.

it will never get done.

[larry_vw_1955]

About 150 containers and at least 40 more that look offline.

if you want quiet for that it would need 20 meter burm of earth that was 5 meters wide and could have a double row of stone pines on the top.

That is a lot of earth to move.

The brum would need to be able withstand freak rain storms and not wash out.

it will never get done.

i dont know what would be worse, living near this bitcoin mining operation or living right behind a shooting range where people are shooting guns all day long.

[mikeywith]

i dont know what would be worse, living near this bitcoin mining operation or living right behind a shooting range where people are shooting guns all day long.

Constant noise is probably better, your brain gets used to it and it becomes the norm.

@phill, ya, won't be anywhere near cheap to fix that noise, if they ever have to fix it "which i doubt since there is no law for that" their best bet would be underclocking + reducing the exuast fans.

[philipma1957]

i dont know what would be worse, living near this bitcoin mining operation or living right behind a shooting range where people are shooting guns all day long.

Constant noise is probably better, your brain gets used to it and it becomes the norm.

@phill, ya, won't be anywhere near cheap to fix that noise, if they ever have to fix it "which i doubt since there is no law for that" their best bet would be underclocking + reducing the exuast fans.

War of the worlds filmed some scenes in my town of Howell, NJ.

they also wanted the sounds of real gun fire so the police were hired to fire 200,000 bullets over three days at the police gun range.

 I did not have a pc and would go to the library to use their pcs.

I heard so many rounds of bullets that they became rhythmic and were not bad at all.

9 to 5 bullet after bullet for three days in a row.

I was not aware they were creating a movie sound track.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film)

I got  home internet in 2006. the movie was filmed in 2004.

[DaveF]

i dont know what would be worse, living near this bitcoin mining operation or living right behind a shooting range where people are shooting guns all day long.

Constant noise is probably better, your brain gets used to it and it becomes the norm.

@phill, ya, won't be anywhere near cheap to fix that noise, if they ever have to fix it "which i doubt since there is no law for that" their best bet would be underclocking + reducing the exuast fans.

Also, kind of an interesting thought, would be ironic if they could fix it, but the way they would have to do it would violate other zoning / building codes.
i.e. build several tall mixed material barriers around the mine like they do near some other noisy manufacturing locations. But where they are does not allow such things.

Years (ok decades I'm old) ago an amusement park tried that will a roller coaster. They could build rides up to 60 feet AGL the building max height was 25 feet AGL so when they wanted to put up a couple of walls to shut up the neighbors about the lift hill & 1st drop noise they had to go before several planning boards to present their case. Park closed before there was a final resolution in the case.

-Dave

* both heights are from fuzzy memories of when I was in high school / 1st year of college so we are talking 1980s so the numbers may be wrong.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

This problem is easily addressed... Instead of just speculating how well noise abatement works ya'll may want to look at how it works. A good start is at https://www.enoisecontrol.com/

In that 1st pic that Phil posted those are cooling towers for their hydro & immersion cooled miners-edit: (or power generation) not turbines for power generation. Sound from them is fairly low freq and intensity & is easy to stop. Sound from air cooled miners is of course far worse but still better addressed by walls around each of the mining containers vs a large 'surround all' approach.

[stompix]

In that 1st pic that Phil posted those are cooling towers for their hydro & immersion cooled miners- not turbines for power generation.

It's a combined cycle gas generation powerplant, just like this one, those are the towers of the plant not the mine:


Besides, if those had been miners, no way for them to have already be built there around 2014  
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#active=10&mapCenter=-97.73061%2C32.33437%2C17

This problem is easily addressed... Instead of just speculating how well noise abatement works ya'll may want to look at how it works. A good start is at https://www.enoisecontrol.com/

Meanwhile, some CEO: "What, more money...lawsuit it is!"

Constant noise is probably better, your brain gets used to it and it becomes the norm.

Well, one loud shot can make you immune for eternity to noise also...

[mikeywith]

Well, one loud shot can make you immune for eternity to noise also...

Ya, that would fix all of their problems.

@NFW,  we battled with noise issues in dozen farms, hired professionals, and tried our own shit, it is most certainly a lot harder in practice that on papers.

It is very simple to stop sound, sound is a form of energy that would stop moving forwad when it meets resistance, you put anything with high density in it's way it would be reduced, up to the point where no human ear could hear it, all those materials in the website you linked are high density (except the ones used for sound dampening which is different from sound proofing) are good and effective.

However, the problem here is that you are not sound proofing a theatre or a studio, it is 300MW worth of heat, anything that would block sound would block heat too, placing the sound proofing walls too far to allow for cooling will reduce sound proofing, placing them too near would block heat.

I am not saying it can't be done at all, I am saying it is a new challenge even professionals in the soundproofing field have not faced before.

[larry_vw_1955]

However, the problem here is that you are not sound proofing a theatre or a studio, it is 300MW worth of heat, anything that would block sound would block heat too, placing the sound proofing walls too far to allow for cooling will reduce sound proofing, placing them to near would block heat.

I am not saying it can't be done at all, I am saying it is a new challenge even professionals in the soundproofing field have not faced before.

good points! maybe the local government should force that mining company to bury their bitcoin miners underground. isn't underground cooler than the surface? so maybe they could do without so many fans. maybe they might not even need any at all. kind of like immersion cooling without the liquid. 

[larry_vw_1955]

ok everyone there is a new update about this story. unfortunately it's not good news either. the noise is still bad as always apparently and now there is some new developments that make things even worse for those poor people:


Constellation’s plan is to erect eight new turbines powered by natural gas to generate electricity. The company applied for air permits to release more than 796,000 additional tons of carbon dioxide per year. To sequester that amount of CO2 would require planting nearly 12 million trees and allowing them to grow for 10 years, according to EPA estimates.

The permit also proposes increased emissions at the site for a host of other pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91190198/a-small-texas-town-has-been-haunted-by-a-noisy-bitcoin-mine-now-a-nearby-power-plant-could-make-things-even-worse

Poor Granbury residents can't catch a break. Bitcoin has really destroyed their lives and now a power company is getting ready to try and screw with them. 

[ABCbits]

ok everyone there is a new update about this story. unfortunately it's not good news either. the noise is still bad as always apparently and now there is some new developments that make things even worse for those poor people:


Constellation’s plan is to erect eight new turbines powered by natural gas to generate electricity. The company applied for air permits to release more than 796,000 additional tons of carbon dioxide per year. To sequester that amount of CO2 would require planting nearly 12 million trees and allowing them to grow for 10 years, according to EPA estimates.

The permit also proposes increased emissions at the site for a host of other pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91190198/a-small-texas-town-has-been-haunted-by-a-noisy-bitcoin-mine-now-a-nearby-power-plant-could-make-things-even-worse

It's a big shame Texas government keep not doing job protecting their citizen. The Granbury resident probably should ask those politician to do a survey by living on their residential area for a month.

Poor Granbury residents can't catch a break. Bitcoin Marathon Digital, US Bitcoin Corp and other cryptocurrency mining company has really destroyed their lives and now a power company is getting ready to try and screw with them. 

Fixed that for you.

[Lucius]

It's a big shame Texas government keep not doing job protecting their citizen. The Granbury resident probably should ask those politician to do a survey by living on their residential area for a month.
~snip~

People's well-being should come before profit, but we know that it is often the other way around - apparently, in this case too, the authorities do not care about people, because the company in question has on its payroll all those who could change something and deny them work permits.

I think that people from that place would simply have to get out of the local framework and raise it to a much higher level, because otherwise nothing will change. Another 1.2 million BTC is available for mining, and most of it will be mined by the end of this decade, but I would not be in the shoes of someone who will wait 5-6 years for the problem to be solved by itself.

[larry_vw_1955]

Fixed that for you.

you didn't fix anything. and those people are the ones that blame bitcoin. look at the signs in their yard. they mention "bitcoin" not the mining company. do you understand why?

 now if you can't understand why they feel that way about bitcoin then i would advise you to move there and experience the noise for yourself. and everything that goes along with that...

[ABCbits]

Fixed that for you.

you didn't fix anything.

"Fixed that for you" is a phrase. I never claim that i fix problem faced by Granbury residents.

and those people are the ones that blame bitcoin. look at the signs in their yard. they mention "bitcoin" not the mining company. do you understand why?

 now if you can't understand why they feel that way about bitcoin then i would advise you to move there and experience the noise for yourself. and everything that goes along with that...

I probably understand why, but it doesn't change the fact that their blame is far from accurate. If they mention name of the mining company instead, i expect those company would feel more public pressure.

And i think government official who give permit to the company or ignore Granbury residents complaint are the one who should move there.