Riot Platforms cyrptomine property in Navarro County, Texas, on March 30, 2025.
(Shelby Tauber)
Setting
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Might 5, 2025
Public officers are propping up a Texas Bitcoin increase that’s threatening water and power methods whereas afflicting locals with noise air pollution.
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This story is copublished with the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative information outlet and journal protecting the Lone Star State. Join their weekly e-newsletter right here.
The 5 members of the Navarro County Commissioners Courtroom had hardly ever seen such a big viewers for his or her Tuesday assembly as they noticed in October 2024, once they weighed a Colorado-based firm’s utility for a multimillion-dollar tax abatement—an incentive to broaden its already-established cryptocurrency mine close to the small North Texas city of Corsicana. It was standing room solely within the small assembly room of the stately county courthouse. Roughly a dozen locals occupied the primary rows of seats, whereas greater than 50 staff of Riot Platforms—the corporate in search of the crypto handout—crammed up the remainder, spilling out into the halls.
Commissioners referred to as on Jackie Sawicky to talk. She wore a black T-shirt with a crossed-out Bitcoin image under an acronym for the Texas Coalition In opposition to Cryptomining (TCAC), the group she based in Might 2022, days after Corsicana introduced that Riot’s 265-acre, 400-megawatt (MW) mine—and 150 jobs with it—was coming to a bucolic space southwest of city the place ranches are strung alongside a two-lane farm-to-market street.
This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
“On April 27, the Metropolis of Corsicana introduced (that Riot was) constructing the world’s largest Bitcoin mine. The individuals residing off of (FM) 709, these lovely individuals, weren’t knowledgeable, nor did they consent,” she advised the commissioners. “It is a multibillion-dollar company, and they’re making an attempt to wriggle out of paying their fiduciary obligation to the county,” including {that a} comparatively poor county like Navarro may use all of the tax income it may get.
Somewhat later, Riot public coverage director Samuel Lyman painted Sawicky, a 45-year-old permaculturalist who relocated to the 25,600-person Corsicana from the Dallas–Fort Price suburb of Garland in 2018 in search of extra gardening acreage, as a “skilled activist,” though her work with TCAC is solely unpaid. Lyman mentioned his agency had already donated greater than $100,000 to group organizations and that the mine’s proposed growth, which is able to greater than double its mining output, would generate over a billion {dollars} in taxable gross sales to offset the tax break.
Riot staff, lots of whom had been bused in that morning from the mine—which lies in unincorporated territory beside the 400-person hamlet of Oak Valley—wore grey work shirts with reflective yellow security stripes. Lyman requested them to lift their fingers in the event that they supported the abatement. Palms shot up.
Present Situation
Riot Platforms is one in all Texas’s greatest Bitcoin gamers, alongside different cryptocurrency miners together with the Nevada-based MARA Holdings Inc., China-based Bitmain, and Houston-based Genesis Digital Property. Such companies “mine” Bitcoin through the use of superior computer systems to, basically, make trillions of guesses at distinctive strings of numbers as a way to add to a collective digital ledger referred to as the blockchain and earn new Bitcoin—one thing like a craps recreation the place the problem is to see who can throw probably the most cube without delay. By rising and sustaining this blockchain, miners like Riot earn income within the type of Bitcoin, the oldest and most beneficial of the so-called cryptocurrencies, that monetary invention which has blurred the strains between a forex and a speculative asset whereas bedeviling authorities regulators.
Whereas Bitcoin is designed as a decentralized cost system that bypasses banks and bank cards, its consumption of Texans’ true wealth—the state’s pure assets—is centralized within the fingers of some corporations, sucking up huge quantities of water and power to maintain {hardware} operating 24/7.
Round Might 2021, cryptominers migrated en masse to Texas for its low-cost energy and deregulated energy grid after China outlawed Bitcoin mining. Governor Greg Abbott declared Texas “open for crypto enterprise” and promised to create a brand new Bitcoin “Mecca.” Since then, cryptomines like Riot’s—consisting of enormous warehouses or arrays of Conex-style containers crammed with stacks of what appear like Nineteen Eighties-era stereo methods laboring day and night time at crypto’s contrived random numbers recreation—have proliferated principally in distant, unincorporated areas, the place they profit from largely unscrutinized, sweetheart tax offers and sparse laws.
The October commissioners’ assembly was Riot’s second shot at a tax break in Navarro after the county took no motion on the proposal in March 2024. Sawicky had organized residents to oppose the giveaway. Now, going through a shock agenda merchandise, the few residents capable of make the assembly reminded commissioner David Brewer of a promise he’d made to say no tax presents for the cryptomine.
Weighing the corporate’s promise to just about double its workforce to 290, Brewer and two different commissioners offered the naked majority wanted for an unprecedented Bitcoin mining growth, clearing the way in which for the world’s first 1-gigawatt cryptomine—anticipated to eat as a lot power as a model new metropolis with 250,000 properties.
The growth is ready to massively enhance Navarro County’s power footprint in a state the place an remoted Texas-centric electrical grid already struggles to fulfill the calls for of its rising inhabitants, business, and the latest proliferation of synthetic intelligence knowledge facilities and different Bitcoin mines. Rising demand means Texas is on monitor to just about double its 2023 price of power consumption by 2030.
The elevated pressure on the Texas grid worries Navarro locals, who haven’t forgotten the winter storm of 2021, when at the least 246 Texans died after a polar vortex blasted all 254 counties. The storm triggered blackouts that affected hundreds of thousands from North Texas right down to the Rio Grande Valley.
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“Texas’s grid remains to be very fragile. The enhancements made thus far by the state are insufficient for what’s coming,” Corsicana resident John Blewitt advised commissioners. “(The crypto business isn’t) enthusiastic about investing in different power. They need quite a lot of power, quite a lot of electrical energy, proper now, which implies burning fossil fuels. The business creates an infinite carbon footprint. Local weather change is actual.”
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Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, a cryptocurrency business group, advised the Texas Observer that roughly 40 mines are working within the state in 2025, collectively consuming about 3,200 MWs, sufficient to energy 800,000 properties. However the greatest customers are simply 15 bigger operations that every eat greater than 75 MWs of power.
Texas is the nationwide epicenter of Bitcoin mining, with solely about 24 whole mines working outdoors the state’s borders as of 2023, in line with The New York Occasions. Riot’s first Texas facility, 120 miles south of Corsicana in Rockdale, at present holds the report for world’s largest cryptomine—although solely till the agency’s Navarro County growth is full.
However Riot’s mines want greater than electrical energy. The agency wants just below 1.5 million gallons of water a day for its unexpanded mine, in line with 2022 paperwork obtained by TCAC and reviewed by the Observer, for the reason that lightning-fast number-crunching will shortly overheat the {hardware} if it isn’t stored cool. The quantity represents roughly an eighth of the Metropolis of Corsicana’s present every day most water utilization.
Riot representatives advised commissioners in October they’re drilling two wells to faucet water from the Woodbine Aquifer and can retailer rainwater on the mine’s 18.5-acre retention pond to be used, however Corsicana is ceding at the least a part of its personal water provide from native reservoirs, data present, to maintain Riot’s computerized “miners” immersed in a thermally conductive liquid.
It’s power and water that locals like Theresa Hibbitts say they’ll’t afford to lose in a county that was below a burn ban because of drought circumstances on the time of the abatement resolution, and in a state whose grid operator recurrently warns Texans to preserve power throughout winter storms and summer time warmth.
Hibbitts recalled how the county’s lakes have been practically depleted throughout droughts in 2006 and 2011, when, she mentioned, “it was cheaper for me to go purchase a brand new set of sheets than to clean (them).” Whereas Navarro County is not in a drought, Hibbitts and others right here understand how shortly that may change. “One minute we obtained a life preserver making an attempt to remain afloat, and the subsequent minute, all of the church buildings have ‘Pray for rain’ on them,” as she put it.
Riot’s tax abatement got here after the corporate made an annexation cope with the hamlet of Oak Valley. In trade for including the mine web site, the township will achieve greater than $1.2 million in electrical energy franchise charges to repave bumpy roads and construct a park. Oak Valley residents corresponding to Daybreak Horn, nonetheless, aren’t shopping for the agency’s PR. She advised the Observer she would stay with potholes over blackouts.
In latest visits to the prevailing Oak Valley facility, the Bitcoin operation’s immersion cooling methods thus far appear to be staving off vital noise air pollution—one other difficulty locals worry.
Different cryptomines that keep away from the bills and useful resource consumption of liquid immersion cooling usually use industrial followers that create a gradual thrum. Many Navarro residents apprehensive that Riot’s growth may convey the identical maddening din generated by one other cryptomining agency that’s protecting their Hood County neighbors up at night time.
Cheryl Shadden drives by Marathon Digital Holding’s 300-megawatt cryptomine and the Constellation Vitality plant in Granbury, Texas, on March 30, 2025.(Shelby Tauber)
MARA Holdings Inc. acquired its 300-megawatt cryptomine in unincorporated Hood County simply over 100 miles northwest of Navarro, in January 2024. The mine seems one thing like the ultimate stage of the basic Area Invaders arcade recreation come to life, resembling primitive graphics of aliens descending in ships. The ability’s big trapezoidal cooling followers appear like they’ve simply landed atop rows of containers housing hundreds of mining computer systems. As a substitute of fast-paced music, they emit a fluctuating drone.
The mine was first sunk right here in 2022, on the identical property as Constellation Vitality’s fracked gasoline plant, within the rolling hills close to Granbury, a fast-growing suburb outdoors Fort Price. The whir of the mine’s followers mixes with the churn of the gasoline plant, which provides the mine’s energy. The gasoline plant, which leases roughly 50 of its 255 acres to the mine, acquired a seven-year tax abatement from Hood County in 2018 that expired this yr.
Constellation additionally hopes to make use of taxpayer funds so as to add eight new gas-fired generators to its plant that might generate 300 MWs—the precise quantity of electrical energy MARA’s mine makes use of. Citing monetary uncertainty associated to the undertaking’s allowing course of, the corporate withdrew an utility for a taxpayer-funded mortgage below the Public Utilities Fee (PUC) Texas Vitality Fund program in March, however it famous it is going to probably apply for a special taxpayer-backed mortgage below the PUC’s Completion Bonus Grant Program.
Cheryl Shadden, a nurse anesthetist and TCAC member, and her eight canines stay throughout the street. When she moved to this acreage west of the Brazos River 27 years in the past, this was an idyllic rural group. Now, she endures relentless racket from the mine and plant mixed. Whereas the background noise might not really feel instantly jarring, it peaked at about 86 decibels—across the similar as a loud vacuum cleaner—on the Sunday in September once I visited, as measured by an app on my telephone.
Within the Seventies, the federal Noise Management Act tasked the US Environmental Safety Company with setting and implementing noise requirements to guard public well being. In 1974, 70 decibels was designated as the utmost restrict for 24-hour noise publicity to keep away from listening to loss. However by 1981, Congress had stripped funding for the hassle, forcing state and native governments to handle extreme noise. In Texas, that authority is basically delegated to municipalities within the type of noise or nuisance ordinances. Unincorporated areas like Shadden’s group in Hood County lack regulatory authority.
Throughout my September go to to the realm, I may sense the influence of the mine’s din. Whereas speaking with Shadden for about 20 minutes, as she constructed ornamental picket pumpkins on a workbench, a faint headache started to creep in from my temples, a tiny fraction of the disquiet and misery that she and her group describe residing with for 2 years now.
The noise air pollution brought on by Marathon Digital Holding’s 300-megawatt cryptomine has given neighbors migraines, movement illness, vertigo, listening to loss, and an array of different signs.(Shelby Tauber)
Shadden says the noise is worse at night time. That’s when the mine runs at full capability, penetrating her partitions with noise as much as 106 decibels, based mostly on her personal app readings, ranges that depart her ears ringing. She mentioned she and a few neighbors have suffered listening to loss, migraines, and vertigo that they consider is immediately associated to their extended publicity to the low-frequency resonance. (The World Well being Group recommends no extra than 30 decibels for sleep high quality.) MARA’s sound barrier, which purportedly helps residents on one other facet of the mine, doesn’t do something for these elsewhere.
Final summer time, Shadden put one in all her canines down after it developed anxiousness and started ripping out its fur. Locals consider different animals and wildlife are affected by the unnatural din, although their hunches are arduous to show.
Throughout my go to, we went to see her retired neighbor, Tom Weeks. He says he and his spouse are each mild sleepers and have spent numerous nights awake. He has hypertension and tinnitus, and he suffered a pulmonary embolism and large blood clot this previous summer time—circumstances he believes have been exacerbated by the noise. A veterinarian has prescribed gabapentin to deal with his canine’s anxiousness.
In Texas, the state does just about nothing to manage cryptomines. Though miners withstand $25,000 in fines every day in the event that they didn’t register massive mines consuming over 75 MWs by the PUC’s February 1, 2025, deadline, no state company locations strict guidelines on the mines’ noise ranges or useful resource consumption. Hood County residents can enchantment to the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality (TCEQ), however it regulates solely the mine’s energy supply: Constellation Vitality’s Wolf Hole II gasoline plant. “The individuals have been neglected of this factor since day one,” Weeks advised the Observer. “There was no consideration or concern for human beings in any respect. It’s simply incorrect.”
Subsequent, we visited Virginia and Nick Browning, a pair who’ve lived for over 30 years on property north of the plant and mine. Whereas Nick isn’t bothered by the cyptomine’s noise, given his deteriorating listening to, Virginia is stored awake and suffers bouts of vertigo after sleepless nights. “Some days, I appear like I’m drunk. I imply, that’s how I stroll. I can’t stroll and have my head up,” she mentioned.
Shadden, Weeks, the Brownings, and others not too long ago banded along with the environmental legislation agency Earthjustice to file go well with towards MARA. The lawsuit particulars myriad well being issues residents have reported—together with a non-cancerous mass medical doctors present in Virginia Browning’s mind over the summer time and may’t clarify.
Residents are in search of an injunction to cease the mine’s noise, arguing that it constitutes a non-public nuisance below an obscure 1973 Texas felony legislation that outlines penalties for extreme noise above 85 decibels. They’re additionally amassing knowledge for potential private damage lawsuits towards each MARA and Constellation, and have efficiently pressured leaders in Hood and neighboring Somervell County to move resolutions opposing the prevailing mine and proposed gasoline plant growth.
In an e-mail to the Observer, Adam Pollock, a spokesperson for MARA, categorically rejected residents’ allegations about noise, writing in a press release that the corporate’s mine is in a longtime industrial zone, its sound measurements are under authorized limits, and that there’s no hyperlink between the corporate’s operations and the alleged illnesses. “MARA is dedicated to being a great neighbor and has a monitor report of sustainable enterprise practices and including jobs and tax revenues to the communities during which it invests,” he wrote.
For now, locals are celebrating a victory associated to the gasoline plant, not the mine: In February, the TCEQ granted residents a contested case listening to course of in response to their problem to the Wolf Hole II growth. If the residents prevail, an administrative choose may submit a beneficial proposal for TCEQ to disclaim or modify the allow.
If authorised, the plant’s new generators, referred to as Wolf Hole III, will add a whole lot of hundreds of tons of poisonous emissions to the realm. These embrace climate-warming greenhouse gasses and unstable natural compounds.
In August, Shadden and her neighbors traveled to the Texas capitol to testify towards the Wolf Hole III utility for a taxpayer-funded mortgage from the PUC. That’s the place I met Danny Lakey, who lives on a hill inside a mile of the mine and gasoline plant. He confirmed me screenshots of a sound-measuring app with a studying of 79.7 decibels.
Shadden advised members of the Texas Senate Committee on Enterprise and Commerce that, for the reason that cryptomine started working in 2022, the gasoline plant has been operating at “99 p.c” capability, generally shaking homes when it has to blow off pressurized steam via valves to regulate compressor surges. Whereas Houston was with out energy throughout Hurricane Beryl in July, she mentioned, she noticed valves blow recurrently on the Wolf Hole because it strained to produce energy to MARA’s round the clock cryptomine.
Shadden and others additionally lobbied legislators in assist of resurrecting Senate Invoice 1751, an finally unsuccessful invoice launched by GOP state Senator Lois Kolkhorst in 2023, which might have restricted cryptomining incentives, together with the “demand response” applications during which massive crypto companies can promote power again to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, throughout peak demand occasions. SB 1751 would have capped these incentives at 10 p.c and withheld abatements from miners consuming greater than 75 MWs.
The efforts led to disappointment: The PUC authorised Constellation’s Texas Vitality Fund utility in September—earlier than the corporate voluntarily withdrew its bid to probably reapply for a special mortgage. In the meantime, the Legislature has solely moved in crypto’s route for the reason that capitol go to.
Texas’s first legislative session following the reelection of President Donald Trump, who vowed to make the US the “crypto capital” of the world, has put Sawicky, Shadden, and different environmental advocates on the protection.
This session, state Consultant Giovanni Capriglione and state Senator Charles Schwertner, each Republicans, launched separate payments to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. As of early April, the Senate had handed Senate Invoice 21, which might permit the state to construct a crypto stockpile, boosting the business. Trump signed an govt order in March that might create an identical federal reserve.
In 2023, a New York Occasions evaluation discovered that 34 massive US cryptomines mixed to pump 16.4 million tons of carbon air pollution into the environment per yr. The rampant development of cryptomining in Texas and elsewhere pushed the Massachusetts-based Quiet Communities Inc. to file a 2023 lawsuit towards the EPA to revive Noise Management Act laws rolled again within the Nineteen Eighties.
Along with the continuing Hood County case, Earthjustice deputy managing lawyer Mandy DeRoche advised the Observer that the group is litigating different cryptomine circumstances in New York and Pennsylvania involving communities impacted by noise or not directly impacted by gasoline and coal ash plant air pollution exacerbated by cryptomining. The agency, she mentioned, is contemplating petitioning the EPA to implement federal noise statutes particularly for cryptomines.
Many analysts had anticipated the Bitcoin bubble to burst in 2023—after the notorious 2022 collapse of the FTX crypto trade, the place prospects had exchanged cryptocoins for typical forex or different cryptocurrencies. Depositors withdrew belongings shortly earlier than FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s 2022 arrest on prices of fraud, conspiracy, and cash laundering. However costs rebounded even after Bankman-Fried’s 2023 conviction. Miners started increasing whereas pouring $133 million into the 2024 federal elections, primarily backing Trump and GOP legislators together with Senator Ted Cruz, who owns at the least three cryptomining machines within the West Texas city of Iraan. In 2023, Cruz disclosed a purchase order of between $50,000 and $100,000 in Bitcoin following an endorsement by the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC).
Cheryl Shadden with 4 of her eight canines on her property, which sits throughout the street from the Marathon Digital Holding’s 300-megawatt cryptomine in Granbury, Texas, on March 30, 2025. (Shelby Tauber)
Bitcoin costs have rallied, spurred by Trump’s govt order supporting crypto development and deregulation. However as cryptomining expands, it is usually turning into extra cutthroat, requiring ever-increasing computing energy, extra superior {hardware}—and much more power. A BloombergNEF mannequin predicted that if the 2023 cryptomining peak hundreds triple, Texans’ peak electrical energy charges may soar by 30 p.c. If the growth is sixfold, charges may enhance by 80 p.c. Proper now, in line with TBC’s Bratcher, the business is rising by 20 to 30 MWs a month.
The expansion of Texas’s cryptomining business massively will increase consumption of fossil fuels that trigger local weather change. And its advocates actively promote a political agenda that features local weather denial. TBC spent greater than half of its $949,488 income in 2023 on a lobbying agency.
A2024 Greenpeace report famous that TBC advisory board member Genevieve Collins additionally directs People for Prosperity Texas, funded by Koch netwotk and the American Petroleum Institute, which is among the many most vocal opponents of power and environmental insurance policies geared toward addressing the local weather disaster.
One other TBC board member, Riot Platform’s head of public coverage Brian Morgenstern, labored within the first Trump administration as deputy press secretary on the White Home, the identical report mentioned. He collaborated with a former power secretary, Texan Governor Rick Perry, to kind the America First Coverage Institute, which has championed “drill, child, drill” insurance policies.
In its years as a crypto chief, Riot has already rebranded itself twice: In 2017, the corporate modified its identify from Bioptix to Riot Blockchain after which to Riot Platforms in 2023, as a part of an effort to pitch itself as an information middle operator.
Riot, like different cryptominers, thrives partly on public largesse. Along with tax breaks, roughly 1 / 4 of its whole 2023 income, $33.7 million, got here from power subsidies for not executing its main perform: mining Bitcoin, as a part of its participation in ERCOT’s demand-response program.
Chris Jones, an electrician who labored on the Navarro County Riot facility for over a yr troubleshooting the ability system supplying the ability’s {hardware}, alleged in March that Riot is making an attempt to misclassify its facility close to Corsicana as an information middle in its utility for an exemption from state gross sales taxes though he claims it doesn’t meet the authorized necessities.
In December 2024 and February 2025, Jones, a 27-year licensed electrician, filed a number of complaints to the Securities and Trade Fee, the Texas Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, and ERCOT describing alleged irregularities by Riot, together with potential misuse of public funds and misrepresentation within the agency’s monetary reporting. He additionally filed a criticism with the federal Occupational Security and Well being Administration (OSHA) about what he described within the criticism as “ungrounded present” operating via the ability’s electrical conduits. “That place is a demise lure. I’m stunned somebody has not obtained killed up there but,” Jones advised the Observer. “It’s probably the most harmful place I ever labored, and I used to work in coal mines.”
Data present OSHA moved to shut Jones’s case in February after receiving a response from Riot Platforms” vp of security Frank Durant, who mentioned he’d investigated and corrected the problems Jones described. Jones despatched a rebuttal to the company disputing Durant’s claims on February 23. Jones was fired, he mentioned, on March 3 after sharing his issues on social media. The company is now investigating Jones’s termination as potential retaliation, in line with OSHA paperwork and e-mails Jones shared with the Observer.
In an e-mail to the Observer, a Riot Platforms spokesperson referred to as Jones’s claims “categorically false,” writing: “Whereas it’s disappointing {that a} disgruntled worker feels the necessity to make these statements, our focus is on our enterprise and persevering with to be a optimistic contributor to the Navarro County group.”
Through the Navarro Commissioners Courtroom listening to in October, Riot senior vp of operations David Schatz advised commissioners and residents that the agency has already improved the land it purchased in 2022. “We have now about 80 acres that’s unused, that we planted 1,000 bushes on, that’s protected, that we don’t contact.… No one advised us we needed to do it—as a result of we’re good stewards of the group,” he mentioned.
Citing two conferences the agency held for the general public, Schatz mentioned, “Since Day 1, Riot has been clear about what we’re doing right here, together with what we’ve accomplished up to now. It is a rinse (and) repeat of what we’ve accomplished in Rockdale. We have now a confirmed monitor report.”
Nick and Virginia Browning of their residence in Granbury, Texas, on March 30, 2025.(Shelby Tauber)
Sawicky, nonetheless, advised the Observer that these public occasions have been held solely after TCAC members and others demanded extra accountability with a week-of-action protest and petition marketing campaign. She advised the Observer she was forbidden from livestreaming the supposedly public meet-and-greet with Riot representatives on the Corsicana Opry final Might and was monitored by a safety guard. Police escorted her out of a second occasion on the Opry the next month after she mentioned she pulled out her telephone to movie.
Trump’s reelection and the county’s abatement resolution have been the final straw for Sawicky. She disbanded TCAC in November and started packing her issues to maneuver to New York State. She plans to place her Navarro County residence available on the market. “My time and power and activism is effective, so I’m going to spend it the place it’s going to have the largest influence and the place it’s appreciated,” she mentioned. “I don’t have any hope for this state. It’s horrible. It’s getting worse.”
She and Shadden vow to proceed their advocacy towards cryptocurrency mining, however as members of the Nationwide Coalition In opposition to Cryptomining (NCAC). For now, Sawicky will assist NCAC kind a board and procure its 501(c)(3) standing. Shadden, in the meantime, is strategizing about the best way to incorporate her Hood County group as a township. Possibly then she’ll win the precise to enact some modest laws for the Wolf Hole gasoline plant and Marathon’s cryptomine.
“We’ve obtained to do one thing,” Shadden advised the Observer. “I imply, how lengthy are all of those communities all through Texas going to tolerate this?”
Candice Bernd
Candice Bernd is an unbiased journalist and senior editor at Truthout whose work has additionally appeared in The Nation, In These Occasions, and Salon.
