The 5-Year Legal War: How a Small County Finally Shut Down a Deafening Bitcoin Mine

You can see the rural America that rural America has always imagined itself to be when you take a leisurely weekday morning drive through Washington County, Tennessee. A landscape that moves at its own leisurely pace, with rolling hills and modest homes set back from two-lane roads. Then, until very recently, you heard something that didn’t belong: a low, unrelenting mechanical drone emanating from a computer-filled building that never paused, never turned off, and never adapted to the local rhythms. Living close to a Bitcoin mining operation in Washington County was characterized by that sound for about five years. It ended this past Saturday. After a legal settlement was reached in late 2023, CleanSpark, the facility’s current owner, has 120 days to remove its equipment. This is the outcome that the neighbors had been fighting for since the operation started.

Fighting a noise complaint for five years is a long time. Sitting with that number for a while is worthwhile. Not five months, not five weeks. Five years of waking up to an industrial hum, five years of court cases, five years of going to county meetings, five years of filing paperwork, and five years of trying to convince anyone who would listen that the sound wasn’t just annoying, but that it was constant, pervasive, and unavoidable in a way that a distant highway or a neighbor’s barking dog aren’t. Because of the economics, Bitcoin mining facilities are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Every hour spent offline results in lost revenue. At ten o’clock at night, the tens of thousands of fans that cool the computer hardware don’t shut off because everyone in the vicinity wants to go to bed. The people in the vicinity are unknown to the machines.

The situation in Washington County is not unique. It’s a part of a trend that has been developing in rural America for a number of years, which picked up speed after China outlawed cryptocurrency mining in 2021 and many businesses moved to the US. According to available estimates, there are currently at least 137 Bitcoin mines operating in 21 states, and the US is responsible for about 40% of the world’s Bitcoin supply. For obvious reasons—cheaper energy, fewer regulatory barriers, land availability, and local governments frequently desperate for tax revenue to overlook the questions locals hadn’t yet considered asking—rural areas became the preferred location. The machinery was operating by the time communities realized what they had consented to or what had moved in without meaningful consultation.

Residents of Granbury, Texas, who live close to Marathon Digital Holdings‘ operation behind the Wolf Hollow gas plant, reported symptoms that go far beyond inconvenience. In late 2024, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of Citizens Concerned About Wolf Hollow, citing over two dozen people who had direct health effects, including crippling vertigo, severe migraines, tinnitus, and permanent hearing loss. Following the initial complaints, a 24-foot sound barrier was installed in 2023, indicating that Marathon recognized the issue. The lawsuit is intended to address the question of whether the barrier was sufficient. Cheryl Shadden, a resident of Granbury, talked about how she felt confined, that her family was physically harmed by noise every day and night, that she had no control over the operations, and that there was no simple way to stop them.

Six metal storage containers containing Bitcoin mining computers were located across the street from a Montessori school serving students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in Dafter Township, Michigan. A Chippewa County civil court issued a 14-day temporary restraining order after Lake Superior Academy filed a lawsuit against Odessa Partners in the summer of 2025. In response, Odessa built a wall of hay bales, claiming that this reduced noise to about 43 decibels, which is comparable to a typical street. She then filed a lawsuit in federal court to have the restraining order dissolved and to recover $183,889.39 in damages from the closure period. The school’s expansion plans, which called for 40 more students and two new classrooms, were put on hold while the case was transferred to federal court. On its face, the question of whether hay bales are a suitable solution to an industrial noise issue in a school that serves five-year-olds seems self-evident.

State law in Arkansas has made it more difficult to solve the issue locally. Local governments are unable to regulate Bitcoin mining facilities due to the state’s “right to mine” legislation, which leaves neighbors with fewer legal options and community officials with limited options regardless of what residents ask them to do. A facility in Limestone that had been in operation since 2021 was ordered to close, achieving the same result as Washington County but via a more drawn-out and costly process that the state’s own legal system was intended to thwart.

The specific irony that runs through the political geography of all of this is difficult to ignore. Many of the most directly impacted communities, such as small New York state villages like Dresden on Seneca Lake, rural Tennessee, and rural Texas, cast large numbers of votes for Donald Trump, who has stated that he wants to establish the United States as the global hub for Bitcoin mining. Ellen Campbell, a Republican in Dresden whose view of Seneca Lake is now accompanied by a constant mechanical hum from the Greenidge Generation power plant, told the BBC that she is currently dissatisfied with her party. That’s a tactful way to explain the situation. The people who were meant to gain from the administration’s economic vision are caught between the policy and its lived experience.

For the residents of Washington County, the accomplishments made over the course of five years are truly significant. However, it’s important to be clear about what it doesn’t fix. The facility is still there because CleanSpark has 120 days to remove its equipment. The legal structure that permitted the conflict to continue for five years is still in place. Numerous communities engaged in earlier phases of comparable conflicts—some with noise ordinances, some without, some in states that have actively stripped local governments of regulatory authority—are observing this result and making their own judgments about what it truly takes to prevail and how long it might take.

In the meantime, the Bitcoin mining sector continues to grow. In Navarro County, Texas, Riot Platforms is building what it claims will be the largest mining facility in the world, using up to a gigawatt of energy. In an effort to influence the environment around the facility before it becomes an issue, the company has been paying local school districts and holding community meet-and-greets, which is the industry’s equivalent of landscape architecture. It’s still unclear if that strategy works where others haven’t, but the Washington County result shows that communities with perseverance, legal standing, and a settlement framework can eventually win. The question is whether most rural communities can afford to pay the price of five years.