NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. — It’s loud along Erie Avenue in North Tonawanda, and the continuous flow of traffic is only part of it.
For the past two years, neighbors have had to take their morning coffee with the unrelenting sounds of cooling fans and mining equipment coming from the Digihost crypto mine up the street from their homes.
“It sounds like a jet plane engine that’s constantly running,” resident Fran Lumia said. “I could go crazy, and I am going crazy, and I'm offended that they stole our enjoyment.”
The city says there's nothing they can do right now to return it to that quiet neighborhood because, frankly, they don’t have the proper equipment to prove the plant’s noise is exceeding any city limits.
That’s what brought a group of neighbors — some who live as far as a mile away from the facility — to city hall Tuesday night to rally behind a proposed two-year moratorium that would prevent the facility’s expansion and any more of its kind from coming to North Tonawanda.
But the noise is only part of the problem. The crypto facility is currently on track to emit over 300,000 tons of greenhouse gasses this year. That’s enough to power 11 cities the size of North Tonawanda.
“We're not allowed to buy a stove. We're not allowed to have plastic straws. We're not allowed to have plastic bags. But we can have this?” Lumia said. “There's something wrong here.”
The facility’s air permit also expired almost three years ago, which normally wouldn’t be a problem because they have a renewal application pending, but the plant is emitting more greenhouse gasses than it ever has before, producing 16,000 more tons in just the first three months of 2024 than all of last year.
Residents are using those changes to urge the DEC to reject the permit application and close the plant altogether.
“We really just want to hear an answer from the DEC on how they want to move forward,” North Tonawanda Mayor Austin Tylec said.
The common council will vote on the moratorium next Tuesday. The mayor is optimistic it will pass.