Town near bitcoin mine experiences 24/7 version of more common disenfranchised dynamic

And how data centers, possibly coming to a town near you, compare

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash of Northern Ireland data center.

By D Menzies

When a new videogame console is released, one of the concerns has been, for all the new graphical capabilities a new system has, how loud would the fan /cooling system be that has been necessary to a piece of hardware essentially not burning out?

People also don’t seem to like the sound of a fan whirring over the sound of the game itself.

And with something like a data center, a comparatively massive conglomeration of computational infrastructure needed to support AI models, the concern is considerably scaled up; the “game” is life. With push back from residents local to the areas where they are built, as there has been in Union County, New Jersey in the past month, data center companies that have addressed this issue have generally said one of two things: they are, or will be, in compliance with the local noise regulations, or they have or continuing to look for ways to mitigate the noise further than is necessary.

That noise, even if complying with those regulations, generally runs 24/7, with peaks and valleys.

How loud can a data center’s cousin of sorts, a bitcoin mining center — with its model wherein more computers have to be added to a mining operation, as the more users there are the need for more power to process “discovery” of bitcoin in its more limited pool — or just a regular ol’ data center be?

According to an article from TechTarget (TT), “Understanding the impact of data center noise pollution,” back-up generators utilized by data centers run from 85dBA on the smaller end to 100 dBA on the larger end, with multiple generators generally being used at once. HVAC systems range from 55 to 85 dBA.

And that’s ancillary equipment. The servers themselves can be as loud as 95 dBA, according to Gerry McGovern, one of the TT piece sources.

And a single home mining unit for bitcoin data mining? That can be as loud as 85 dB. Bear in mind, again, bitcoin mining on what’s the profitable model of “discovery” for this cryptocurrency requires adding more and units of processing to, and one would figure, more ancillary generators and HVAC units.

db comparisons

DBA as a measurement of decibels accounts more for the way a noise is registered by human ears, so something that’s 85 dB may be less dBA (let’s say about, 80 dbA), depending on a sound’s frequency. 80 db is still in the beginning of range where having to listen to a noise at this level for an extended period of time should be done with noise protection. It’s basically industrial-level.

According to boomspeaker.com, a single lawnmower emits noise at 85 dB. Very few people have heard a single lawnmower and not wished that the process is over with as quickly as possible. A club or concert, according to the same site, emits noise at a level of about 100 dB — but both facilities are also generally supposed to follow noise ordinances to be adequately soundproof or distant from residences.

An interesting side note about noise is that a study on rats, which are used as model organisms because of their genetic and social similarities to human beings, indicated that sober ones hate noise and ones administered drugs preferred jazz. Further research on this study suggests that, more than jazz opening up the rat's minds to something they craved without drugs, rats naturally began to associate the music with the dopamine-boosting experience of the drug.

There are legal substances that also increase dopamine, and on some level, this suggests a dynamic for both those and illegal substances.

Noise pollution after and before data mining

after

There’s a particular phenomenon Chilltown Blues has been twanging/harping about — that nothing trickles down, but the things that people have to deal with living in places that are disenfranchised …. those trickle up.

A 2025 report from More Perfect Union highlighted some residents of Granbury, Texas, a town 70 miles outside of Dallas. Roughly four years ago as of May 28, 2026, a bitcoin mine was constructed at a gas plant just outside of where most residents live, ranging from about a few hundred feet to further.

The resulting noise pollution has made for what one resident said was “maddening.”

Every resident featured in the story’s Granbury segment mentions what they say is a health issue that’s emerged since the bitcoin mining facility began operations.

At one point during the report’s filming, a resident points to a wall installed around the facility she says is intended to be sound suppressing; she also notes it has a gap that lets power lines in.

After a night’s sleep, another resident tells her partner, “I went to the window and I listened and I thought, man, this is going to be a rough night, and it was ... It’ll be a long day for me.”

That resident’s partner expresses that Granbury had for decades been a quiet place they loved living in.

before and ongoing

Let’s describe a quintessential example of urban noise — a tenement building in a disenfranchised area, at the height of increasingly hot-for-longer summer. At some point during the day, on the week or weekend, some resident can be playing music from speakers upwards of 85 to 100 dB for hours. Just one resident playing music at that level for hours affects a lot of other households, but it may be more than one. What’s good for the goose …

One of the features I would say defines a tenement in the U.S. is a building where the landlord has been unlikely to do anything related to a tenant’s quality of life for years, pre-major gentrification; that’s not far-off from the dictionary.com definition.

This relatively common source of noise therein, along with the likelihood of increased exposure to other noises and forms of pollution, may add up to exposure at levels of 85 to 100dB for hours at a time regularly, if not 24/7 — in an area with high population density and broad and distinct healthcare challenges.

(Instead of someone who has not lived in any place chalking this up to conjecture, try to think of this description of a locale when I cite a Harvard source about what areas bear the brunt of noise pollution in the U.S.)

It’s almost expected for this kind of noise pollution to be business as usual, chalked up to “cultural differences” acceptable for that building/area (otherwise one would simply move, right?), and reinforced by what the late environmental psychologist Dr. Arline Bronzaft explained is “"learned helplessness” in a previous story.

Basically, how much will someone face indifference to their plight without learning to settle into a feeling of helplessness?

I digress. Music as noise pollution along with other forms like constant traffic/honking/screaming, according to Bronzaft’s work, help mask the kind of illicit activity people across the board generally don’t want to live with at all — let alone concentrated versions of them. While it may not be a 24/7 plight in a tenement or a spot like it, several hours from multiple sources of this on and off throughout a day or a week or year(s), at high-end dB levels … that adds up to a public health crisis.

Bronzaft was not a fan of the idea that any being could get acclimated to noise. Yes, someone can get more used to it, but the body’s stressed response is inherently taxing — and taxing mentally, as well.

While noise pollution exists everywhere, it’s been particularly common in disenfranchised urban areas — the kind that grew, in part, from racist scapegoating from real estate entities guiding WWII veterans, able to benefit from the G.I. Bill in a way Black veterans could not, to the idyllic suburbs in NJ, according to a report from NJ Spotlight.

(It was hardly limited to NJ.)

As we’ve written about, the Reagan administration defunded federal noise programs — making noise a local issue somewhat limited to class, and noise in general a hard issue to tackle because of what Bronzaft once suggested was a level of varied nebulousness in a given area/town/state’s noise ordinances.

But federal noise control programs, ideally, offer a certain level of blanket enforcement across the board — or at least the obligation. Other obligations to the infrastructure of these abandoned areas festered, in part bolstered by Reagan’s defunding of social programs.

In 2022, Peter James, an associate professor at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute’s was a source in a piece from Harvard Health on noise pollution because of James’ 2017 study published in “Environmental Health Perspectives,” which points to people in neighborhoods “with low socioeconomic status and higher proportions of residents of color” bearing “the brunt of noise pollution in this country.

“We want our patients to reduce their exposure as much as possible, such as wearing ear plugs or investing in soundproofing insulation, but that’s not possible for many who live in the noisiest areas,” James told Harvard Health. “To say the onus is on the individual to fix their noise exposure is not feasible.”

But a lot of it was and is, effectively — particularly for individuals among a population below the median income whose voting interests get placated; and the median income has, of course, skyrocketed in the places around or adjacent to Manhattan because of gentrification.

All of this is to say what manifested itself mostly to communities in the most prosaic sense is now manifesting itself in places that pride themselves on a sense of community in a more idyllic sense. But that’s been bolstered by fortune, and in that, some of them will turn that tide. Others may find that the foothold that exists because of deregulation that’s now trickled up is a thing they’re supposed to get used to.

They shouldn’t — but not anymore than people who’ve been hearing an unspoken rule loud and clear, before the zeitgeist defined it as particularly contemporary: you get what you can pay for, not what you deserve.

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I continue to see pollution clean-up initiatives with no intersectional efforts.

This kind of pollution sits at the intersection of something of which noise pollution is but one feature. Tackling noise pollution is more challenging than temporarily clearing a street, but like litter, the return of noise pollution is generally guaranteed without resistance to it being an infrastructural feature; and that takes the kind of civic investment that is only complicated because of how much inequity has been reinforced.