Organizations led by an environmental organization filed a lawsuit against the US town of Torrey in New York for giving the green light to expanding a bitcoin mining facility at the Greenidge Generation power station.
Environmental Institute Leading Laws Against New York City for Approval of Plan to Expand BTC Mining Facility
According to court documents, the Sierra Club – which is leading the lawsuit—, the Committee to Keep the Finger Lakes, Seneca Lake Guardian, and others filed an Article 78 petition in Yates County Supreme Court against Greenidge Generation LLC, the Town of Torrey, and the Torrey Planning Board, are seeking a court injunction to block construction.
They claim in the claims that the proposed expansion of the mining facility will damage water discharges to Seneca Lake, whose operations began in early 2019, and removed data tools on plant-generated power that never hit the grid .
Although officials have stated that such activities do not violate any laws, plaintiffs assure otherwise. The factory, Greenidge, asked the Town of Torrey to expand bitcoin mining facilities in early 2020 by building four new warehouses that will house refrigeration and computing equipment.
However, an Article 78 petition states that local officials violated the State Environmental Quality Review Act:
Greenidge sought approval for this project through two separate but interdependent approval applications, thereby sharing their application for approval.
According to Fingerlakes1, the petition also claimed that the planning board had not considered taking a “hard look” at the need for additional water to cool the generating station “and discharge superheated water to Lake Seneca.”
Health Harm Concerns
Two of the plaintiffs stated that they feared that their health could be “harmed” if bitcoin mining facilities were expanded as expected.
Despite the previous efforts before the lawsuit by the organizations involved in the lawsuit, Greenidge said:
Even with this project (bitcoin expansion), our plant will remain firmly inside the environmental limits set by state and federal governments.
Atlas Holding, a private equity firm and owner of Greenidge, had installed about 7,000 bitcoin mining machines in 2019.
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