Environmental groups sue Seneca Lake bitcoin miner

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Partnering with the Sierra Membership, Finger Lakes activists against the continued operation of a decommissioned Seneca Lake energy plant repurposed for bitcoin mining are asking the Environmental Safety Company to close the Seneca Lake plant down.

A <a target="_blank" href="https://rochesterbeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Senca-Lake-Bitcoin-suit.pdf" rel="noopener">lawsuit </a>filed within the federal Western District of New York’s Rochester Division Tuesday by the Seneca Lake Guardian, the Committee to Protect the Finger Lakes and the Sierra Membership comes as bitcoin miner <a target="_blank" href="https://greenidge.com/" rel="noopener">Greenidge Generation</a> could also be weighing a chapter submitting.

Greenidge said in a Securities and Alternate Fee <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1844971/000162828022032258/gree_exhibit991x20222012.htm" rel="noopener">filing</a> final month that although it had restructured some $74 million in debt, it nonetheless noticed chapter as a chance.

“There stays uncertainty relating to Greenidge’s monetary situation and substantial doubt about its skill to proceed as a going concern,” the submitting states.

The lawsuit introduced by the Sierra Membership and Finger Lakes activists claims that Greenidge’s bitcoin mining operation, located within the Yates County village of Dresden, runs afoul of Clear Water Act guidelines and different federal environmental laws. The courtroom motion comes after months of fencing between Greenidge, environmentalists making an attempt to shutter the agency’s Seneca Lake plant and the state Division of Environmental Conservation.

Greenidge Technology’s president blasted the lawsuit, and the teams that filed it.

“What number of instances are we going to do that identical precise factor? You may have set your watch to the curiosity teams submitting one other frivolous authorized problem that in the long run is only a PR stunt,” mentioned Dale Irwin, responding to the Beacon’s request for remark. “They’ve misplaced each single lawsuit they’ve filed over eight years—with 5 courtroom rulings towards them, and 0 for them. The end result right here will observe the identical sample—file a lawsuit, get some media consideration after which later lose in courtroom as a result of you don't have any grounds.”

At difficulty is a previously coal-fired energy plant retrofitted in 2017 to run on pure gasoline and later decommissioned. Since 2019, the previous energy plant has been run by Greenidge as a bitcoin mining operation.

So-called proof-of-work mining of bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies is finished by banks of highly effective computer systems that run trillions of computations to unravel extremely sophisticated issues that when efficiently solved unlock blocks that yield cryptocurrency “cash.”

Whereas they've largely failed to achieve their goal of serving as a medium of change not tied to any authorities, crypto cash are traded as commodities.

At its peak in 2021, a single bitcoin traded for greater than $67,000. As of Jan. 1, 2022, the worth had fallen to roughly $47,000. Midweek, bitcoins had been buying and selling round $22,500 apiece.

In supplies submitted to the state, Greendige has portrayed itself as an financial improvement engine that will deliver numerous jobs to the Finger Lakes area. Critics say the plant’s operations pollute the air, generate greenhouse gases and discharge harmfully heat water into Seneca Lake, upsetting the 600-foot-deep glacially created Finger Lake’s ecological steadiness.

In a 2021 Rochester Beacon <a target="_blank" href="https://rochesterbeacon.com/2021/11/18/the-crypto-cloud-over-seneca-lake/" rel="noopener">opinion piece</a>, commentator Michael Warren Thomas described the Seneca Lake plant as working “inside a loophole in New York’s environmental regulation the scale of an influence plant.”

Opponents say the Greenidge plant violates quite a few environmental requirements. Greenidge maintains the environmental influence of its plant’s operations are minimal.

In June, the DEC turned down <a target="_blank" href="https://rochesterbeacon.com/2022/06/30/dec-denies-greenidge-permit-renewal-application/" rel="noopener">Greenidge’s application</a> to resume its Title V Air Allow. Greenidge criticized the company’s ruling, however mentioned it choice wouldn't have an effect on the plant’s operations as a result of the appliance was deemed well timed and full, permitting its operations to proceed operating uninterrupted underneath its present Title V allow, “which remains to be in impact, for so long as it takes to efficiently problem this arbitrary and capricious choice.”

Greenidge’s allow to discharge pollution into Seneca Lake expired in September 2022 and has not been renewed, the lawsuit states.

The bitcoin mining agency “did not undergo the New York State Division of Environmental Conservation a adequate renewal software containing full, federally required data obligatory for a renewal (subsequently) the power just isn't entitled to proceed to discharge underneath its expired allow,” the courtroom transient argues.

Irwin countered that Greenidge final week “accomplished a $6 million superior fish display system, assembly all state and federal necessities, to guard aquatic life in Seneca Lake. Efforts like this from opponents is why no person within the Finger Lakes listened to those gadflies anymore; they've zero credibility. We proceed to function underneath a sound allow, and the newest phony criticism from these perennial litigation losers can’t change that.

“They don’t file lawsuits,” he added, “they difficulty press releases dressed up as lawsuits and easily waste the courts, and taxpayers, money and time.”

<a target="_blank" href="http://news.google.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#e9ccdbd99e808585c7889a9d869ba99b868a818c9a9d8c9b8b8c888a8687c78a8684" rel="noopener">Will Astor</a> is Rochester Beacon senior author. The Beacon welcomes feedback and letters from readers who adhere to our <a target="_blank" href="https://rochesterbeacon.com/2019/08/22/our-comment-policy-is-changing-heres-why/" rel="noopener">comment policy</a> together with use of their full, actual identify. Submissions to the <a target="_blank" href="https://rochesterbeacon.com/letters/" rel="noopener">Letters page</a> needs to be despatched to <a target="_blank" href="http://news.google.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#59153c2d2d3c2b2a190b363a313c2a2d3c2b1b3c383a3637773a3634" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a>.

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