Nine Granbury, Texas, residents have hit Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings with a federal lawsuit, alleging the company’s nearby cryptocurrency mining facility has turned life in their neighborhood “unbearably loud” and damaged their health and property.
Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas and first reported by Blockspace, the complaint seeks more than $1 million in damages and demands a jury trial. The plaintiffs — members of several families living as close as 0.01 miles (roughly 53 feet) from the site — say constant noise, vibrations and low-frequency sounds from the facility’s cooling systems have permeated their homes, made outdoor time intolerable and driven down property values.
“This lawsuit arises out [of] the denial of Plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their property via interference from the MARA’s management and operation of the Cryptomine,” the complaint states. It accuses MARA of creating a “permanent private nuisance” and links the emissions to a range of alleged physical and mental harms, including insomnia, headaches, tinnitus, anxiety, fatigue, hearing loss and hypertension. Plaintiffs also report changes in livestock behavior and reduced wildlife activity near the site.
The suit says conditions worsened after MARA assumed operations at the facility in 2024 and contends the company knew about the effects but failed to adequately mitigate them. The complaint advances four claims: private nuisance, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and restitution.
MARA has previously said it is working with the community and taking steps to reduce sound, including shutting down some air-cooled units, building sound barriers and transitioning toward liquid immersion cooling. In a March 2024 statement quoted in the filing, the company said it aims to be “thoughtful and considerate members of our new community” and welcomed local feedback. Nonetheless, the plaintiffs say those measures haven’t resolved the impacts. Attorneys for both sides did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted to Decrypt.
The lawsuit arrives as an increasing number of Bitcoin mining operations diversify into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, repurposing existing power and cooling infrastructure to chase new data-center contracts. That shift — and the growth of large data centers more broadly — has sparked community pushback across the U.S., with complaints over noise, electricity demand, water use and other strains on local resources. Maine this year enacted a first‑in‑the‑nation moratorium on new large-scale AI data centers, citing community and environmental concerns.
This case adds to a growing tally of legal and regulatory challenges facing crypto miners as they expand and adapt facilities originally built for Bitcoin production.
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