Bitcoin mining impacts Northeast TN from Limestone to Mountain City

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LIMESTONE AND MOUNTAIN CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Mountain City Mayor Jerry Jordan sees multiple potential benefits if a Bitcoin mine comes to his town, but says 'I don't want to get snaked' by any unexpected negatives.
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'My reputation's on the line. I've lived here practically all my life, and I don't want to bring something in here that's going to be detrimental to this community and this town,' Jordan told News Channel 11 Wednesday.
Early that morning, Preston Holley stood across Lola Humphreys Road from Northeast Tennessee's only active Bitcoin mine, in the New Salem community of Washington County. With a constant drone emanating from the fans that cool racks of computers — the machines that perform complex calculations to 'mine' for Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency — Holley had a suggestion for Jordan and his community.
'I would caution any community who's being told that this kind of a facility is going to be built to make sure that they (the Bitcoin company) hold themselves accountable for everything that they say they're going to do, but not to trust anything as far as the noise levels go,' Holley said. 'There will be noise no matter no matter what technology they use to dampen it.'
Speaking of dampening, the company wanting to put a mine in Mountain City says it plans to use a newer cooling technology if it opens a facility there. CleanSpark, a national company that focuses specifically on mining Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has been in talks with community leaders in Mountain City about opening a 30 megawatt mining facility just off Highway 421 south of downtown.
'We are known in the industry as innovators in immersion cooling,' CleanSpark Senior Vice President Harry Sudock told News Channel 11 in an email. 'Some deployments have significant noise mitigation benefits and those would be the designs we intend to deploy in Mountain City.'
Assurances from Jordan and Mountain Electric Cooperative CEO Rodney Metcalf — the utility would sell the massive amounts of electricity needed to power the computers that race to unearth new Bitcoins or verify crytpo transactions — haven't yet put a stop to community opposition. Dozens of people turned out at a meeting earlier this month to voice concern over everything from noise and health impacts to strain on the power grid and a low number of projected jobs.
'I'm going on 16 years (as an elected town representative) and I've never seen anything like this before,' Jordan said.
Holley's community was hit unawares when a company called GRIID started operating the 20MW mine just off Bailey Bridge Road in early 2021. BrightRidge, the utility selling it power from an adjacent substation, had told Washington County commissioners only that it was planning to open a 'blockchain data center' when it applied for a rezoning in 2020.
Once the noise began, the community rose up.
'This was normally a quiet, peaceful place to be,' Holley said. 'You heard the birds. You heard farm sounds. Now we sound like we're on a four-lane highway. There's a constant sound of these fans running. There's no tuning it out.'
Commissioners, angered at the lack of early transparency, learned that the company may have built without a permit and that became the basis for a lawsuit. GRIID settled, offering to pay fines until closing the mine no later than March 2026. Eventually, CleanSpark bought GRIID, which was heavily in debt.
Mountain City's been grappling with the Bitcoin issue ahead of time. CleanSpark was open in its talks with Mountain Electric, which could use a large power customer to offset the loss of Parkdale Mills, which closed late last year. Planning commissioners discussed the proposal openly, and asked CleanSpark for more specific site plans and additional details.
'I said, you know, the one in Limestone is a disaster, and they offered I could come down there and look at (an operating facility that uses liquid cooling),' Jordan said. 'So we we took them up on their offer.'
A delegation of local leaders visited a facility in Norcross, Ga. that uses liquid cooling. Jordan, who took a decibel-reading app, said he came away convinced a facility housed inside a large building and using liquid cooling could operate without reaching nuisance levels of noise.
Asked whether the company could have simply dialed back the intensity of 'mining' taking place to reduce the need for cooling, Jordan admitted that was a possibility.
'They assured me they would be a good community partner, so I'll take them at their word,' Jordan said. 'We reviewed the facility and looked at it. I don't see a problem with it.'
Next up is a town-funded charter bus trip June 16 so citizens themselves can check out the Norcross facility.
'We want to do our due diligence,' he said. 'We want people to see what we saw.'
CleanSpark's Sudock said the company 'understand(s) that past experiences have created community concerns, and that's why we are committed to transparency and education around how our facilities are designed.'
He said the company 'conducts comprehensive sound studies' to determine potential impacts and ultimately 'design facilities that integrate seamlessly into the community and support a peaceful, low-impact environment.'
He said CleanSpark is continuing to engage with the Mountain City and hopes to share more about operations and the company's track record 'to help address concerns and build understanding.'
He said the company's approach 'has always been to listen first and proceed only where there's mutual interest.'
Concerns about stress on the power grid have been expressed across the country where Bitcoin mining is concerned — as well as data centers that support artificial intelligence — and that's no different in Mountain City.
Sudock said CleanSpark facilities can easily ramp down during peak demand 'to support the broader system,' and in fact did so during recent hurricanes in Georgia. He said in the Tennessee Valley Authority region, CleanSpark is among the largest participants in TVA's 'Powerflex' program, which he said directly benefits all ratepayers.
BrightRidge offered Bitcoin mine operator $100,000 incentive, said noise wouldn't be issue
'In addition, we contribute meaningfully to local tax bases, provide steady revenue to local utilities which helps stabilize household energy costs, and we are proud to support community programs through donations and sponsorships,' Sudock said.
Jordan said he reckons the personal property tax from an eight-figure investment in equipment is likely to bring more than $100,000 to town coffers, and even more to Johnson County. While the number of jobs created isn't high, Jordan thinks the wages will be very competitive — and he'd like to see conditions requiring most of those jobs go to local people.
'If the noise isn't an issue and it's safe and it only creates 12 jobs, those are 12 jobs we don't have and they will be good wages,' Jordan said.
The preliminary site plan calls for a building about 400 by 60 feet (roughly 24,000 square feet). The earliest a Planning Commission okay could come would be June 27, more than a week after the public trip to Norcross.
In Limestone, Holley is looking forward to the mine's closure in less than a year — even though that means the free fiber internet BrightRidge has provided as part of the settlement won't be free anymore.
But BrightRidge recently placed a moratorium on new data centers (including Bitcoin mines) after an outcry in Johnson City, where residents feared CleanSpark was planning to build a replacement for the Limestone mine. Holley said he hopes that doesn't create a temptation for BrightRidge and CleanSpark to keep the current mine open past next March.
'The other communities where they're wanting to put these facilities are also in opposition to them and understandably so,' Holley said. 'So if that slows down the process, yeah, I wouldn't like that. But at the same time, I don't want this on any community.'
For Holley, it's all going to come down to whether CleanSpark stands by its claims of wanting to be a positive impact on the communities where it operates. Much of that, he said, revolves around noise.
Sudock said the company is investing in 'advanced noise mitigation technologies, including immersion cooling, site design enhancements, and emerging acoustic cancellation tools.'
He called those efforts 'a core part of our engineering process, not an afterthought' due to the company's desire for its facilities 'to blend into the community.'
Holley said if he were a Mountain City resident with a chance to visit a facility and talk to company representatives, 'I'd sure like to to know more about it.'
But he said a company-arranged trip to another Bitcoin mine site would only be 'a nice start.'
'Seeing one might tell us a little bit, but I'd like to talk to the community members and people around there to find out, 'how exactly has this affected you?' Because, you know, (CleanSpark's) side is one thing. I'd like to hear from the people who have to be there every day.'
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