Little Rock, Arkansas – A new cryptocurrency-mining operation has recently opened in a small town in Garland County, and some of the residents are not happy about it.
Residents of Mountain Pine are complaining about the facility’s continuous loud noise, which they claim they can hear up to four or five miles away.
“It’s just freaking loud. High-pitched fans, that’s what you hear,” said Gary Muston, who lives across the road from the facility.
Just a few months have passed since the crypto mine opened, and it is situated right adjacent to Mountain Pine’s residential neighborhoods and downtown.
“It’s just annoying, we’re worrying about property values going down because of it,” Muston said.
GMI Computing is the firm that created the cryptomine. Only one of the facility’s five employees is a local, according to some locals who told Channel 7 they were misled about what the cryptocurrency mine would accomplish for Mountain Pine. They claimed to have been assured it would create jobs and improve the local economy.
Additionally, some residents claimed that GMI Computing misled the town when proposing the facility, misrepresenting it as a crypto mine and calling it a data center.
“Everybody on the city council believed that it was going to be like a data processing center and that it was going to affect the people. And they were told how it was going to benefit the city,” said Brenda Long, who lives within a mile of the crypto mine.
Some locals claim that the noise is not a problem.
“It’s nothing in comparison to what the lumber mill used to make. It’s really a non-issue for folks who’ve lived here from the time the lumber mill was here,” said Bill Brown, who has lived in Mountain Pine since the 1980s.
But for the most marginalized members of the community, it’s far from a non-issue. Milagros Rosa Middleton claims the noise from the cryptomine is tormenting her veteran husband, a former medic with PTSD.
“When he deployed he had a lot of injuries he had to go pick up on flight lines. One of the issues that he’s having with his PTSD is this noise really aggravates him, and it’s not something he can get away from,” Middleton said.
Mountain Pine City Hall has established a noise ordinance and directed GMI Computing to soundproof the cryptocurrency mine in response to mounting concerns from the community.
“Nobody’s told us anything. Nobody’s told the mayor anything about doing anything about it, but we were promised it would be soundproofed. That’s all we’re asking,” Long said.
Residents of Mountain Pine will have to put up with the loud drone of the facility until GMI Computing installs sound barriers surrounding the crypto mine, which is given until the end of the year by Mountain Pine City Hall.