From the balcony of his office at Boundary Breaks vineyard in Lodi, New York, vineyard manager Kees Stapel looks out on Seneca Lake, the largest and deepest of the 11 Finger Lakes.
“Right where people sit and enjoy their wine and the view, you can clearly see this thing chugging away,” Stapel says.
That eyesore is Greenidge Generation, a Bitcoin mining operation that, since the spring of 2020, has been running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
After realizing that running a “peaker plant” at 6 percent capacity was unprofitable, Greenidge made a pivot to Bitcoin mining.
Because of its “behind the meter” status, which means it doesn’t provide electricity to the public, the Greenidge power plant has, so far, been able to largely skirt environmental regulation.
“To be resurrecting decommissioned or underutilized power plants in the middle of this climate crisis to make fake money feels literally insane to us,” says Yvonne Taylor, vice president of Seneca Lake Guardian, an all-volunteer local grassroots organization.
New York State wine is a $6.6 billion industry that supports 70,000 jobs, the vast majority centered in the Finger Lakes region, and the winemakers fear Greenidge’s presence will dampen the tourist appeal they so heavily rely upon.
Warmer water can exacerbate the growth of toxic algal blooms, which have been forming on the lake in recent years, threatening health and the drinking water for 100,000 people.
In December 2020, Seneca Lake Guardian joined Sierra Club, Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, and 30 residents in challenging Greenidge’s permit.
From her lakefront house about a mile north of Greenidge, she can see the pollution spewing into the air and, from her dock, she can hear the din of the plant’s many machines, fans, and turbines buzzing away without pause.
Environmental advocates see Greenidge’s operation as a way for cryptocurrency companies to test what’s possible in the state, which hosts 20 percent of the country’s Bitcoin mining operations in the United States.
The permit expired in September 2021, and the agency, which has twice delayed its decision on the renewal, now says to expect one by the end of June.
Michael Warren Thomas, known as “the voice of the Finger Lakes” and the host of several local radio shows on food and wine, has been following the development of the area’s mostly family-owned wine industry for the past 25 years.
The 48 jobs Greenidge says it’s adding to the local economy won’t do much, but the $25,000 the company donated to the local fire department, for example, holds a lot of sway.
State-level regulations—as well as broad public education efforts by community advocates and media members like Thomas—are critical to reigning in the Bitcoin industry.
Seneca Lake Guardian and other regional, state, and national groups spent eight years fighting a gas storage and transport hub facility on the lake’s western shore.
There was also the long battle against fracking in the state, which ended in a ban—after a moratorium to study health impacts—in 2015.