North Tonawanda noise nightmare

North Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - As North Tonawanda residents continue to struggle with noise and pollution complaints with the crypto-mining company DigiPower X, formerly known as Digihost, along Erie Avenue, several concerned citizens made their voices heard on Tuesday, as the company faces new charges from the city.

DigiPower X was in city court Tuesday afternoon to face an arraignment on four charges for violating the North Tonawanda's noise ordinance laws.

"It's clear they don't have any regard for residents nearby, nor do they seem to care about the noise control ordinance that they're violating," Gondek added. "I know that [Mayor] Austin [Tylec] and his team are looking at, along with the city attorney, updating the city noise ordinance to include decibel readings that take into account this low frequency industrial noise."

Since becoming mayor, Tylec has focused on doing trying to work with Digihost to try and reduce noise and pollution in the city and region. However, Tylec continues to see and hear the problems that continue with the factory, and its impact on residents.

"Our residents, honestly, deserve peace and quiet in their own homes. We have put in the time, the effort and resources to get to this point, and I will continue to push until this problem is resolved once and for all," Tylec said at Tuesday's rally outside North Tonawanda City Hall.

Tylec acknowledges there needs to be some changes to the city's noise ordinance, notably trying to create more restrictions to the penal law that's more than 30-years-old.

"Currently, the penalties really just don't compare to the dollar. It's been decades since it's been updated. So when you look at something like a house party, it tends to shut down, they could pay for a $100 fine. But when you look at a major industry, $100 is nothing to them. That's one of the big pieces we're looking at, something that compounds day-to-day and builds-and-builds," Tylec noted. "Something that is a little more hard for someone to bear, that they take it more seriously. So our ordinance originally was derived from the EPA, I believe, a template of sorts that the EPA provided many years ago. The EPA doesn't really focus on noise anymore, it's no longer part of that department. Now it's really up to the locality to enforce, to have ordinances, codes, laws, to do what we can to rectify issues like this."

North Tonawanda Police Chief Keith Glass says during a two-and-a-half-week period of noise readings in the neighborhoods surrounding the bitcoin factory, DigiPower X is in violation of the city's noise ordinance every night.

"I, specifically, looked at the sound after 10 p.m., between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and it was an easy violation every single night," Glass said on Tuesday. "I personally wrote them four different citations on four different nights. They were originally due to be served about a month ago, but because of construction, everything got pushed up. But that's what they're here today to answer to."

Glass was very careful with how he wanted to issue these citations against DigiPower X in court.

"When I talked with our team, the city attorney, I could write them every single night, but when it goes to court, unfortunately what I think could happen is they could look at this big stack and say, 'Why don't we just combine everything into one?' I've seen that happen with traffic tickets, things like that. I didn't want to overwhelm the court where everything just gets knocked down into one ticket."

For North Tonawanda resident Kevin O'Connor, he's had enough of the noise pollution that the DigiPower X factory has had in his community on Remington Drive. He's hoping to see the plant, at some point, shut down over the continued violations.

"Upstairs, in my plant-facing bedroom windows, the window-penetrating noise is just terrible. You can't sleep. On my backyard deck, noise bouncing off the homes behind me is also irritating, taking away the peacefulness of my own home," O'Connor said at Tuesday's rally. "Many people are scolding me, saying I should have known that plant was there before I built there. Not so. That plant site was a Babe Ruth Youth Baseball facility at the time when I moved in there. It's a whole lot different now, I tell you."