Pennsylvania bitcoin mining lawsuit tests rare ‘green amendment’

PHILADELPHIA (CN) — A Pennsylvania environmental group is aiming to break new legal ground by using the nation's first-adopted — but rarely used — "green amendment" against the state and a power plant that supplies energy for bitcoin mining.

Mining cryptocurrencies like bitcoin requires massive amounts of electricity. Already, the nascent industry represents 0.6% to 2.3% of the country's entire energy consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Most U.S. crypto miners get their power from the nation's electrical grid, but Stronghold's Carbon County mining facility is unique in that its energy is derived from the Panther Creek power plant in Nesquehoning, which Stronghold privately owns and operates primarily by burning waste coal.

Save Carbon County wants to limit pollution from the coal plant, stop state tax credits from going toward the facility's operations and force the state to regulate the crypto-mining industry. The group filed a 27-page lawsuit in state court on Tuesday to that effect.

"We don't think we're getting anywhere with the Department of Environmental Protection," said Linda Christman, Save Carbon County's president, during an interview on Wednesday. "We're certainly not able to convince Panther Creek to clean up their act. And we believe that this type of use is dumped on the coal regions of Pennsylvania over and over again, and we'd like that to stop."

Waste coal, the material burned at Stronghold, is the low-energy discarded material, left over from the Keystone State's long history of coal mining. Hundreds of millions of tons of these coals litter the state, leaching pollutants like iron and aluminum into nearby waterways.

Stronghold says its Panther Creek power plant is able to make good use of waste coal by removing the piles and allowing recreational sites to take their place.

"Our record of cleaning up land and water in the Commonwealth speaks for itself," a Stronghold spokesperson told Courthouse News in a statement. "Without purpose-built, emission-controlled, reclamation and power facilities like Panther Creek, waste coal would sit dormant and continue to cause environmental harm. ... We are proud to clean up substantial piles of waste coal that have long devastated Pennsylvania."

But Christman and Save Carbon County say Stronghold's cleanup is just creating new problems that Carbon County's residents have to deal with.

"What they are really doing is they're taking one source of environmental pollution, which is coal piles — I will give them that — and turning it into two other kinds of environmental pollution: water pollution and air pollution," Christman said.

People living near the plant have had masses of soot accumulate on their windowsills, plants and yards, as well as in the air they breathe, Christman said. And the coal ash created by burning waste coal is dumped into a nearby abandoned strip mine, where it is at risk of polluting the county's aquifer, she said.

Save Carbon County's lawsuit isn't only aimed at Stronghold Digital Mining — the suit targets the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, too, arguing it has failed to uphold its residents' constitutional right to a clean environment.

Adopted by Pennsylvania in 1971, the Environmental Rights Amendment was the nation's first "green amendment." It declares that the state's responsibility to conserve and maintain public natural resources.

The amendment held little judicial weight for decades after its codification, though, as state courts used a separate set of criteria to determine whether a defendant violated the law. That changed in 2017, when a Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decision set new legal precedent, doing away with the separate criteria entirely and allowing the amendment's language to speak for itself.

Now in a new era of the Environmental Rights Amendment, Save Carbon County is testing the amendment's re-designated limits.

"Our attorneys, Freiwald Law, say that this is a new type of case," Christman said, "specifically because we're using the Environmental Rights Amendment."

"What we're saying in our lawsuit is they're not doing a good job of being a trustee of our environment," she added. "That language, that beautiful language in our constitution, means nothing if it's not enforced."

A Stronghold spokesperson said the company is still analyzing the lawsuit but adamantly denies any wrongdoing.

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