marinaraHQ

On May 9, 2000 Alcoa, the world’s largest aluminum producer, acquired rival company Reynolds Metals, taking over their plant just west of the US Customs and Border Agency along the St. Lawrence River. The plant, Alcoa East Facilities (also known as RCMA) is currently occupied by cryptocurrency mining company, North Country Data Center (Coinmint, see map on page 2). The Alcoa East facility was originally an attractive site to Coinmint, due to the cheap and abundant electricity provided by the Massena’s Moses-Saunders Power Dam and Alcoa’s partnership with the New York Power Authority (NYPA).¹

Operating out of an RCMA’s old aluminum smelter complex, Coinmint resides in a superfund site known for its primary contaminants of concern including PCBs, cyanide, dioxins, dibenzofurans, fluoride, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, chrysene, fluoranthene, and pyrene.² Coinmint’s neighbors are an inactive industrial waste landfill, inactive spent pot lining waste, and black mud lagoon contaminated with cyanide. Past disposal practices at landfill, black mud lagoon, and spillages of PCB heat transfer medium in the north yard led to widespread soil and groundwater contamination.

Cointmint uses open-air sourced cooling to maintain the temperature of the data center. To quote Prieur Leary (co-founder of Coinmint),³ “the amount of heat that comes out of a 1400 watt hair dryer is about the equivalent amount that comes out of the machines, so if you step into the exhaust container and you want to envision 700 1400 watt hair dryers blowing into it, the things that we need to do is get that heat out of the building.” To regulate the temperature, “cool air flows into the rooms from the open floors, goes up to the vaulted ceiling and out the mono-duct, sending that exhaust to outside where it won’t overheat the machines.” What Leary fails to mention is PCBs contained in the soil surrounding and beneath the facility are volatilized by heat.

Atmospheric transport is the major mode of global dispersal of PCBs. In addition, for sediments that have undergone extensive anaerobic microbial PCB dechlorination (such as those at Alcoa East), volatilization is more extensive. To our knowledge, there are no filters or air scrubbers that prevent the fans from pulling in toxicant infested air (this was confirmed by documents obtained through NYSDEC FOIL request) volatilizing it through heat exposure and pushing it out to open air where it blows downstream over Akwesasne- potentially exposing thousands of people to outdoor air PCB exposure.

What’s needed-

• Comprehensive air-quality and community health testing to evaluate the severity of PCB air volatilization caused by bitcoin cooling fans
• A full-halt of all bitcoin mining operations till testing is analyzed and reviewed
• Comprehensive thermal air pollution permitting by the DEC
• Access to all leasing documents between Arconic and Coinmint