PLEASE ATTEND AND INVITE OTHERS TO ATTEND:

Town of Torrey Planning Board meeting on this Monday September 21, 2020, at 7:00 PM at the town offices: 56 Geneva St., Dresden, NY 14441.

We understand that Greenidge will again be requesting site plan approval for an expansion of its data center/bitcoin project. Greenidge came to the July 20th and August 17th meetings requesting site plan approval and no decision was made at either meeting.

There are significant concerns about the impact of this project on the environment and on Seneca Lake.

Please plan on attending. Wear a mask and know there will be appropriate social distancing measures in place.

At this time, it does not appear that the meeting will be on Zoom or on a live broadcast.

The goal in attending this meeting will be to encourage the Town of Torrey Planning Committee to hold off on approving any expansion until more information can be gathered and reviewed about the impacts to the residents and the environment in and around Seneca Lake.

In 2019, Greenidge used about 6% of its electrical generating capacity and 24 million gallons/day of its 139 million gallon/day allocation. According to news reports about Greenidge’s new data center and bitcoin operation, they plan to use 100% of electric generating capacity for the new operations.

According to an interview recently in Forbes: “Greenidge wants to increase its energy consumption. The company has plans to use the plant’s total capacity of 104MW next year.”
— https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanzalone/2020/08/13/bitcoin-mining-can-be-profitable-if-you-generate-the-power/#45b3e0e75702

Unfortunately, Greenidge has a permit issued by the DEC that allows them to withdraw 139 million gallons of water a day, vacuuming up fish and fish eggs and larva, to cool the turbines and discharge the heated water into Seneca Lake. DEC never reviewed the use of this permit for purely commercial use. Nor have they evaluated the impacts on commercial use on air permits, discharge permits and biological impacts on fish and wildlife. And they need to.

The Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes assisted residents of the Village of Dresden and/or Town of Torrey to prepare a letter requesting that DEC modify, suspend or revoke the following permits issued to Greenidge Generation LLC pursuant to 6 NYCRR 621.13 for material changes in the plant’s operations that were not evaluated before the permits were issued.  This letter was sent to the DEC on Wednesday September 16, 2020.  

We hope to see you at the meeting this Monday September 21, 2020 at 7pm.