Demers v. Digi Power X: The Three Mile Noise Class Action Against a Crypto Mine Turning Into an AI Data Center

The building at 1070 Erie Avenue was a gas-fired peaker plant, the kind of facility that runs a few hundred hours a year when the grid is stressed. Digi Power X, then operating as Digihost, bought it in early 2021 and turned it into something that runs every hour of every day: a bitcoin mining operation powered by the plant's own generation, with thousands of computers and the industrial cooling fans they require. According to the complaint, the noise began in September 2022 and has not stopped.

Residents describe it as loud, droning, and persistent, with a low-frequency component that manifests like vibration inside their homes. They report roughly four years of complaints to the company and the city before filing. The suit pleads private nuisance, public nuisance, negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and alleges that the noise has caused substantial annoyance, emotional distress, loss of comfort and enjoyment, diminished property values, and an increased risk of adverse health effects.

The plaintiffs are represented by Weitz & Luxenberg, the New York mass tort firm that also filed the Southaven, Mississippi turbine noise class action against xAI two months later. Digi Power X did not comment on the filing in initial reporting.

Two features of the North Tonawanda complaint separate it from the wave of data center noise classes that followed it in May, June, and July 2026.

The radius. The Vineland, Dowagiac, and Fairwater cases define their classes at one to 1.5 miles. North Tonawanda claims three, and it claims it retroactively, covering everyone who has owned or lived within that distance since 2021. That is a bet that low-frequency noise from a site of this kind carries much farther than the A-weighted decibel readings most ordinances use would suggest, and that a court will let the class be defined by exposure rather than by the number on a meter. If certified at that scale, the class would dwarf the others.

Medical monitoring. The suit asks the court to establish a medical monitoring protocol for class members: a program, funded by the defendant, to screen residents for health effects of chronic noise exposure over time. Medical monitoring is a remedy borrowed from toxic exposure litigation, where courts have ordered it for people exposed to chemicals before disease appears. Asking for it in a noise case treats years of sleep disruption and stress as an exposure with latent health consequences, not just an annoyance. Whether New York law allows it on these facts will be one of the case's central fights, and a ruling either way will be cited in every noise case that follows.

Digi Power X describes itself today as a developer of energy and digital infrastructure, including bitcoin mining and AI-ready data centers, and it has been public about converting the North Tonawanda site to AI computing. For the neighbors, that is not a resolution. AI workloads require the same cooling, often more of it, and the noise complaints that defined the site as a crypto mine follow it into its next life. The case is, in effect, the first suit against an AI data center that was filed before the facility became one.

It also lands in the first state to pause data centers. Governor Hochul's Executive Order 62, signed July 14, 2026, halts state environmental permits for new hyperscale facilities for up to a year, and the legislature's broader Responsible Data Center Development Act awaits her signature. Neither reaches an existing site like this one, which is exactly the gap the North Tonawanda plaintiffs are asking a federal court to fill. Our New York page covers the state's moratorium and the Greenidge fight on Seneca Lake, the state's other long-running crypto power plant dispute.

If you live near a computing facility, crypto or AI, that runs its cooling around the clock, the North Tonawanda case adds two ideas to the checklist:

• Measure low frequency, not just dBA. The complaint's vibration claims are about sound below what a standard A-weighted reading captures. A meter that reports C-weighted or octave-band levels documents what your ordinance may ignore.
• Keep a health log. Sleep, blood pressure, anxiety, medical visits. The medical monitoring demand exists because the plaintiffs could describe health effects over years, not weeks.
• Think in miles, not blocks. If neighbors two miles away hear what you hear, the class is bigger than the street, and so is the leverage.
• Do not wait four years. The residents here complained for nearly four years before filing; nuisance claims carry statutes of limitations, and older harm can fall outside the recovery window. Our deadlines guide explains why.

Our noise lawsuit guide covers how these claims are built, and our free case review connects you with an independent attorney in our network who handles data center cases in your state, at no cost and with no obligation.