At the foot of Lake Atitlán, a bucolic yet impoverished region of Guatemala, a Bitcoin project has managed to get a miner into the hands of the local mayor. The process has boosted local incomes while also improving the air quality.

In Panajachel, Guatemala a community of almost 20,000 people is coming around to Bitcoin after the local mayor, Cesar Piedrasanta was gifted an old S9 Bitcoin miner. It’s the first municipality in Central or South America to mine BTC.

While this is exceptional in itself, there are two important consequences. Firstly, mining with a “5-year old” miner helps to “address the electronic waste (or ‘e-waste’) narrative associated with bitcoin mining,” Bill Whittaker, part of the Bitcoin Lake team, told Cointelegraph.

E-waste refers to the replacement of physical mining infrastructure with newer, more efficient models. A New York moratorium on mining recently addressed the reported issue recently, and a report by Science Direct claims that one Bitcoin transaction produces 272 grams of e-waste due to mostly old mining equipment. However, the Guatemala Mayor is managing just fine with his old S9.

Secondly, with the proceeds from the Bitcoin miner, the team hopes to resolve issues affecting the wastewater treatment plant.

The waste treatment plant (WWTP) is a heavy polluter “due to cracked seals located on top of the plant's digester, there is not enough pressure to flare the plant's methane emissions.” As a result, the unpleasant and smelly pollutants are contaminating the air.

Whittaker and the team intend to repair the WWTP, then capture the biogas that used to leak to be used as a power