Elon Musk’s xAI, merged with SpaceX last week, is under pressure from environmental and civil rights groups over pollution concerns, this time at the company’s facility in Southaven, Mississippi.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, on behalf of the NAACP, filed a notice of intent to sue xAI and related subsidiary MZX Tech LLC on Friday, claiming that the company operates dozens of natural gas-burning turbines requires a federal permit, violate the Clean Air Act, and harm nearby communities.
The turbines have caused pollution, which xAI has also employed in Memphis, Tennessee, to serve its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers, and have been a point of contention locally for more than one year.
A third data center in Southaven, a city about 20 miles (32 km) south of Memphis, was announced early this year, with Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves indicating that the project would create “hundreds of permanent jobs throughout DeSoto County.”
It was introduced by Musk in 2023, and xAI is attempting to enter the lucrative generative AI market alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Musk said SpaceX, his rocket maker and defense contractor, acquired xAI in a deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion on February 2.
Musk is making the region in and around Memphis the core of his AI plan, and he has been going around environmental regulations to build as quickly as possible. Musk’s social network X, formerly Twitter, is also owned by xAI, which created the Grok AI chatbot and image generator.
XAI is now subject to a plethora of governmental inquiries in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. following Grok unlocking users to simply generate and distribute deepfakes of pornography, even explicit content, portraying child sexual abuse.
The residents of the predominantly Black community of Boxtown in South Memphis testified in the previous year in a series of public hearings about the smell in the air and the effect of increasing smog on their health due to the use of natural gas turbines by xAI.
A study conducted by the scientists at the University of Tennessee also established that the use of xAI turbines contributed to the air pollution problems in the region.
However, the environmental advocates, such as the NAACP, had previously said they would sue to stop xAI’s unpermitted use of the turbines in Memphis. They did not file a legal complaint, though the Shelby County health department permitted xAI to treat the turbines as non-road engines in temporary use and issued permits to utilize them.
On the federal level, the EPA recently clarified gray areas of the legislation and indicated that these turbines could not be defined as temporary non-road engines. Therefore, xAI has been operating the turbines across state boundaries without federal permits. xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The turbines have also been a source of noise pollution that has been a cause of consternation among the locals. Jason Haley, a Southaven resident, informed CNBC that the turbines make headache-inducing noises around the clock that he can hear inside his home.
Haley belongs to a group known as Safe and Sound that records the amount of decibel levels and is urging local officials to cease xAI to create so much noise, particularly overnight, with its turbines.
Mississippi authorities will conduct a community hearing, which will be conducted on Tuesday to allow community members to voice their concerns regarding the expansion plans of xAI in the region.
Mississippi reported that the hearing will revolve around the issue of whether the state can allow xAI to install and operate 41 permanent turbines at its Southaven plant.
The same community dynamics are occurring all over the U.S., where tech giants scramble to build huge data centers that can put a strain on the local power and water supply and lead to price increases.
Meanwhile, Microsoft concluded its efforts to develop a data center in Wisconsin in November due to the community’s vocal opposition. Amazon even dropped plans of establishing a data center in Arizona following community protests.
With reference to Musk’s Southaven project, Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney with SELC, said xAI “has to follow the law, just like any other company.”
Anderson said in an email, “And when it flouts the Clean Air Act’s bedrock protections against unpermitted emissions, it puts the health and welfare of ordinary citizens at risk. That’s why we intend to hold xAI accountable here.”
Thus, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality did not immediately respond to comment requests.
