Overview:
The NAACP lawsuit against xAI highlights a deeper tension in the artificial intelligence boom: who profits from innovation, and who pays with their health. In the Memphis region, Black communities may again be carrying that burden.
The Tennessee-Mississippi border area around Memphis remains at the heart of Elon Musk’s plans for a rapidly growing artificial intelligence-data center empire. But the billionaire’s plans to power a massive new supercomputer there with fossil-fueled generators may have hit a snag.
The NAACP sued Musk’s company, xAI, last week, alleging it is operating dozens of unpermitted, gas-powered turbines to supply electricity to Colossus 2 — a new, supersized artificial intelligence data center near Memphis, a majority-Black city. The suit contends the turbines will spew hundreds of tons of pollution into the air over a residential area, worsening smog and exposing people to cancer-causing chemicals.
‘Death Sentence’ for Health
Abre’ Conner, NAACP’s director of environmental and climate justice, said in a statement that Musk’s company is “following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of ‘innovation.’” Two influential nonprofits — the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earth Justice — are assisting the civil rights organization in the lawsuit.
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A data center “should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” Connor said. It’s clear, she said, that xAI is “looking to evade clear air laws to operate dirty turbines that emit pollution and known carcinogens.”
xAI is following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of ‘innovation.’
Abre’ Conner, NAACP director of environmental and climate justice
The right to clean air “is not up for negotiation,” she said.
For months, xAI has operated the natural gas-burning turbines at its facility in Southaven, Mississippi, just across the Tennessee state line. The company insists it doesn’t need a state permit because the power plant system is temporary. And for its part, Mississippi has said xAI does not need permits to operate the turbines for the first year.
Insatiable Power Appetite
While it already operates the Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers in Memphis — with the former located not far from Boxtown, a neighborhood founded by formerly enslaved people in the 1860s — xAI plans to build another, named Macrohardrr, in Southaven. Mississippi regulators recently issued an operating permit for another 41 turbines to operate continuously at the facility, helping power the third data center.
Last year, xAI began developing the Colossus 2 data center to further train Grok, its AI chatbot. According to the NAACP, xAI installed 27 gas turbines in Southaven, a system capable of generating up to 495 megawatts of power, “the equivalent of a conventional power plant,” according to the lawsuit.
Those unpermitted generators could annually produce 1,700 tons of nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that contributes to smog, as well as 180 tons of fine particulate matter, 500 tons of carbon monoxide, and 19 tons of carcinogenic formaldehyde, according to the NAACP. The facility — part of what Mississippi says is a $20 billion investment in developing data center infrastructure in DeSoto County, another Memphis suburb — is close to homes, schools, churches, and other places where residents go about their daily lives.
‘Violation of Law’
The new emissions from the xAI turbines add to already high air pollution in the greater Memphis area: the American Lung Association gave both DeSoto County and Shelby County, Tennessee, where Memphis is located, F ratings for ozone pollution.
The lawsuit demands that xAI stop operating the turbines, update the facility with pollution-control technology, and pay fines for violating the Clean Air Act. It also accuses both xAI and Mississippi regulators of leaning on the purported “temporary” status of the tractor-trailer-mounted turbines to skirt regulations.
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The EPA told the nonprofit news outlet Floodlight that it’s not responsible for state-level permitting, even though it is responsible for enforcing the Clean Air Act if state-level regulations are violated. But former regulators say the rules are quite clear about how this process is supposed to unfold — or how it has gone in the past.
The current arrangement “is a violation of the law,” Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, told Floodlight after reviewing documentation of xAI’s turbines running in Southhaven. “You’re supposed to get permission first.”