By Willy Blackmore
Elon Musk’s race to dominate artificial intelligence is colliding with a growing environmental justice battle in the South, where civil rights advocates say Black communities near Memphis are paying the price for an expanding AI power plant fueled by unpermitted gas turbines.
For months, the NAACP and a coalition of environmental justice groups have accused Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of poisoning Black communities in North Mississippi and Memphis with an improvised power plant fueled by unpermitted gas turbines. Now, even after the groups sued him, alleging violations of the Clean Air Act, Musk appears to be escalating the fight.
The billionaire recently added six more gas-powered turbines to the sprawling xAI data center operation, and civil rights and environmental advocates are racing to prevent the pollution from becoming permanent.
The NAACP, represented by Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center, the NAACP asked a federal court earlier this month to immediately shut them down.
Ben Grillot, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement that the court must act “in order to protect communities in North Mississippi and Memphis from the tech company’s harmful pollution.”
Sitting just across the state line from Memphis, the ad hoc power plant supplies power to Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, a massive pair of supercomputers that Musk’s xAI company has built in the area. The facilities both run and train Grok, Musk’s entry in the crowded AI chatbot field. The new turbines bring the total number operating there from 27 to 33, and the additions are some of the largest in use at the facility, capable of generating even more air pollution.
In a statement, Abre’ Conner, the NAACP’s director of environmental and climate justice, said that “the urgency of ensuring that our communities’ health and environment are protected is clear.” Musk’s deliberate expansion of an “unpermitted” power plant, she says, is an end run around environmental safeguards, and shows xAI’s “blatant disregard for the law.”
Adding six more turbines “further exacerbates the health risks facing families in North Mississippi and the Greater Memphis region,” Conner said. “We will not stand by and idly watch as the Clean Air Act is ignored. We will continue to fight to ensure all polluters, including billionaires’ companies, understand that the law is not to be treated as a suggestion while local communities bear the consequences.”
The turbines are running near Southaven, Mississippi, a residential community with homes, schools, churches, and workplaces. The city, which is part of the greater Memphis metro area, is about one-third Black.
Across the state line in Memphis, xAI’s Colossus 1 facility is located near Boxtown, a community founded by freedmen that remains a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Musk pioneered the use of gas-powered turbines, which are mobile and, under some circumstances, can be used without regulatory permits or an environmental review because they are considered temporary.
But according to the NAACP, the turbines are now likely the leading source of nitrogen oxide emissions in the greater Memphis area.
Nitrogen oxides generate smog, which is already a significant issue around Memphis and in Northern Mississippi. Both DeSoto County, Mississippi, where Southaven is located, and Shelby County, Tennessee, home to Memphis, recently received F grades for smog pollution from the American Lung Association.
