Musk’s AI Project Faces Environmental Racism Suit in Historic Black Memphis Community – The Energy Mix
NASA/Kim Shiflett
The NAACP intends to sue Elon Musk’s xAI company and others involved in building a gas-spewing artificial intelligence (AI) data centre on the edge of Memphis.
And Musk’s own AI chatbot appears to agree.
Partnering with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued the required 60-day notice June 17, alleging Clean Air Act violations after xAI hastily built what it claims is the “world’s biggest supercomputer” just a few kilometres from Boxtown—a South Memphis community founded in the 1860s by African Americans escaping enslavement.
The first of xAI’s two planned data centres is powered by gas turbines, but without the required permits and pollution controls, says the NAACP. The civil rights organization is also disputing the number of turbines onsite. It obtained aerial and satellite images that appear to show 35 turbines, while local officials say there are 15 to 17.
A video shot by methane watchdog group Oilfield Witness using an optical gas imaging camera also showed “huge, billowing plumes of pollution, including large volumes of unburned methane, ris[ing] into the atmosphere and drift[ing] off-site,” reports Gas Outlook.
“We cannot afford to normalize this kind of environmental injustice—where billion-dollar companies set up polluting operations in Black neighbourhoods without any permits and think they’ll get away with it because the people don’t have the power to fight back,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a release.
Musk vs. Musk Chatbot
The site is one of two in the area selected to house data centres to power Musk’s Grok chatbot, which itself flagged possible legal violations with the project. When The Energy Mix asked Grok to review news reporting and local, county, state and federal laws to determine if any were violated by the xAI data centre, it answered:
View our latest digests
“Research suggests xAI may not have followed the Clean Air Act and air quality permitting requirements for its gas turbines at the Colossus data center in Memphis, leading to legal threats.”
Leaders from the Tennessee branch of the NAACP and its Center for Environmental and Climate Justice urged action on residents’ concerns in a letter to the Shelby County Director of Health and Board of Commissioners of local utility Memphis Light Gas and Water (MLGW) in late May.
They questioned the decision by xAI to locate near a historically Black community and said the Shelby County Department of Health was making South Memphis a “sacrifice zone…counter to its mission.’
“Studies also demonstrate that Black communities bear the brunt of these issues due to centuries of disinvestment, siting of industrial pollution, and intentional decisions to sacrifice their health,” the NAACP said in the letter.
xAI installed gas turbines at the first location “sometime in June” 2024, reported the Commercial Appeal newspaper, but it wasn’t until two months later that MLGW confirmed there were 17 gas turbines active on the site, insisting they were temporary.
Almost a year later, those turbines are still powering the data centre and a second xAI data centre is under construction nearby. There are contradictory reports on how the second centre will be powered, but Commercial Appeal’s reporting shows xAI is seeking as much as 1.1 gigawatts of power at the second site.
The NAACP’s Johnson said the group won’t allow Musk to get away with “treating our communities and families like obstacles to be pushed aside.”
When the supercomputer was announced last summer, ABC’s Channel 24 News reported that the Greater Memphis Chamber called it “the city’s largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history.”
The local councilwoman for the area, Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, said she knew nothing about the project and only found out about it from news reports. Cooper-Sutton told German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) late in 2024 that the process for allowing the data centre to move in and start generating power happened behind closed doors.
“We’re not saying that we didn’t want the business or the business shouldn’t be here, but what you did was you left the people that live in this city out,” Cooper-Sutton said.
This past May, she proposed a data centre environmental reform policy, calling for stronger regulations around water usage, water quality, and air pollution monitoring.
Memphis Mayor Paul A. Young recently defended the data centre(s) in an op-ed in Commercial Appeal, writing that he would create the city’s first ever “Community Benefit Ordinance” mandating that 25% of xAI’s city property tax revenue be reinvested in neighbourhoods within five miles of the facility.
After Shelby County held a public hearing where hundreds of people showed up to voice their concerns, the City of Memphis responded by conducting air quality monitoring at three locations in the area, including Boxtown and Whitehaven, which is near the second data centre.
According to the results, levels for every pollutant for which the city tested were well below established safety thresholds. One sample detected formaldehyde, but the city said it was “far beneath any level of health concern.”
SELC Senior Attorney Patrick Anderson said the sampling failed to use best practices for air monitoring, pointing out that the tests were conducted over a very short period of time and didn’t take wind direction into account. He also said the monitors did not follow testing best practices and were placed in closed-off spaces, according to a statement provided to ABC’s Channel 24 News.
Anderson was also concerned about what was not tested—the level of smog pollution, or ground-level ozone. This type of ozone is formed when two main types of air pollutants react, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
“Nearly all of the air monitors in the Memphis metro have recorded ozone concentrations that violate the federal standard,” said Anderson. “To say that Memphians face ‘no dangerous pollutant levels’ ignores existing data and is irresponsible.”
The population of Memphis is about 60% Black or African American and the city was at the centre of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while visiting Memphis in 1968.
The city also has a history of climate activism, organizing and advocating effectively for change. In 2021, the community rallied together and successfully halted a proposed multi-billion dollar crude oil pipeline that would have run through the community.
Now, many of the same community leaders and groups are questioning how xAI was able to set up shop and begin operations without notifications or permits.
One of the co-founders of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), which opposed the pipeline four years ago, was Justin J. Pearson. Pearson is now the Tennessee Representative for the district, and he has called for the gas plant permits to be denied.
In a statement to ABC’s Channel 4 News, Pearson said that because ozone is a considerable problem in Memphis, it should have been part of the municipal testing. He also claimed the tests were “misleading” and conducted for the purpose of “finding a conclusion conducive to Mayor Young’s unwavering support of xAI.”
“xAI’s turbines likely emit more nitrogen oxides than the largest industrial sources in Memphis,” said Pearson. “We have an air pollution problem that is indisputable. We do not have time for political stunts and propaganda.”
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NASA/Kim Shiflett
The NAACP intends to sue Elon Musk’s xAI company and others involved in building a gas-spewing artificial intelligence (AI) data centre on the edge of Memphis.
And Musk’s own AI chatbot appears to agree.
Partnering with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued the required 60-day notice June 17, alleging Clean Air Act violations after xAI hastily built what it claims is the “world’s biggest supercomputer” just a few kilometres from Boxtown—a South Memphis community founded in the 1860s by African Americans escaping enslavement.
The first of xAI’s two planned data centres is powered by gas turbines, but without the required permits and pollution controls, says the NAACP. The civil rights organization is also disputing the number of turbines onsite. It obtained aerial and satellite images that appear to show 35 turbines, while local officials say there are 15 to 17.
A video shot by methane watchdog group Oilfield Witness using an optical gas imaging camera also showed “huge, billowing plumes of pollution, including large volumes of unburned methane, ris[ing] into the atmosphere and drift[ing] off-site,” reports Gas Outlook.
“We cannot afford to normalize this kind of environmental injustice—where billion-dollar companies set up polluting operations in Black neighbourhoods without any permits and think they’ll get away with it because the people don’t have the power to fight back,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a release.
Musk vs. Musk Chatbot
The site is one of two in the area selected to house data centres to power Musk’s Grok chatbot, which itself flagged possible legal violations with the project. When The Energy Mix asked Grok to review news reporting and local, county, state and federal laws to determine if any were violated by the xAI data centre, it answered:
View our latest digests
“Research suggests xAI may not have followed the Clean Air Act and air quality permitting requirements for its gas turbines at the Colossus data center in Memphis, leading to legal threats.”
Leaders from the Tennessee branch of the NAACP and its Center for Environmental and Climate Justice urged action on residents’ concerns in a letter to the Shelby County Director of Health and Board of Commissioners of local utility Memphis Light Gas and Water (MLGW) in late May.
They questioned the decision by xAI to locate near a historically Black community and said the Shelby County Department of Health was making South Memphis a “sacrifice zone…counter to its mission.’
“Studies also demonstrate that Black communities bear the brunt of these issues due to centuries of disinvestment, siting of industrial pollution, and intentional decisions to sacrifice their health,” the NAACP said in the letter.
xAI installed gas turbines at the first location “sometime in June” 2024, reported the Commercial Appeal newspaper, but it wasn’t until two months later that MLGW confirmed there were 17 gas turbines active on the site, insisting they were temporary.
Almost a year later, those turbines are still powering the data centre and a second xAI data centre is under construction nearby. There are contradictory reports on how the second centre will be powered, but Commercial Appeal’s reporting shows xAI is seeking as much as 1.1 gigawatts of power at the second site.
The NAACP’s Johnson said the group won’t allow Musk to get away with “treating our communities and families like obstacles to be pushed aside.”
When the supercomputer was announced last summer, ABC’s Channel 24 News reported that the Greater Memphis Chamber called it “the city’s largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history.”
The local councilwoman for the area, Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, said she knew nothing about the project and only found out about it from news reports. Cooper-Sutton told German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) late in 2024 that the process for allowing the data centre to move in and start generating power happened behind closed doors.
“We’re not saying that we didn’t want the business or the business shouldn’t be here, but what you did was you left the people that live in this city out,” Cooper-Sutton said.
This past May, she proposed a data centre environmental reform policy, calling for stronger regulations around water usage, water quality, and air pollution monitoring.
Memphis Mayor Paul A. Young recently defended the data centre(s) in an op-ed in Commercial Appeal, writing that he would create the city’s first ever “Community Benefit Ordinance” mandating that 25% of xAI’s city property tax revenue be reinvested in neighbourhoods within five miles of the facility.
After Shelby County held a public hearing where hundreds of people showed up to voice their concerns, the City of Memphis responded by conducting air quality monitoring at three locations in the area, including Boxtown and Whitehaven, which is near the second data centre.
According to the results, levels for every pollutant for which the city tested were well below established safety thresholds. One sample detected formaldehyde, but the city said it was “far beneath any level of health concern.”
SELC Senior Attorney Patrick Anderson said the sampling failed to use best practices for air monitoring, pointing out that the tests were conducted over a very short period of time and didn’t take wind direction into account. He also said the monitors did not follow testing best practices and were placed in closed-off spaces, according to a statement provided to ABC’s Channel 24 News.
Anderson was also concerned about what was not tested—the level of smog pollution, or ground-level ozone. This type of ozone is formed when two main types of air pollutants react, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
“Nearly all of the air monitors in the Memphis metro have recorded ozone concentrations that violate the federal standard,” said Anderson. “To say that Memphians face ‘no dangerous pollutant levels’ ignores existing data and is irresponsible.”
The population of Memphis is about 60% Black or African American and the city was at the centre of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while visiting Memphis in 1968.
The city also has a history of climate activism, organizing and advocating effectively for change. In 2021, the community rallied together and successfully halted a proposed multi-billion dollar crude oil pipeline that would have run through the community.
Now, many of the same community leaders and groups are questioning how xAI was able to set up shop and begin operations without notifications or permits.
One of the co-founders of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), which opposed the pipeline four years ago, was Justin J. Pearson. Pearson is now the Tennessee Representative for the district, and he has called for the gas plant permits to be denied.
In a statement to ABC’s Channel 4 News, Pearson said that because ozone is a considerable problem in Memphis, it should have been part of the municipal testing. He also claimed the tests were “misleading” and conducted for the purpose of “finding a conclusion conducive to Mayor Young’s unwavering support of xAI.”
“xAI’s turbines likely emit more nitrogen oxides than the largest industrial sources in Memphis,” said Pearson. “We have an air pollution problem that is indisputable. We do not have time for political stunts and propaganda.”
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