In January, the EPA ruled against xAI in a case in which Elon Musk’s CSAM machine/AI company said that if gas turbines were used in a temporary fashion, they were exempt from regulations.
At the time, I wrote:
Time will tell if the company runs into similar legal issues in the state of Mississippi, where the company is currently operating 18 natural gas turbines just south of the state line, on Stanton Road [in Southaven]. That power is then piped a few miles north to xAI’s second site in Memphis.
It appears that we are on the road to that time, as Evan Simon writes for Floodlight:
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Miss., despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.
State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long required that such pollution sources be permitted under the Clean Air Act.
Simon goes on:
However, thermal images captured by Floodlight — and analyzed by multiple experts — show more than a dozen unpermitted turbines still spewing pollutants at the plant nearly two weeks after the EPA’s recent ruling.
“That is a violation of the law,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations.
Those images look a lot like the ones captured in Memphis over the last year or so:
The first and only public hearing in Southaven is tonight, and takes place as xAI is seeking a permit for even more turbines.
Currently, there are two xAI data centers in Memphis itself, with plans for a third in Southaven.
Patrick Anderson is a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. He is quoted in Simon’s piece as saying:
[xAI] violated the Clean Air Act the first time, and now they’re gonna copy and paste and do it again. I maybe had some naive hope that the regulators who are most in the day-to-day business of implementing the Clean Air Act in Mississippi would do the right thing.
Sadly, Anderson’s hope turned out to be naive, as Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality responded to Simon:
The turbines currently operating at the Southaven facility are classified as portable/mobile units under state law and therefore remain exempt from air permitting requirements during this temporary period.
Nothing in the EPA’s January 15 rule altered that determination under Mississippi regulations.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is planning to sue xAI over its actions in Southaven, as Eric Hilt writes:
Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sits dozens of unpermitted gas turbines that power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center while releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde. The tech company set up the de facto power plant with no permits, no public input, and no notice to nearby communities that will have to deal with the consequences. But now the Southern Environmental Law Center, Earthjustice, and the NAACP are preparing to take xAI to court for flouting federal law and threatening to worsen air pollution problems.
SELC and Earthjustice, on behalf of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the national NAACP, sent a notice of intent to sue to xAI for the tech company’s ongoing use of unpermitted methane gas turbines to power its massive Colossus 2 data center. The notice letter explains that xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk, is violating the Clean Air Act by installing and operating polluting gas-fired turbines without obtaining any permits. A 60-day notice of intent to sue is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act.
“xAI has once again built a polluting power plant without any permits and without any notice to nearby communities,” SELC Senior Attorney Patrick Anderson said. “There are no loopholes or exceptions —xAI is breaking the law while leaving local communities to deal with the consequences, and we plan to take them to court.”
My personal feelings about AI in general are complicated, but even some of its biggest fans realize that the environmental impact has to be reckoned with. Hilt outlines some of these impacts:
xAI’s 27 unpermitted turbines have the potential to emit a staggering amount of nitrogen oxides, a type of pollution that causes smog. This would likely make the facility the largest industrial source of NOx in the 11-county Memphis metropolitan area — an area already struggling with problems with smog.
“Our communities are not playgrounds for corporations who are chasing profit over people. xAI’s first data center is already creating pollution for Mississippi’s neighbors in Memphis — a community already suffering from decades of disparity — and now they are polluting in Southaven, Mississippi,” said Abre’ Conner, Director of Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP.
Pollution from the turbines powering xAI’s second data center risks worsening air quality problems in the Memphis area, which is already failing to meet national standards for smog. Memphis was recently named an ‘asthma capital’ and both Shelby County, Tennessee, and DeSoto County, Mississippi, received an “F” for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association.