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South Memphis residents say they’re worried about long-term health impacts after rapid construction of Elon Musk’s data center last year
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“This is God-given air, men should not take it away from us,” said a 76-year-old woman
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As various organizations, advocates and watchdog groups sound the alarm, city officials say the company’s presence in the area will support the local economy
Some Memphis residents say they are already fighting for cleaner air after Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company began spewing large amounts of pollutants to power its massive data centers.
“This is God-given air, and humans should not take it away from us,” Easter Knox, a 76-year-old woman who lives in Boxtown, just 3 miles from the xAI data center, told reporters. time earlier this year. “I don’t care how much money you have.”
The woman was diagnosed with COPD in 2024 and lost three loved ones to cancer. She started smelling gas in the air last year and stopped opening her windows because of the “rotten cabbage” smell.
Boxtown’s majority black population has a median household income of $36,000. time and Politico previously reported. For generations, residents have struggled with pollution-related health problems.
There are 17 industrial facilities in the area, and even before the billionaire’s supercomputer was built, the air quality was considered unhealthy due to smog, Politico reported. The advent of data facilities has only exacerbated residents’ plight.
“Imagine if these facilities were located next to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, there would be an outcry and no one would allow this,” Austin Dahlgo, an academic primary care physician in South Memphis, told CNN time. “Instead, they are being placed in the backyards of historically Black, underserved communities, exacerbating the environmental racism that has long existed in Memphis and our country.”
Musk and xAI did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
On xAI’s website, the company describes its supercomputer, called Colossus, as “the world’s largest.” According to the website, the AI training system has a staggering 200,000 GPU (graphics processing unit) output, helping to power the company’s chatbot Grok.
“We were told it would take 24 months to build,” a message on the website reads. “So we took the project into our own hands, questioned everything, removed everything that was unnecessary, and accomplished our goal in four months.”
To power the massive machine, the company reportedly used a gas turbine.
The turbines were meant to be a temporary solution as proper infrastructure needed to be built to support Colossus, but residents said they feared such a move would set a dangerous precedent for other AI data centers, the Memphis Business Appeal reported.
The NAACP filed a notice of intent to sue xAI in June, claiming the company violated the Clean Air Act, but has not yet filed a lawsuit, the outlet reported.
Politico previously reported that until this summer, the turbines did not implement the pollution controls typically required by federal law or permits, noting that they had been operating for six months at that time.
After months of debate, the Shelby County Health Department approved the permit in July.
In a statement shared with the Memphis Business Appeals Board in July, xAI said it complies with all federal, state and local laws. The company reportedly said that all temporary turbines have been decommissioned and only 15 turbines are authorized for use. (The company is also building a second Colossus campus at 5420 Tulane Road and plans to build a larger data center in nearby Whitehaven, according to media reports.)
An appeal to revoke xAI’s flight license was denied on Monday, Dec. 15, following a seven-hour hearing involving community members, according to the Memphis Business Appeal.
A central point of the appeal is that the original ruling was “unlawful” and that the current situation allowed the company to install the gas turbines without a permit, input from local communities or a preliminary environmental report, the outlet reported.
Austin Johnson/AFP via Getty Images
People march to protest xAI and National Guard arrival in Memphis, Tennessee.
As various organizations, advocates and watchdog groups reportedly sound the alarm, city officials believe the company’s presence in the area will support the local economy with new jobs and property tax revenue that will be used for public projects. time.
That hasn’t swayed some residents’ concerns. In April, hundreds of people attended a public hearing on xAI’s permanent turbine aviation license and voiced their concerns.
‘Why can’t we breathe at home?’ Alexis Humphrey, 28, reportedly suffered her first severe asthma attack in 15 years shortly after the supercomputer was built. time.
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Concerns are growing as data centers owned by major companies race to expand after the Trump administration shut down the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research division. Residents are concerned about rising electricity bills, while people in other states are concerned about the quality of drinking water.
As concerns grow about the long-term health effects of data centers near South Memphis, more people are speaking out.
“They put our lungs and our air on the auction block and sold us to the richest man in the world,” state Representative Justin Pearson said during a protest earlier this year, Politico reported.
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