Resistance to Elon Musk’s xAI facility in South Memphis gets stronger

Hundreds of people are speaking out against xAI’s South Memphis data center, urging local leaders to deny the company’s request for an air permit.  

xAI—a company founded by Elon Musk—opened a data center in South Memphis last year. Touted as ‘the world’s largest supercomputer,’ the facility powers Grok, the company’s AI chatbot and requires massive amounts of power. To meet the data center’s incredible energy demands, xAI set up — and is still running — more than 30 unpermitted methane gas turbines.  

In other words, xAI essentially set up a power plant without any permits, without any oversight, and without any formal input from nearby communities.  

Smog, NOx, and Formaldehyde 

Operating gas turbines can have major impacts on the air and people living and working nearby. The turbines at the xAI facility pump out smog-forming pollution, nitrogen oxides or NOx, and harmful chemicals like formaldehyde.  

Memphis has long struggled with poor air quality. The area is already failing to meet federal standards for smog and again received an “F” from the American Lung Association for ozone pollution in 2025. These problems are pronounced in South Memphis, which is made up of predominantly Black communities and is surrounded by industrial polluters, including a steel mill, an oil refinery, a TVA gas plant, and many more. In Boxtown, the neighborhood closest to the xAI facility, the cancer risk is four times the national average.  

“For decades, families living in South Memphis have been overburdened with industrial pollution and environmental injustices. Community members we’ve talked with say they worry about being outside for long periods of time because they don’t know what else is in the air,” SELC Senior Attorney Amanda Garcia said.  

 
xAI has not even been using proven and commonsense pollution controls that would reduce the turbines’ impact on Memphians’ air.    

Taking Musk’s matters into our own hands 

From the beginning, the company operated with a stunning lack of transparency that left impacted communities in the dark. Even many Memphis city officials were unaware of the facility’s plans and how it would be powered. As xAI’s South Memphis facility rapidly expanded its capacity, details about the data center became less and less clear.  

Because of the lack of information about the xAI facility, SELC partnered with the organization SouthWings to do a flyover of the facility last month. The result was aerial photographs that showed 35 gas turbines at the datacenter—nearly double than what was previously known. The number of turbines and extent of their emissions likely make xAI the largest industrial source of the smog-forming pollutant NOx in Memphis.  

Shortly after SELC revealed there were 35 gas turbines at the facility, Memphis Mayor Paul Young claimed xAI told him they were only operating 15 of them.  

But just days later, SELC and SouthWings went up in the air again. Images shot with a thermal camera showed 33 of the 35 turbines giving off significant amounts of heat, indicating that they were running and weren’t just being stored.   

But just days later, SELC and SouthWings went up in the air again—this time with a thermal camera. The thermal images showed 33 of the 35 turbines giving off significant amounts of heat, indicating that they were running and weren’t just being stored.

“The back-and-forth about how many gas turbines are at the xAI data center and how many are running really underscores the lack of accountability surrounding this facility,” said SELC Senior Attorney Amanda Garcia. “This is information that local leaders and health officials should know and should be communicating to people living nearby. We shouldn’t have to do a flyover for communities to find out what’s going down the road.” 

“We’re going to fight”  

On a Friday night in April, hundreds of people packed into a South Memphis high school’s auditorium, hoping to have their voice heard for — in many people’s opinions — the first time. 

The crowd gathered because, even though local leaders told community members last year that the gas turbines were “temporary,” it’s now applying for permits that would allow for 15 turbines to run 24/7— for at least the next 5 years. The draft permit is silent about the remaining twenty-plus turbines currently operating on the site. 

The permit application sparked concern and criticism from community members and led to the public hearing, which is required as part of the application process.  

“I live three miles from the [xAI] facility, and we have enough pollutants in our area to start with before they even started bringing this in and started polluting even more,” Barbara Britton, president of the Boxtown Neighborhood Association said at a rally outside the high school where the hearing took place. “We’re going to fight and we’re going to do everything we can to stop this from polluting in our area.” 

During the hearing, community members expressed their worries about the air quality in South Memphis and shared stories of family members who struggled with illness while urging the Shelby County Health Department to deny the permit. 

Nearly every comment during the two-hour-long meeting opposed the permit. 

 
“It’s a choice between turning a blind eye to what is actually happening at this site in an already overburdened neighborhood or standing up for the air that Memphians breathe every day,” Garcia said. “To me, it’s an obvious decision.” 

The Shelby County Health Department has said it will take “several weeks” to reach a decision on the air permit.