- The NAACP has sued xAI for operating 27 unpermitted gas turbines pumping formaldehyde and smog into Black neighborhoods near Memphis.
- The Southaven, Mississippi facility is the largest industrial source of nitrogen oxides in the greater Memphis area.
- A separate 41-turbine permanent plant is already permitted despite the lawsuit, raising questions about environmental oversight.
xAI has been burning methane to power its AI data centers, and the NAACP says the company did it without asking permission or caring who got sick. The civil rights organization filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday in Mississippi, accusing Elon Musk’s AI company of violating the Clean Air Act at a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.
The suit alleges that between August and December 2025, xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech, LLC installed and operated 27 gas turbines in Southaven “without an air permit or regard for the health and safety of people living nearby.” Tens of thousands of people live, work, and go to school near the plant. A disproportionate number of them are Black.
xAI runs the Colossus 1 and 2 data centers in Memphis, just across the state line, and Southaven is where the company decided to build the power plant feeding them. The turbines are expected to emit more than 1,700 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides each year, making it the largest industrial source of the pollutant in the Memphis area. They can also release up to 180 tons of fine particulate matter, 500 tons of carbon monoxide, and 19 tons of formaldehyde annually.
The neighborhoods surrounding the facility already face a cancer risk four times the national average. “A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” said Abre’ Conner, NAACP director of environmental and climate justice.
xAI’s ‘Temporary’ Power Plant That Became Permanent
xAI’s defense has been that the turbines were temporary and therefore didn’t need federal air permits. That argument held up just long enough for Mississippi regulators to grant the company a separate permit in March for 41 permanent turbines at the same site. The NAACP is challenging that permit separately.
The company is also planning to build another data center nearby called Macrohardrr. Combined with the permanent power plant, xAI is essentially constructing a small industrial campus in a residential area that didn’t ask for one.
Laura Thoms, enforcement director at Earthjustice, which is representing the NAACP alongside the Southern Environmental Law Center, put it bluntly: “xAI has been pumping illegal pollution into this community in its rush to power the ‘Colossus 2’ data center. No company has a free license to pollute our air.”
The NAACP is asking the court to shut down the turbines until proper permits and pollution controls are in place, and to impose civil penalties for each day of violation. The group also wants the company to install the best available pollution control technology on the plant.
What makes the Southaven fight particularly pointed is the money behind it. SpaceX acquired xAI in February in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what’s expected to be the largest IPO in history. The world’s richest man’s company, worth more than most countries’ GDP, is running gas turbines without permits in a neighborhood where residents already breathe some of the worst air in the South.