Black Memphians refuse to be the collateral damage to Elon Musk’s ‘progress’

I live 3 miles from xAI’s South Memphis data center, where Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has been operating dozens of methane gas turbines without critical — and we believe legally required — environmental permits. My neighbors and I are forced to breathe the pollution this company pumps into our air every day. We smell it. We inhale it. This isn’t just an environmental issue — it’s a public health emergency.

This isn’t just an environmental issue — it’s a public health emergency.

Memphis and Shelby County had a pollution crisis long before Musk and xAI powered up Colossus, a massive supercomputer. The American Lung Association gave us an “F” for air quality for four of the last five years, and we got a D the one year we didn’t get an F. We haven’t met federal ozone standards since 2021. We are known as an “asthma capital” in the U.S., and recent statistics found that we had the most asthma-related ER visits in Tennessee.

Now, in response to this growing threat to the air we breathe, we’re fighting back. Last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) sent xAI a notice of intent to sue on behalf of the NAACPa notice that is mandatory under the Clean Air Act. This action is about justice, transparency and our human right to breathe clean air.

Together, the turbines at the xAI data center have a generating capacity that SELC says rivals that of a regional Tennessee Valley Authority power plant. Despite claims from the Shelby County Health Department, the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and xAI that permits aren’t required for the turbines’ first year of use and xAI’s assertion that it is “operating in compliance with applicable laws,” SELC, which performed a thorough analysis of the turbine models’ specifications and applicable environmental lawdisagrees. It believes xAI’s turbines are stationary engines and therefore require an air permit. SELC asked the county Health Department to shut down the turbines and explain where SELC’s legal opinion is wrong. These requests have not been met.

This is not minor. These permitting requirements exist to protect communities from exposure to hazardous emissions.

City officials celebrate xAI’s arrival as an economic win as they downplay the serious health and environmental risks and impacts.

E&E News reported in May, citing the data from environmental groups it had reviewed, “In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County’s largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides.” Smog is linked to increased rates of asthma and respiratory illnesses. Rather than halt operations, xAI is now asking the Health Department to approve a permit that would allow it to permanently operate 15 gas turbines 24/7.

When 35 turbines were photographed at the site in March, far more than what had been reported, I asked Memphis Mayor Paul Young about them, and he told me only 14 turbines were active and that the rest were being stored there. SELC, however, used thermal imaging to determine that at least 33 turbines were in use. Mayor Young has dismissed xAI’s emissions as “minimal,” despite estimates that the turbines emit 1,200 to 2,000 tons of smog-forming NOx annually. City officials celebrate xAI’s arrival as an economic win as they downplay the serious health and environmental risks and impacts.

An example of this is the irresponsible pollution report the city of Memphis released Tuesday. According to the report, unspecified air monitors were placed in two areas in southwest Memphis and at City Hall downtown on two different days for less than 12 hours each day. The minuscule nature of the testing notwithstanding, the data did not include any testing results for ground-level ozone or smog.

According to AirNowthe federal government’s website that is home to the U.S. Air Quality Index, ground-level ozone, a major component of smog, is one of five major pollutants the Environmental Protection Agency measures to establish a particular community’s air quality index. Still, the city described its limited findings as “definitive and reassuring.” We deserve better than such misleading reports sanctioned by our mayor.

This pollution isn’t impacting majority-white suburbs in East Memphis or Collierville. It’s impacting South Memphis, a historically redlined, majority-Black, working-class community long targeted for industrial zoning. Our neighborhoods have been burdened for generations by landfills, chemical plants and toxic industries. xAI’s turbines continue that legacy. Once again, our health is being threatened for someone else’s profit.

When children in our community struggle to breathe, when our elders are rushed to the ER during Code Orange air days, we’re told this is the cost of economic progress. But we refuse to allow our lives to be collateral damage for this so-called “progress.”

We refuse to allow our lives to be collateral damage for this so-called “progress.”

Now xAI is expanding. The company recently acquired 100 acres and a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in Whitehaven — another majority-Black Memphis neighborhood — to house a second data center just 8 miles from Colossus and a half-mile from John P. Freeman Schoolattended by students in grades K-8. Although the Memphis Chamber of Commerce claims xAI will not use turbines at the site, according to SELC, the permit application xAI affiliate CTC Property submitted on behalf of xAI to the EPA contemplates operating 40 to 90 gas turbines at the site. Independent filings and local reporting also suggest the company may partner with a new corporate entity, Stateline Power Solutions, to place these turbines in Southavenabout a mile from the Whitehaven facility.

Pollution does not stop at state lines. I recently joined Southaven faith leaders and political leaders to speak out against this expansion. We deserve clean air whether we are in Tennessee, Mississippi or Arkansas, and this project threatens it.

The truth is out. The people are watching. And we are demanding accountability. The people of South Memphis and Southaven deserve better. We deserve leaders who protect our right to clean air — not ones who excuse corporate pollution. We deserve a permitting process that upholds the law — not one that allows flagrant violations to go unchallenged.

To the Shelby County Health Department and elected officials: Deny the permit. Do not reward what we believe to be illegal activity. Do not validate secrecy. Do not let our communities pay the price for a billionaire’s ambition.

Deny the permit, protect the people and deliver justice. Our people-powered movement is not going anywhere. We will stand as Davids against Goliath and win.

Justin J. Pearson

Justin J. Pearson represents the 86th District in the Tennessee House of Representatives.