Community Complains of Choking Fumes From Elon Musk's AI Fortress

Yahoo

09-05-2025

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is building one of the world's largest AI supercomputers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since coming online in September, the facility, dubbed Colossus, has amassed an absurd arsenal of 200,000 Nvidia graphics processing units to train Musk's chatbot, Grok.
That comes with monstrous energy demands, and the way xAI is meeting them has angered environmental groups and the residents of Boxtown, a predominantly Black neighborhood just three miles south of the facility, Politico reports.
Without obtaining a permit, Musk's company has rolled in 35 portable gas-powered turbines with enough electricity output between them to power a small city, spewing harmful, smog-forming pollutants into the air, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde. And in just 11 months since xAI started operations in Memphis, it's become one of the largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides in the surrounding county, according to environmental group estimates reviewed by Politico, afflicting an area that already leads the state in emergency visits for asthma.
"I can't breathe at home, it smells like gas outside," a tearful Alexis Humphreys, a Boxtown resident, said while holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines last month, per Politico. "How come I can't breathe at home and y'all get to breathe at home?"
"xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities," Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said in a statement last month.
The saga is the latest example of Musk's enterprises flouting environmental regulations. In August, his aerospace company SpaceX was accused by state and federal regulators of illegally dumping hazardous pollutants into water in Texas. Tesla, Musk's automaker, has faced similar accusations of repeatedly mishandling hazardous waste from its facilities in California.
xAI's environmental consultant, Shannon Lynn, said in a recent webinar that because the turbines are temporary, the company doesn't need federal permits for their emissions of hazardous pollutants like NOx or formaldehyde, per Politico. In August of last year, the Shelby County Health Department similarly said that it didn't need to issue permits because the Environmental Protection Agency had agreed that it doesn't have the authority regarding the gas-burning turbines, since they were temporary, Politico reported.
But experts don't see it that way. Bruce Buckheit, a former director of the EPA's air enforcement division, said that xAI is violating the Clean Air Act with its actions.
"There needs to be a permit beforehand," Buckheit told Politico. "You don't just get that first year for free."
Garcia, the SELC attorney, found the county Health Department's argument to be dubious, too. The exemption for temporary turbines is intended for small machines like those used to power asphalt crushers for road construction, he said.
"xAI's position is quite suspect — I mean, they're huge," echoed John Walke, a former attorney in EPA's Office of General Counsel, to Politico. "The temporary or not temporary argument is irrelevant."
Facing significant community pressure, xAI in January said that it would seek permits for permanent installation of its turbines. At the time, the company claimed it only had fifteen pieces of the machinery onsite. But in March, thermal images taken of the facility by environmental groups showed that xAI, in reality, had 35 turbines, with 33 giving off significant amounts of heat.
Though caught in a lie, xAI is still seeking the permits. As of April, Lynn, xAI's environmental rep, claimed that only seven of the current turbines will remain at the facility, and will be "retrofitted" with pollution reduction controls. The other 28 turbines, he added, are merely "temporary" and will be removed once xAI finishes construction of two substations to supply power from the energy grid.
The timeline for this, though, is suspiciously hazy. Only one of the substations has approval. And at this point, many in the community are fed up with all the deception.
"The way they have come into the city, it's like, oh, you think we are unintelligent, you think that the people in these communities aren't able to comprehend what you are doing and will take this assault on our health lying down," 15-year-old Boxtown resident Jasmine Bernard told Politico.
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