Historic Black Community Takes On Elon Musk Over Environmental Racism

Last summer, Elon Musk quietly transformed a portion of a South Memphis, Tennessee, community established by a group of formerly enslaved people in 1863 into what the world’s wealthiest man called “Colossus” — the planet’s most powerful supercomputer.

The artificial intelligence venture turned an old manufacturing plant into a powerful 550-acre supercomputer designed to train Grok, which is his AI company’s “anti-woke” chatbot that deliberately pushes boundaries on controversial topics. The neighborhood, which remains predominantly Black, was already choking on industrial pollution, but he promised hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue.

For many residents, the promise of prosperity came with a price. To feed its computational appetite, a company called xAI deployed three dozen gas-powered turbines across the site, bypassing standard environmental review processes and pumping out toxic nitrogen oxides in a region already failing federal air quality standards, advocates and lawyers said.

Memphis has worse smog pollution than 86% of major U.S. cities, and these turbines would make the computer the largest source of the smog-forming pollutants in the city. Already, the neighborhood where it is located has a cancer risk from air pollution that is four times the national average.

Tuesday, after months of community activism led in large part by Memphis Community Against Pollution, the battle received national support. The NAACP filed notice of its intent to sue xAI for alleged Clean Air Act violations. To file a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act, those taking legal action must submit a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue, which is what the NAACP has filed.

The organization contends that the company’s operations without proper permits represent a case of environmental injustice, where marginalized communities bear the costs of corporate expansion while seeing few of the promised benefits.

At a recent community event, LaTricea Adams, the founder of a national Black environmental group called Young, Gifted & Green, said even before Musk’s computer arrived, living in the ZIP code — 38109 — where the facility is located has already negatively impacted the health of Black residents.

There are 19 active polluting facilities already located in the ZIP code, including a major oil refinery, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to pollution is the second-leading risk factor for premature death.

Adams said her father died prematurely just one week before Christmas in 2022, and the matriarch of her family died from cancer just six months after that. Her great-grandmother, she said, developed breast cancer as soon as she moved into the neighborhood as well.

“Living in this ZIP code has been a death sentence for Black Memphians,” she said, calling it “a clear act of genocide.”

The life expectancy in the neighborhood, known as Boxtown because the first Black inhabitants built shotgun houses that resembled boxed train cars, is eight years less than the U.S. average, and roughly 45% of residents report living in “poor or fair” health, which is three times higher than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s PLACES database.

“We are going to stand 10 toes down in South Memphis,” she added about the community’s resolve to fight an onslaught of environmental threats.

The dispute represents a collision between Silicon Valley’s AI gold rush and long-standing fights for environmental justice taking place nationwide.

“We cannot afford to normalize this kind of environmental injustice — where billion-dollar companies set up polluting operations in Black neighborhoods without any permits and think they’ll get away with it because the people don’t have the power to fight back,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

In a statement on Tuesday, xAI told NBC News that the company is following the law. “We take our commitment to the community and environment seriously,” an xAI spokesperson said in a statement. “The temporary power generation units are operating in compliance with applicable laws.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center, which is planning legal action against xAI, has said the company was required to have a permit before bringing the turbines onsite. But the county health department, the mayor and the local chamber of commerce have said the company does not need permits for the turbines’ first year of use.

The company is paying substantial amounts for its Memphis operations, according to reports, including as much as $30 million in property taxes annually, plus investments of $35 million for a new power substation to ultimately replace the turbines and $80 million for a water recycling plant.

But regardless of the money surrounding the project, residents and experts fear that such computers and data centers are misguided as the nation shifts to clean energy, which doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, and attempts to combat climate and environmental threats related to pollution.

Advocates for clean energy argue that the growing electricity demands from data centers and technology companies are prolonging America’s dependence on dirty energy sources. Nationwide, at least 17 fossil fuel generators scheduled for closure are now delayed or at risk of delay, and about 20 new fossil fuel projects are being planned to meet data centers’ soaring energy demands.

“Elon Musk’s xAI is joining a dozen other polluters who are destroying Memphis’ air quality,” said KeShaun Pearson, the president of Memphis Community Against Pollution. It is “dangerous for a wannabe tech-dictator to determine what kind of air we breathe.”

State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who is KeShaun Pearson’s brother and represents the neighborhood where the plant is located, likened the current battle to the biblical story of David and the Goliath.

“We’re Davids in this fight,” he said. “It’s alright to be David because we know how the story ends.”