Mississippi regulators to hold xAI permitting meeting on Election Day

With Elon Musk’s xAI planning to build a massive natural gas-fired power plant in South Haven, Mississippi, the state’s environmental regulator has decided to hold a board meeting on Tuesday, voting day for the 2026 primary, to decide whether to grant the company a key permit.

The NAACP and other civil rights and environmental activists called for the meeting to be postponed, saying it was rushed and conflicted with voting efforts by some residents. The groups also said holding the meeting in Jackson, about 320 miles from Southaven, would prevent people directly affected by the plant from participating.

“This is not only a civic duty challenge, but also an unnecessary economic burden on Black residents, low-income residents, and individuals living in other communities near the facility,” the NAACP said in a March 8 letter to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), which was made public Monday.

They asked that the public hearing be rescheduled and moved to a location closer to the proposed facility.

MDEQ denied the request Monday, saying in a response to the NAACP that the permitting board “meets regularly on the second Tuesday of each month, which has been standard practice for decades,” and that the regulator “considers issues across the state.” A copy of the letter was shared with CNBC.

The meeting will take place more than a month after Musk merged xAI with his reusable rocket company SpaceX, valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. Since launching xAI in 2023, Musk has been trying to turn the AI ​​company into a competitor to OpenAI in the burgeoning generative AI market.

Training and running AI models requires large amounts of compute and power, and rising utility costs are partially due to the high power consumption of new data centers. At a meeting with the White House last week, executives from technology companies, including xAI, signed non-binding commitments to provide power to their facilities.

So far, xAI has relied on its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers located across the Mississippi state line in Memphis, Tennessee. In South Haven, about a 15-minute drive from Memphis, xAI is investing in a planned power plant and a large data center called Macrohardrr.

In response to MDEQ’s response on Monday, the NAACP said in a statement that “their actions will speak louder” by holding the hearing on the morning of Election Day, three hours away from the community.

“They are trying to sneak xAI data centers into communities’ backyards, without caring about the people who live there,” the letter said.

The NAACP filed a notice of intent to sue xAI in February for alleged Clean Air Act violations in Southaven.

As previously reported by CNBC, residents in the area endure 24-hour noise pollution and say they are concerned about air quality and public health issues from xAI’s use of “temporary” natural gas-burning turbines. A study by scientists at the University of Tennessee found that xAI’s early use of turbines further exacerbated Greater Memphis’ air pollution problems.

A public hearing held Feb. 17 in South Haven found that about 200 residents begged state and local officials to deny approval to xAI to quickly build out data and power infrastructure without increased transparency, community involvement, and effective efforts to prevent noise and air pollution.

Doctors, parents, teachers and local officials spoke at the hearing.

“We’re becoming less and less attached to the places we choose to raise our families,” said Taylor Logsdon, a mother of three, citing pollution, noise levels and negative health effects. “It’s no coincidence that this is happening now, and I feel the situation is only going to get worse.”

A recent investigation by Floodlight found that xAI was operating more than a dozen “temporary” turbines at the same time in Southaven, similar to what it had previously done in Memphis. The company has argued that the turbines do not require a federal permit, but environmental compliance experts disagree.

Community backlash and regulatory requirements are among the factors driving Musk and other technology executives to explore the potential of data centers in space.

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