SOUTHAVEN – Jason Haley, who’s lived in his Southaven home for the last two decades, in August started to hear a whirring, mechanical noise from outside that sounded like a leaf blower. 

The noise would go on for days at a time and through the night, he told Mississippi Today. He soon realized the sounds were coming from a cluster of natural gas turbines about a half mile away.

Over the summer, billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company set up shop in north Mississippi, erecting dozens of turbines on the site of a former power plant to fuel two data centers just up the road in Memphis. 

In 2024, the company, xAI, finished construction on the first center, Colossus, which it claims houses the “world’s biggest supercomputer.” Colossus holds over 200,000 computer chips powering the AI chatbot Grok. The company is now building the second iteration, Colossus II, near the Mississippi state line. To help power the operation, xAI planted 59 natural gas turbines in Southaven. 

Eighteen turbines are currently running, as the company awaits permit approval through the state for the remainder. Mississippi regulators, though, aren’t monitoring air emissions from those 18 turbines because they fall into a “temporary-mobile” category. 

The designation means they aren’t subject to air emissions oversight as long as they operate for less than a year, state regulators told Mississippi Today. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said it adopted standards used by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

But some, including people living near the Southaven power generators, disagreed with MDEQ’s approach and argued a lack of enforcement and transparency will force them to breathe unsafe air. 

“This isn’t some far away industrial site, this is smack in the middle of a suburban area,” said lifelong Southaven resident Shannon Samsa. She is especially worried about the impact of particulates from the turbines on kids at the multiple schools within a 3-mile radius from the plant.

Debate over EPA air pollution rules

Natural gas turbines are considered cleaner than coal but still release air pollutants such as nitrous oxides and particulate matter. Exposure to those can lead to heart and lung complications, the EPA says.

Amanda Garcia, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, argued MDEQ’s basis for allowing the temporary turbines to run without permits is flawed and violates the federal Clean Air Act. The turbines fall under the EPA’s “New Source Performance Standards” and need to be treated as a “stationary” source, she argued.

“While (the EPA) hasn’t weighed in directly, they’ve made pretty clear their interpretation is these large combustion turbines are subject to New Source Performance Standards, which means they need to get a permit,” said Garcia, who also led litigation from the NAACP over temporary turbines xAI placed in Memphis. 

Last year, Garcia’s group made the same argument to officials in Shelby County, where Memphis is located, over xAI needing permits for the generators. In January, the company finally applied for permits for its Memphis turbines, and then moved others to Mississippi, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The Memphis metropolitan area, which includes Southaven, already has smog-pollution levels that surpass federal standards, Garcia said. 

“One of our big concerns was that this huge unpermitted installation of gas turbines had become the largest source of smog forming pollution in Shelby County, and we have the same concern about the installation in Southaven,” she said. 

Last December, the EPA proposed amending emissions standards for different types of turbines. In a statement to Mississippi Today, the EPA did not address whether MDEQ had properly applied current federal standards. 

“EPA is working expeditiously to issue a final rule,” said the agency. 

The EPA statement also criticized Democratic members of Congress over the recently ended government shutdown, saying the “Democrat shutdown disrupted critical functions of our agency and others across the federal government.”

When asked for a response to Garcia’s argument over EPA’s standards, MDEQ replied in an e-mail to Mississippi Today, “It would not be appropriate for MDEQ to engage in a legal debate through this means.”

Residents yet to see noise mitigation

Haley, living near the turbines, said he hopes something can be done to limit the noise. The temporary turbines have another nine months before they reach their one-year limit. 

“I can’t live here like this for another nine months. It’s going to drive me crazy,” Haley said, adding he’s filed noise complaints, talked with the police department and emailed the mayor. 

Friends suggested he sell his house and move. He likes his house and worries about his neighbors who aren’t in a financial position to move. But if the noise continues, he believes he might not have a choice. 

In a Nov. 19 email to Mississippi Today, Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite said, “The noise is mostly temporary construction noise that will go away within days. xAI has assured the City that any and all necessary adjustments will be made within days to mitigate any noise and not negatively impact surrounding developments and neighborhoods in any way.”

A Mississippi Today reporter recorded sounds at 7 p.m. on Nov. 12 of a constant loud humming noise easily heard from homes in the Colonial Hills subdivision of Southaven half a mile from the xAI power plant. Reporters also reviewed recordings by Southaven residents of similar sounds heard on different dates.

When Samsa heard that xAI would be operating a power plant two miles from her home, she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. She’d heard about environmental concerns surrounding xAI’s data centers in Memphis, where residents have pushed for stricter air quality monitoring.

Samsa remembers thinking that after everything that happened in Memphis, public officials would take steps to protect Southaven residents. While Musselwhite has assured the generators will have a “very low” environmental risk, she’s found the lack of public information around the turbines’ impacts worrying. 

“If a project is truly healthy and safe, why not be transparent about it,” Samsa said. 

The 41 permanent turbines will have a maximum generation capacity of 1,200 megawatts, while the temporary generators will only be able to reach about 400 megawatts, MDEQ told Mississippi Today in an email. 

While notifying xAI that the temporary turbines fall into a special criteria precluding them from emissions limits, MDEQ in a July letter “implored” the company to “operate … in a manner that minimizes the emission” of nitrous oxides and particulate matter.

“In conversations we’ve had with (xAI), I think they have the right intentions,” MDEQ director Chris Wells later told Mississippi Today. 

Mississippi Today reached out to xAI with questions about emission controls and noise complaints and received what appeared to be an automated message that said, “Legacy Media Lies.”