Despite repeated cries from Southaven residents about noise, unchecked air emissions, and opaque operations of the xAI gas turbine facility in north Mississippi, the state permit board voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the company to expand its footprint.
Shannon Samsa, a Southaven resident with a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, said after the hearing she felt “dread” about the prospect of dozens of new turbines emerging at the nearby generator station.
“Every single system and person who’s supposed to protect us has failed to do so,” said Samsa, a community organizer who made the three-hour drive Tuesday morning to attend the hearing in downtown Jackson.
The permit board’s decision comes three weeks after the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality held a town hall in Southaven to invite feedback on xAI’s application to build 41 permanent turbines. Dozens of residents and advocates — both from north Mississippi as well as Memphis, Tennessee — spoke out against the proposed permit. No one there spoke in favor of the facility.
The group of generators would power xAI’s data center operation that stretches across the state line into Memphis. The company also recently announced a new center it plans to build just down the street in Southaven. Elon Musk, a billionaire and recent adviser to President Donald Trump, owns the business. The xAI facilities, which consists of the “world’s largest supercomputer,” the company claims, are used in part to power the AI chatbot Grok.
Residents, at the town hall and Tuesday’s hearing, largely complained of the site’s proximity to people’s homes. Less than half a mile away from the xAI facility, neighbors can hear a constant humming noise from the existing 27 turbines. The state allows those turbines to run without a permit because they fall under a “temporary-mobile” exemption, which means no one is officially tracking what toxic releases come from the generators. A number of parents at the February meeting expressed concern that the emissions were already impacting their children’s health.
Brent Mayo, vice president of operations for xAI, spoke at the hearing, thanking MDEQ for helping the company “lead the global AI race.”
“ We have advanced emission controls on all of our turbines to produce environmental effects,” Mayo told the board. “We use this modern technology to adhere to stringent air quality standards to help maintain healthy environments for everyone.”
Jaricus Whitlock, chief of MDEQ’s Air Division, said modeling done by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency showed emissions from the new turbines would keep the area in compliance with national air quality standards.
“As MDEQ is conscious of the concerns regarding the contributions that emissions from (the proposed turbines) will potentially have on existing air quality, this analysis was thoroughly scrutinized by both MDEQ air modeling staff and EPA Region 4,” Whitlock said.
Mayo added that xAI has worked “closely and transparently” with MDEQ and EPA throughout the permitting process.
None of the concerned residents in Southaven, though, have been able to get in touch with Mayo or anyone else at the company, said Samsa. Her group, the Safe and Sound Coalition, has raised alarms about the facility since the fall.
Mississippi Today reached out to xAI’s official media channel in the fall, which responded with an apparent automated message, “Legacy Media Lies.” When reporters approached Mayo at Tuesday’s public hearing, he declined to answer any questions. The only contact information he gave out was his account on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
Jason Haley, who said he can see the turbine site from his backyard in the Colonial Hills neighborhood, played for the permit board an audio recording of the humming from the facility he hears around the clock. He said some of his neighbors have already moved because of the noise.
“I’ve lived in my house for 20 years and now I don’t want to be here anymore,” Haley told the board.
‘Rush to get this permit finalized’
Emails obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center suggest Mississippi officials were in a hurry to approve xAI’s permit application.
“Attached is the first draft permit preliminary determination for MZX Tech,” Jeffrey Bland of MDEQ’s permits division wrote to the EPA on Dec. 22 last year (MZX Tech is the subsidiary of xAI that owns the Southaven facility). “The directive from my upper management is that this permit needs to be at public notice no later than (Jan. 15th) of next year. If you plan to review, please provide comments on the draft document no later than (Jan. 6, 2026).”
Another email, sent by EPA Region 4 staff to MDEQ on Jan. 14, references a “rush to get this permit finalized.”
In a response Tuesday afternoon, MDEQ said the email from Bland was regarding “coordination about scheduling, not an effort to rush or bypass the permitting process.”
“Because the company’s construction timeline was tied in part to the one-year limitation on temporary turbines, staff were asked to determine whether the draft permit could be ready for public notice in January if the technical review was complete,” Jan Schaefer, MDEQ director of communications, told Mississippi Today in an email. “That direction was contingent on the air quality modeling and other analyses meeting all regulatory requirements.”
The one-year timeline Schaefer referenced is how long xAI has to run its temporary-mobile turbines without a permit. The company began running those turbines last August. Mississippi Today also reached out to EPA about its email, and will update this story if it hears back.
Last week, the national NAACP and the group’s state chapter wrote a letter blasting the agency over the hearing’s timing. MDEQ only publicized the hearing on March 5, giving just five days notice, and it also just responded to public comments on Saturday, the letter said.
Moreover, the hearing took place on the morning of a midterm election primary, making it especially burdensome to attend for Southaven residents who already live a three-hour drive away.
“Instead of protecting air quality, MDEQ is forcing Black and low-income residents to choose between exercising their right to vote and protecting their right to breathe clean air,” Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, said in a statement. “Scheduling a hearing on Election Day, three hours away from the community, with almost no notice, is a textbook example of environmental racism.
“The message is clear, they want to sneak this data center in with as little involvement from the community as possible.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center also panned the agency for holding the hearing just three weeks after the end of the public comment period, which received significant participation.
“This absurdly short timeline shows that MDEQ is seemingly more concerned about rubberstamping xAI’s air permit than it is about having a dialogue with the public or protecting the health of North Mississippi and Memphis families,” Eric Hilt, SELC’s senior communications manager, wrote in an email.
In a two-paragraph response on Monday, MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells wrote that the board always meets on the second Tuesday of each month, and that all public comments were provided to the board.
In February, the SELC and NAACP sent xAI a notice of intent to sue for violating the federal Clean Air Act by running its temporary-mobile turbines without a permit. Hilt told Mississippi Today the groups have to wait until 60 days after that notice before they can file the lawsuit.
Samsa, with the Safe and Sound Coalition, confirmed after the hearing that her group would explore additional legal action to address the constant noise coming from xAI’s turbines.
The state environmental permit board is comprised of state agency appointees. All six members who were present Tuesday — the state Oil and Gas Board’s David Snodgrass was the lone absence — voted to approve xAI’s permit application.
Updated 3/10/26: This story has been updated to include MDEQ’s response to its emails regarding the timeline to get the permits.
