Elon Musk’s xAI has secured a permit with Mississippi state regulators to build a power plant in the town of Southaven to power its nearby data centers.

“The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) held a board meeting earlier in the day to vote on whether to issue the permit,” CNBC reports.

The plant will have “41 natural gas-burning turbines,” the outlet noted.

CNBC shared further:

The NAACP and other civil rights and environmental advocates tried to get the meeting delayed, arguing that it would conflict with some residents’ efforts to vote in the state’s primary elections, being held on the same day.

“We are outraged that, despite the community’s clear demand to move the Election Day hearing, MDEQ chose to bulldoze through a decision that silenced the very residents most harmed by it,” said Abre’ Conner, director of environmental and climate justice at NAACP, in a statement from his organization and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

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The MDEQ didn’t immediately respond to a request for information about the hearing.

Now owned by SpaceX after a merger was announced in February, xAI has been using more than a dozen temporary turbines for months at the facility in Southaven, claiming that no federal permit has been required. The company has two data centers — Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 — in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the Mississippi state line.

Critics accused xAI of “polluting the area and harming neighborhoods.”

More below:

In January, Gov. Tate Reeves announced a $20 billion+ investment by xAI.

Previously, xAI bought a dormant power plant in Southaven and used temporary turbines to power data centers.

NBC News has more:

Eddie Gossett awoke one morning last summer to what sounded like an airport runway suddenly opening on his rural Mississippi road.

The jet engine roar has been almost nonstop ever since, much to the frustration and insomnia of Gossett and his neighbors. It isn’t a plane — or anything supernatural — though. It’s Elon Musk.

Just down the road from Gossett’s house, 18 methane gas turbines had arrived on trailers on behalf of the richest person in the world. Without warning, the temporary turbines began running day and night, locals say, to power Musk’s AI ambitions.

“I intended to die right here,” said Gossett, 76, who wonders how long he will have to put up with the noise and the air pollution. “Hell, I couldn’t give my house away with all this noise.”

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Musk’s xAI bought the long-dormant power plant in Southaven last year and plans to spend more than $20 billion in the area, some of it on a new data center in the city. It was the largest private investment in state history, according to Mississippi’s governor.

Nine more temporary turbines arrived in December, bringing the total to 27. The company has since applied for a permit to put in 41 permanent turbines at the 114-acre site to generate electricity for AI data centers.

Tech giants like Microsoft, OpenAI and Google are making billions in AI investments across the country to build up the computing and electric power the technology demands. That requires vast land and resources and, for communities like Southaven, a tradeoff between the promise of new jobs and tax revenue vs. environmental and energy costs.

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