NAACP threatens lawsuit over air pollution from xAI's Memphis data centre

The Southern Environmental Law Center, acting on behalf of the NAACP, sent xAI a 60-day notice of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act over air pollution from the gas turbines powering its Colossus supercomputer in South Memphis, the mandatory first step before a citizen suit under the statute can be filed.

The notice alleged that xAI had installed roughly 35 methane gas turbines at the site without the air permits the SELC and NAACP said federal law required, and that the equipment had been emitting smog-forming pollutants and hazardous chemicals such as formaldehyde for about a year without pollution controls. The groups linked this pollution to elevated risks of asthma, other respiratory disease, heart problems and cancer, and argued xAI had relied on a disputed local exemption to avoid a full permitting process.

The complaint centred the site’s location: Colossus sits in a majority-Black area of South Memphis already home to an oil refinery, a steel mill and a power plant, and the nearby Boxtown community was said to face a cancer risk around four times the national average. The NAACP framed the turbines as adding to an existing environmental-justice burden rather than introducing pollution to a previously unaffected area. xAI had already drawn public criticism over the turbines, including community protests and hundreds of formal comments opposing them, and local officials had pointed to a permitting exemption whose applicability remained disputed.

The notice did not itself constitute a lawsuit, but started the clock on one; it added a distinct regulatory and community dimension to Colossus’s public image, which until then had centred on the speed and scale of its construction rather than its environmental footprint.