It's no secret that Elon Musk's wealth is staggering. At the time of writing, he's worth over $325 billion. To give that number a sense of scale, that's $62 billion more than the total annual salary of every worker in Michigan combined — all 4.3 million of them.

So why is he powering his data centers with rinky-dink portable generators?

New aerial surveillance footage obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center has found that Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is using 35 methane gas generators to power its "Colossus" supercomputer facility, the backbone of its flagship Grok. That's 20 more generators than the 15 xAI filed permits for, and 35 more than it was approved to use.

The data center, nestled in historic south Memphis, came online last September, despite protests from community leaders. AI data centers are notoriously loud, and hog water and electricity like a mid-sized American city. Case in point, the local utility company, Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) estimates the Memphis facility will soon be sucking up one million gallons of water per day, as well as 150 megawatts of power, once it reaches its full power.

Though the MLGW says it's "executed four standard electric service agreements, one water service, and one gas service agreement" with xAI — totaling 50 megawatts of power — Musk says the facility needs much more due to rapid power fluctuations in his system of 10 to 20 megawatts at a time.

But getting approval for that kind of power is a slow and cautious process, according to Bloomberg, as rapid data center construction runs up against the limits of what civilian power grids can provide. Never one to wait for approval, Musk has chosen instead to exploit a loophole in local regulations, which seemingly allow him to park a fleet of toxic methane generators outside his facility as long as they don't sit in the same location for 364 days.

Local residents, meanwhile, are left to deal with the toxic fallout. One report by ProPublica found that the cancer rate in this area of Memphis is four times higher than the national average. The low, flat land here has historically been used as an out-of-site locale for megacorporations to plant industrial facilities, resulting in waves of health crises as toxins like ethylene oxide and arsenic pollute the nearby ground, water, and air.

Generators like xAI's emit huge amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a highly reactive gas which causes irreversible respiratory damage over time. And that's before you consider its effects on the ozone layer, or its contribution to acid rain, smog, and nutrient pollution in local soil and waterways. With 35 generators now chugging along, that's a whole chorus of turbines spewing the toxic gas into low-income, minority-led communities 24/7.

With the city urging residents to grin and bear it, and the EPA staying silent since October, the burden is falling on the communities affected to stand up to Musk's move-fast-and-spew-gas AI strategy.

"Nobody else should be burying their families because these rogue, rich, white, racist people continue to build projects that are suffocating us," KeShaun Pearson, a local resident and director of the Memphis Community Against Pollution told The Guardian. "This is all preventable."

More on data centers: Something's Gone Wrong With Microsoft's Huge AI Data Center Investments


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