SOUTHAVEN, Miss. — 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.”
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.
There is also another X factor: The technology may reshape industries and unlock scientific discoveries, but it also poses a potential threat to the future of work in many industries. That’s what makes neighbors’ complaints about the Southaven plant a bit different from opposition to other residential or commercial projects. The power plant doesn’t just sound irritating, nearby homeowners say. It sounds scary.
“I don’t know all that’s entailed with it,” Charlene Wilson, a Southaven resident, told NBC News at a packed regulatory hearing on Feb. 17 about xAI’s request to add the permanent turbines. “What’s the point in all of this? A lot of people are going to be out of work.”
The uproar in Southaven isn’t the first time data centers and their power needs have disrupted quiet neighborhoods. In Northern Virginia, known as Data Center Alley, some property owners have tried to escape continuous hums by selling their homes.
At Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump called on tech companies to build power plants to meet the electricity needs for their data centers as part of an effort to address opposition and concerns about spiking utility bills. Over three months last year, an estimated $98 billion in projects were blocked or stalled across the country, according to Data Center Watch, which tracks local opposition to the facilities.
The money, speed and urgency with which Musk and other tech leaders are pursuing the ventures didn’t give communities in Southaven much time to push back over noise and health concerns. The public hearing in Southaven was an opportunity for the community to raise questions about the plan for permanent turbines, which could be approved as soon as next month.
Attendees, some wearing “Not all money is good money” shirts, told state regulators that xAI’s plans and current operations would increase pollution in a county already struggling with air quality.
“The scale, the speed, the intensity of this expansion are unlike anything this area has absorbed,” said Southaven native Nathan Reed. “This was not a thoughtful, phased development. It was an industrial surge imposed on our residential community.”
‘Southaven is now under attack’
Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite has called the noise “a legitimate concern,” but he has also dismissed the backlash as partly politically motivated. “Southaven is now under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances,” he posted on Facebook.
In an email to NBC News, Musselwhite, a Republican, wrote that some of those at the public hearing didn’t live in Southaven, referring to Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson. At the hearing, Pearson, who previously spoke out against xAI’s use of similar turbines in Memphis, Tennessee, urged Mississippi’s permit board to reject the company’s request.
Last month, xAI representatives were joined by Mississippi’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves. The company's chief financial officer discussed the new data center, which Musk dubbed MACROHARDRR, in an unsubtle dig at competitor Microsoft.
The data center and plant are expected to bring in millions of dollars and new jobs, Musselwhite said. The city recently accepted a $1.38 million donation from xAI’s affiliated company MZX Tech for its police department. Opposing the project, he has argued, would be akin to walking away from FedEx in the 1970s. The shipping giant, headquartered nearby in Memphis, is one of the area’s largest employers.
As for the noise complaints, Musselwhite said in January that xAI is working to address those concerns and has installed a $7 million sound wall to muffle the noise.
Musselwhite said in an email that xAI is still working on the issue and considering removing some of the louder turbines. He said the permanent turbines xAI plans to install will be quieter.
Work hasn’t started on an additional embankment to reduce the noise, which Musselwhite said in January would take two months to finish. Engineers are still studying what type of sound barrier would be most effective and expect to decide within two weeks.
xAI didn’t respond to questions.
Taylor Logsdon, who lives close to the power plant and is part of a community group opposing the project, said the sound wall hasn’t done much to muffle the turbines or reassure neighbors. “We make fun of it and say, ‘It’s the Temu sound wall,’” she said, referring to the online Chinese fast-fashion retailer known for its ultra-low prices.
She acknowledged there may be some benefits from the xAI project, but she fears it’s already coming at her family’s expense. Two of her children developed respiratory problems since the plant went online, she said. The nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center has said gas turbines produce pollution and release hazardous chemicals, including formaldehyde.
Opponents of the Southaven turbines said their concerns have nothing to do with politics.
Gossett, a former small-business owner, praised Musk’s success and the work Musk did as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, calling it “a service.”
He said that after another 2 a.m. wakeup, though, he has had enough. “You need to come over and stay at my house for a week,” Gossett said, addressing Musk.
Jason Haley, an IT worker, co-founded the Safe and Sound Coalition, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group pushing to shut off the turbines.
Haley can hear the turbines from his home in a working-class subdivision called Colonial Hills. He started posting daily recordings that caught the attention of local news media, and he has questioned why noise mitigation efforts weren’t put in place from the beginning.
“If you knew the noise was going to be an issue, put in a sound wall first,” he said. “Do some other stuff first before you torture us. That’s not that hard of an ask.”
A noise analysis conducted by xAI hasn’t been made public.
Raising the volume
The NAACP has accused xAI of powering up its turbines in Southaven without a permit. The civil rights organization said the company is following the same playbook it used in Memphis to bring its Colossus I data center online in 2024 in just 122 days.
There, too, xAI ran turbines for months before it sought air permits. Residents of a nearby predominantly Black neighborhood called Boxtown told NBC News at the time that they were experiencing health issues. (City officials later released a study that showed pollutants weren’t at dangerous levels, a finding advocates questioned.)
“Mississippi has a long and powerful history of making decisions intensifying environment harms of Black and low-income communities, treating our neighbors as a sacrifice zone,” Robert James, president of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, said at the Southaven hearing.
On Feb. 13, the Southern Environmental Law Center gave xAI a 60-day notice over the Southaven turbines, saying it plans to sue the company on behalf of the NAACP under the Clean Air Act. Environmental advocates say xAI’s temporary turbines rival a conventional power plant with the ability to power thousands of homes.
The Southern Environmental Law Center has said recent changes to Environmental Protection Agency rules confirmed that temporary turbines, like the ones xAI uses, require permits.
Asked about the change, the EPA referred to Administrator Lee Zeldin’s remarks last month about the rule’s potential impact on xAI.
“Not everything on the internet is true,” Zeldin told Fox Business.
In the past, xAI has said it follows the law, complies with regulations and uses technology to limit emissions.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates clean air standards, said the state doesn’t require permits for what it considers temporary turbines — and told xAI they can’t be used longer than a year. The agency added that it wouldn’t comment on pending litigation.
The agency said that it takes community concerns seriously but that its role is “limited to air quality matters.” Last year, it urged xAI to run the turbines “in a manner that minimizes the emission of nitrogen oxides,” or the gases that contribute to smog.
After the public hearing, Krystal Polk stood in the dark and recorded the turbines’ howls from her family’s yard, just a few hundred feet from xAI’s property.
“I just haven’t really internalized that this is here and this is what’s happening,” she said.
Her family owned the 2-acre plot during a time when many Black families in the region were still sharecropping. After her parents died, Polk was determined to hold on to it. She and her husband planned to renovate the place as a retirement home or for one for their children.
Then the noise came. And the wildlife left, she said.
Polk had the electric service shut off and moved their furniture out. She’s not sure when they’ll be back.
