SOUTHAVEN, Miss.—For several months, Krystal and Kenneth Polk had been discussing renovating the one-story home she grew up in, which had been in her family’s possession for three generations. The house sits on around two acres of land, built many years before Southaven, Mississippi, officials zoned it for industrial use.
But home improvement goals came to a screeching halt last summer when a formerly dormant industrial plant across from the property suddenly came to life with a loud, non-stop whir as it began fueling tech industry giant Elon Musk’s xAI data center, Colossus 2—which his company touts as the largest supercomputer in the world.
“The noise is excruciating and the scenery is gone,” Krystal Polk told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 11. “The wildlife, of course, has been disturbed.”
Colossus 2, located just over the state line in Tennessee, is Musk’s second xAI data center in Memphis, after Colossus 1. The temporary gas turbines in Southaven powering Colossus 2 are located at the former Duke Energy plant and help power Musk’s supercomputer, Grok. Since Musk launched Grok in 2023, the AI chatbot has earned a reputation for spewing racist and antisemitic invective, creating deepfake pornographic images of real people, undressing children and declaring itself Mecha Hitler.
Residents plan to attend a public hearing over xAI’s bid to install additional permanent gas turbines at the Southaven plant this evening, Tuesday, Feb. 17, at 6 p.m. at the Ranger Conference Center at 1210 Church Road in Southaven.
Much as Musk’s Colossus data centers have prompted an outcry among residents of the mostly Black Memphis neighborhoods where they’re located, the energy plant in Southaven has fueled noise pollution complaints from neighbors and an outcry from those worried about other types of potentially dangerous pollution.
And now, Musk is set to bring a third data center to the region, this time on the Mississippi side in Southhaven. But over the din of the turbines and the complaints of locals, Musk’s foray into North Mississippi has local and state leaders beaming over the prospect of millions of dollars flowing into the area.
‘An Exciting Day for Mississippi’s Future’
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, in a Jan. 8 visit to Southaven, heralded the $20-billion investment for the new xAI data center in DeSoto County as the largest private endeavor in state history. The investment includes creating hundreds of permanent jobs and thousands of indirect subcontracting jobs, the governor said.
“It’s an exciting day for Mississippi’s future,” he proclaimed, speaking from inside the 810,000 square-foot warehouse that xAI purchased less than a quarter mile from the power plant.
Musk’s new data center, called MACROHARDRR, will initially employ 145 people at an 810,000-square-foot warehouse at 2400 Stateline Road in Southaven, formerly the site of GXO Logistics, where dozens of employees lost their jobs after xAI purchased the facility. MACROHARDRR is part of Elon Musk’s MACROHARD project, named as a play on “Microsoft,” that he hopes will challenge the company behind Windows with all-AI software.
Musk posted about the new Southaven center’s announcement on his X social media account on Dec. 30.
“xAI has bought a third building called MACROHARDRR,” Musk posted. “Will take @xAI training compute to almost (two gigawatts).”
Musk’s investments, however, have also raised concerns among the 114-acre site’s surrounding neighborhoods and some local officials as they cope with constant noise from the natural-gas running turbines and fears of potentially hazardous air and water pollution.
Both neighbors and local officials are seeking answers to quality-of-life issues similar to those people have raised over the past several months in southwest Memphis.
A series of related properties purchased by xAI included a water recycling facility that Musk’s company purchased in a Memphis industrial park in October 2025, next to the first xAI data center. The company intends to use the plant for recycled water once the data center is up to scale. That move will reduce xAI’s current reliance on using tons of water—necessary to prevent the supercomputer’s system from overheating—from the regional Memphis Sand Aquifer, which is where DeSoto also draws its water supply.
‘I Hear It Constantly’
It was a typical hot August day when Jason Haley first noticed an unrelenting humming noise outside his Southaven home. He was doing yard work and speculated that a distant neighbor must have errantly left a leaf blower running.
A week later, though, when he returned from an out-of-town trip, the invasive noise continued thrumming.
“That’s when I started to investigate,” he told the Mississippi Free Press outside his home on Jan. 9. “I realized that this was a much larger problem than my first hunches and it was not going away.”
Haley’s residential disturbance would eventually become pervasive, both outside and inside his home, and just one of many related pollution fears for a growing number of residents affected by the turbines powering Colossus 2 in the older section of the city.
Haley’s Southaven home is among those closest to the vacant former Duke Energy property, where 18 temporary turbines now operating 16 to 24 hours per day have made his life at home “torture,” he told the City of Southaven’s mayor and Board of Aldermen in a packed meeting on Jan. 6.
Many of Haley’s neighbors, some who live next to Jerry Street Park, Southaven’s first ballfield (nicknamed “The Hole”), are also dealing with the irritating, relentless noise.
He has measured it with a decibel meter. The sound ranges from decibel levels in the 40s to levels as high as the mid-50s range, he said. The noise oscillates between a constant high-pitch hum and a low-level churning sound resembling a hovering airplane, Haley said.
“It’s hard to be outside for long when all you’re hearing is this high pitch. It’s very difficult. And from inside my house … I hear it constantly,” Haley told the board, noting lost sleep and little relief from using earplugs. “If you wake up, you go to the restroom, you hear that noise. And obviously it makes me angry, because it’s still happening.”
Officials would soon tell Haley and other neighbors that neither code enforcement nor police had the authority to do anything about the noise.
Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite, who has been in correspondence with Jason Haley and other residents in the impacted area, said he continues to be in regular talks with xAI officials, pressing the need to further lower noise levels.
In late November, company officials finished building a $7M noise barrier along the east side of the property, which the mayor said lowered the noise—an assertion Haley disputes. Haley is skeptical that the noise will become a non-issue even after the temporary turbines are replaced with permanent ones because xAI plans to more than double the number of turbines to 41.
He also questions how the noise pollution has affected the residential area’s property values for now and in the future.
Musselwhite acknowledged that sound levels are oftentimes “unacceptable,” citing his on-site inspections with the use of a digital decibel meter, in the city’s west-end neighborhood.
He said the problem must be addressed, noting that xAI has pledged to build a $12.8 million berm to mitigate noise pollution and then add an evergreen landscape to it. Musselwhite told the audience the berm is “projected to make a tremendous difference in reduction.”
Environmental, Civil Rights Groups Threaten to Sue xAI
Officials with xAI received permission from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality last summer that allows xAI to run temporary, unpermitted gas turbines for 12 months until 41 permanent, less noisy units are installed. But the EPA said in a January ruling that exemptions for such turbines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all.”
On Feb. 13, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earth Justice, on behalf of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the national NAACP, sent a notice of intent to sue to xAI over its use of unpermitted methane gas turbines.
“Our communities are not playgrounds for corporations who are chasing profit over people. xAI’s first data center is already creating pollution for Mississippi’s neighbors in Memphis—a community already suffering from decades of disparity—and now they are polluting in Southaven, Mississippi,” NAACP Director of Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP Abre’ Conner said in a Feb. 13 statement.
“We will not stand by idly. As we shared when xAI began its operation in Tennessee, this illegal pollution only exacerbates complications to frontline communities who continue to bear the brunt of environmental injustice,” Conner continued. “We cannot allow for companies to promise a better future while pumping harmful chemicals into the air we breathe. We demand that xAI follow the Clean Air Act and stop operating these unpermitted turbines to protect the people of Southaven.”
The group previously threatened to sue xAI over unpermitted turbines at the Colossus facility in Memphis last year. xAI removed those unpermitted turbines and obtained permits for 15 other turbines.
“xAI is running a de facto power plant without an air permit, without necessary pollution controls, and without regard for families living as close as a half mile away,” Laura Thoms, enforcement director for Earthjustice, said in the Feb. 13 statement. “We won’t let the company disregard the law and the health of Mississippi residents.”
‘Not All Money Is Good Money’
About 700 Southaven residents signed a petition, spearheaded by the Safe and Sound Coalition, in objection to the site’s operations, which Jason Haley left with the Board of Aldermen on Jan. 6. Criticisms in it include threats of hard-to-detect pollution, highlighted by Shannon Samsa, a health-care worker and DeSoto County resident, who warned of health concerns.
Samsa complained that because MDEQ classified the current turbines as having a “temporary” status, air emissions oversight is exempted. The designation also means officials are not required to host town hall-style meetings for public feedback.
She noted that the site is close to multiple public schools and voiced worries that emissions—even established low amounts over time—from the operations will endanger the health of residents near the property.
“As someone with two health-care degrees, these emissions are linked to serious, well-established health risks for stroke, heart attacks, asthma, cancer, reproductive harm, and other complications,” Samsa said.
“People will die from this. I’m not saying that to be funny, I’m being serious … This is not safe.”
No more than a mile from Haley’s home, Krystal and Kenneth Polk remain in a “wait and see” mode because of the disruption from the power plant directly across the street on Stanton Road, where the power plant’s property offers no sound barrier wall on its north end.
Krystal Polk’s extended family have congregated at the home regularly over the years for holiday gatherings. But what lies ahead for the home is dependent largely on better environmental conditions around it, she told the Mississippi Free Press.
Before the nearby Tennessee Valley Authority plant was constructed several years ago, Polk said TVA representatives went door-to-door to surrounding residents and assuaged possible concerns about its new power lines. In contrast, no city, county or company officials provided any notice to that area’s residents before workers sliced treelines across from the property and the noise started, she said.
“We had plans of doing some renovations to the property and making it more like our long-range home,” Krystal Polk said. “But I’m not sure now. Everything’s up in the air with it.”
At the Jan. 6 meeting, Musselwhite insisted that the project is safe for residents, noise pollution aside, and noted his personal attachment to the pertinent neighborhood, part of which has been zoned industrial for decades, back to when trains raced by several times daily. He said due diligence has been done on the project.
“I lived my whole life in that neighborhood. I went to Hope Sullivan School. You won’t find one human being in the city that loves Colonial Hills like I love it, I have a great history there,” Musselwhite said about the subdivision. “I wouldn’t let this happen anywhere, but the last place I would let people’s health be jeopardized would be in the neighborhood where I grew up.”
He called the technology company’s investment in DeSoto County a “tremendous game-changer,” and an investment coveted globally, with potentially unprecedented capital investments.
He calculates that Southaven’s $83 million annual budget fund could leap by $20 million solely from the xAI’s local investment by 2028. Musselwhite said the infusion would mean more police and firefighters, better road conditions and schools, and more emergency medical technicians.
But Shannon Samsa demurred.
“Not all money is good money, mayor,” she said.
“If nothing changes,” Samsa continued, “the legacy left behind won’t be beautification projects or skate parks; it will be a moment residents realize their health, their peace of mind, and their trust sold off.”
The public hearing over the turbines will be heald at the M.R. Davis Public Library located at 8554 Northwest Drive in Southaven, Mississippi, on Tuesday, Feb. 17.