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Comment by breadsniffer | Hacker News Reader

from perplexity deep research: "Colossus‑related gas‑turbine power plants have been run in ways alleged to violate the Clean Air Act, in already over‑polluted Black and low‑income communities near Memphis, and Anthropic has now become the main user of that infrastructure."

sources: https://www.tba.org/?pg=Hastings2025AIX (Tech, Toxins, and Memphis: Evaluating the Environmental Footprint of the xAI Facility)

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Any specifics? What are they doing and what statutes are allegedly being violated?

Emphasis my own:

> "The xAI facility has already deployed *nearly 20 gas turbines, including four large units with a combined capacity of 100MW*, to power its AI system Grok... There are plans to add *15 more gas turbines between June 2025 and June 2030*, and the turbine application projects *annual emissions of around 11.51 tons of hazardous air pollutants*."

> "it is currently *running gas turbines without the necessary permits from the Shelby County Health Department*"

> "findings from the Southern Environmental Law Center indicate that the facility has 'installed' gas turbines. This suggests that new industrial systems are in place and that *xAI is obligated to comply with the new NSPS* [New Source Performance Standards] *to avoid violating the Clean Air Act*"

> "NSPS are authorized under *Section 211 of the Clean Air Act*... All new sources must comply with the *Best System of Emission Reduction (BSER)*, which mandates the use of state-of-the-art technology to minimize air pollutants."

> "there is a history of Elon Musk's companies, such as *SpaceX and the Boring Company, being fined thousands of dollars for violating environmental law* to circumvent regulation"

So they haven't gotten permits, but why? Why where the permits denied?

Just the other day we had news that some Californian environment protection agency denied permits for SpaceX for political reasons as opposed to following objective rules, as ruled by a judge. So the fact that some permits were not issued doesn't tell me anything.

To my understanding: the permits weren't denied, they were never applied for.

Edit: I re-read https://www.tba.org/?pg=Hastings2025AIX and yes, it seems that xAI never applied for permits related to the gas turbines as they're making the argument that the permits aren't required.

I wonder what the pollution from these gas turbines is like. SO2 from trace sulfur compounds? Is it much worse than a traditional gas-fired power plant for some reason? I can't imagine it would be but I have to plead ignorance and beg for hints here.

Well, from a quick bit of searching it looks like it's all NOxes. There are supposed to be known ways of mitigating NOx formation [1][2] but there enough dependencies that I'm not going to do any more digging.

1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nox-reduction-technologies-ga...

2. PDF: https://www.ifc.org/content/dam/ifc/doc/1990/handbook-nitrog...

Report from February 2026:

  The independent study, conducted by EmPower Analytics Group and commissioned
  by the Southern Environmental Law Center, was led by a Harvard-trained 
  environmental health scientist Dr. Michael Cork and shows that operation
  of xAI’s proposed permanent gas turbines would measurably increase 
  health risks for families throughout the area—even in places as far away
  as Germantown and North Memphis.

https://www.memphiscap.org/

The southern environmental law center is a political action group, not a government agency.

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