The NAACP has sued xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi over a 27-turbine gas plant in Southaven, Mississippi, that the complaint says was built and operated without an air permit. Those turbines power Colossus 2, the company's second data center in South Memphis, just across the state line.
Scale first, because that is what makes this an infrastructure story rather than a nuisance complaint. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which is representing the NAACP alongside Earthjustice, puts the combined output of the Southaven turbines at up to 495 megawatts and calls the installation the equivalent of a conventional power plant. CNBC reports the suit alleges xAI and MZX Tech installed and operated the 27 units between August and December 2025.
xAI's position, as CNBC reports it, is that no federal permit was required because the turbines were only for temporary use. CNBC also reports the company did not immediately respond to its request for comment. The complaint language CNBC quotes says the turbines were installed and operated "without an air permit or regard for the health and safety of people living nearby."
What the NAACP is asking for is specific. It seeks declaratory and injunctive relief for the companies to "cease operating the Colossus Gas Plant unless and until they obtain the required permits; to apply the necessary pollution controls; and to pay appropriate civil penalties for each day of violation."
Both the NAACP and SELC put the plant's emissions at more than 1,700 tons of nitrogen oxides a year, with up to 180 tons of fine particulate matter, 500 tons of carbon monoxide and 19 tons of formaldehyde. Each of those is stated as a potential annual figure rather than a measured one, which is the distinction a permitting engineer draws first.
Timing is the operational fact underneath the rhetoric. SELC says a 60-day notice of intent to sue went to xAI in February, and the turbines kept running. "xAI's continued operation of these turbines without a permit and without adequate pollution controls is not only illegal, it's an insult to families living nearby who for months have expressed serious concerns about how air pollution from the company's personal power plant could impact their health and well-being," SELC senior attorney Ben Grillot said in the NAACP's statement.
There is precedent a few miles up the road. SELC says xAI began operations at Colossus 1 in June of 2024 using as many as 35 unpermitted gas turbines, removed them after an earlier notice of intent to sue, and obtained permits for the remaining 15.
Permanent generation is already in motion at the disputed site. CNBC reports Mississippi regulators granted a permit in March covering a 41-turbine plant at Southaven, that the NAACP is separately asking the state to revoke it, and that a third data center called Macrohardrr is planned nearby. The NAACP says hundreds of community members packed a Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality hearing on the facility.
For anyone weighing on-site gas generation as a way around an interconnection queue, this case puts a price on the shortcut, because the remedy sought is a shutdown order plus civil penalties for every day of operation. Buyers planning behind-the-meter turbines for an AI build should treat the air permit as a hard dependency on the commissioning date rather than a parallel workstream.
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