The records · the state line essay
Every record behind "How did 68 of xAI's turbines get into Mississippi with no permit?"
These are the records that essay is built on. Ten of them have no public home anywhere, because they came to me in productions made to me by Mississippi's environment agency and Tennessee's - so I am hosting those here, as they were produced. The rest are court filings, agency documents and news stories, and each one links to whoever owns it. Every quotation in the essay is in one of these documents. Nothing here is a summary of a record I am keeping to myself.
The pages that matter, marked up
Each one outlines the passage the essay relies on, in red, on the page it actually sits on. Tap to open the full image.
What MDEQ told me
The answer at the center of the essay. Everything else is context for it.
The agency's written answers to my three records requests
Samantha Lewis, MDEQ's Legal Assistant Team Lead, sent me answers written item by item by Jaricus Whitlock, the agency's Air Division Chief - the same official who signed the July 2025 letter that created the twelve-month condition in the first place. On tracking the twelve months by unit, by group or by site: "There are no such records for this request item." On how the agency would treat a replacement unit: the same sentence. On serial numbers: that information "will not be found." On any inspection or site visit since August 1, 2026: "To date, MDEQ has not performed any such inspection / site visit so no such record is available." Four more items on the July agreed order came back the same way, including any air quality analysis the agency relied on before signing it. These answers arrived as the body of an email, so there is no agency file to host. I have set it as a document exactly as it reached me, with my own home address and telephone number taken out and the quoted history of my earlier messages cut. MDEQ's wording is untouched.
The rule, and the letter that used it
Two words, and no meaning given for them
The exemption list in Mississippi's air rules. Item three reads, in full, "Mobile sources." There is no definition, no time limit, and the words portable and temporary do not appear. This is the text as EPA approved it into the state plan at 85 Fed. Reg. 10070 on February 21, 2020, filed in the NAACP's federal case at docket entry 51-3.
The NAACP v. X.AI Corp. docket (N.D. Miss. 3:26-cv-00074)85 Fed. Reg. 10070, February 21, 2020
The ask, and the yes four days later
Brent Mayo's July 25, 2025 letter asking MDEQ whether the portable turbines counted as mobile sources, and Jaricus Whitlock's July 29 determination letter saying they did, on two conditions the agency wrote itself: each unit stays on its trailer, and each is intended to be there under twelve months. Both are court-filed, at docket entries 51-6 and 51-7.
The Tennessee trail
This is the part of the record that exists nowhere else. All six documents came to me in agency productions, and all six are hosted here.
"A potential facility in Shelby County, TN (just over the state line)"
Slater Smith of Trinity Consultants wrote to three MDEQ staff on the morning of February 28, 2025 asking for air emissions inventories, and described the job in those words. He gave coordinates and asked for everything inside a 60 kilometer radius. On March 7 Deborah Boleware sent back a spreadsheet, and the file name she attached is in the email: "Trinity - Slater Smith - 20250228 - Shelby Co TN - 60km - emissions inventory.xlsx." Produced to me by MDEQ under the Mississippi Public Records Act, inside a consultant email file. Both messages are here as one PDF.
The modeling protocol for a 1.56 gigawatt plant at 5420 Tulane Road
Three weeks after that request, the modeling plan for the permanent plant went out - on the Tennessee side, at the Tulane campus. The Shelby County Health Department circulated it to two reviewers at EPA, two at the National Park Service, the USDA and Tennessee's environment agency. The review window closed April 20, and then the Tennessee plan went away. Produced to me by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
"No plans to site any turbines at its Tulane location"
Eighteen days after the federal review window on that protocol closed, the Chamber of Commerce told Action News 5 that xAI was demobilizing turbines in Shelby County and had no plans for turbines at Tulane. It is the Chamber speaking, not the company, and nothing establishes what anyone at the Chamber knew.
"Call with Xai on expansion plans"
A week after that review window closed, Bill Cork at the Mississippi Development Authority sent a meeting invitation at 10:43 that morning to MDEQ's executive director Chris Wells, to Brent Mayo at the company, and to two of his own staff. Wells forwarded it inside MDEQ within two minutes, and by that afternoon the agency's Air Division Chief had it on his calendar for nine o'clock the next morning. I have blacked out the meeting number and passcode and nothing else.
"Request a Meeting - Confidential Project"
Maya Rao of Trinity wrote to three MDEQ staff asking for a confidential meeting at Trinity's Ridgeland office. The thread is four messages long and the meeting was set for four o'clock that Friday. Produced to me by MDEQ.
Nobody in the file is calling it xAI
MDEQ's own record for the site is the "Duke Facility," after the Duke Energy plant that stood there before. The stormwater submissions call it "Project Duke." Fourteen emails under those two names, produced to me by MDEQ.
The land, and the permanent plant
The deed for the old Duke Energy site
Warranty deed, Julie M. James to MZX Tech LLC, Tulane Stanton Industrial Lot 2, Book 1025 Page 13703. The consideration recorded is "ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration," which is the ordinary way to record a sale without stating the price. Mississippi does not require the price to be stated.
The real permit, for 41 permanent turbines
Air permit 0680-00119, a 1.2 gigawatt power plant. It came three weeks after a public hearing where hundreds of people turned up. The court-filed copy is docket entry 51-27.
Permit 0680-00119 on the NAACP docket, entry 51-27MDEQ enSearch
The agreed order and the twelve-month clock
Agreed Order no. 7739 26, with the unit-by-unit dates in Appendix A
The removal schedule inside this order is the twelve-month condition worked out one machine at a time. Every retirement date in Appendix A falls exactly one year less a day after the day that unit arrived. The first turbines came on August 1, 2025 and more arrived through the following summer, so run the appendix out and the last ones do not have to leave until July 2027. This is my copy as MDEQ produced it; it is also on the agency's own system as order 1862315.
The reporting on that order the day after it was signed
Memphis, and how Colossus 1 was done instead
The letter that started the Memphis fight
Lawyers for the neighbors wrote to the Shelby County Health Department saying xAI's turbines likely required air permits. That is where the two-year argument in Memphis begins.
The county answered the objections in writing, then issued the permit
The response to comments on draft permit 01156-01PC, then the permit itself for 15 permanent turbines at Colossus 1. All of it public, and all of it before the permit. That is the contrast the essay turns on.
The response to comments, docket entry 60-6Permit 01156-01PC, attached to the NAACP and Young, Gifted & Green appeal (PDF)
The thermal imaging at Colossus 1
How people found out
"The only available power source"
Ken Jacobson's sworn declaration, describing the Stanton Road turbines as the only available power source for the Tulane and Stateline computing facilities. Docket entry 60-3.
The residents' own sworn accounts
Standing declarations from Tracy Thornton and five other Southaven and Nesbit residents, docket entries 51-37 through 51-42. Thornton swore he found out the plant existed when he saw a sign at Tulane and Stateline, after the machines were already running.
What the reporters found before I did
Mississippi Today, November 24, 2025: the noise complaintsNBC News, February 26, 2026: nobody at the hearing spoke in favorDeSoto County News, January 6, 2026: the petition to the aldermenCBS News, August 27, 2026: the family that has owned the land for four generations
The noise class action
What MDEQ does enforce
This is the counter-evidence, and it belongs here as much as anything else does.
Two Notices of Violation at $25,000 a day, and the company's answers
The same agency that treated 68 unpermitted gas turbines as exempt wrote this company up twice in August. One notice covers the west parcel, the old Southaven municipal training site, where MDEQ's inspector found more than 16 acres disturbed with no stormwater coverage and "significant dust impacts with inadequate control." The other covers the Macrohard site on Stateline Road. Both cite a maximum of $25,000 per violation per day, and one of them cites Mississippi's air rules on airborne particles. The company answered both on August 19. I am hosting the inspector's full reports, including his photographs and maps, because they are the part that shows what he actually saw. The difference is not that MDEQ will not enforce. It is that dust on a construction site has a rule with a trigger in it and "mobile sources" does not.
Notice of Violation ENF20260002, west parcel, with the inspection report (PDF)Notice of Violation ENF20260001, Stateline Road, with the inspection report (PDF)The company's response on the west parcel (PDF)The company's response on Stateline Road (PDF)
Where it stands now
Eleven powered down, and a city with no rules for any of it
The company said on August 31 that it had powered down eleven of the 68. Eleven is exactly the number the agreed order called for in August. Two days later Southaven's planning director told the Board of Aldermen that data centers are "allowed by right under the city's industrial zoning ordinances," and the board approved another one.
Action News 5, August 31, 2026DeSoto Times Tribune, September 2, 2026
What I asked for, and what is still open
The MDEQ answers at the top of this page close three requests I filed on July 29, July 30 and August 26, 2026. MDEQ has said more documents are still coming from its Office of Land and Water. Dates and status for every request I have filed are on the board.
Think I got something wrong? Check the records, then tell me. That's the whole point.