Mississippi's xAI turbine hearing: what you should know

If you live near Colossus II, the xAI data center near Tulane Road – you need to read this.

The xAI files

Every essay in this series is pinned to a question on the board at rachelandthecity.com/the-xai-files.

Mississippi has a formal hearing on xAI’s Southaven power plant set for November 9th and 10th – and if you live near the plant, you probably haven’t heard about it.

Its only public trace is one line in the Permit Board’s June minutes, which MDEQ posted as a scanned image in August. It isn’t on MDEQ’s Permit Board page or its public notices page, and it hasn’t turned up in any news coverage of the appeal. The minutes don’t even say where or what time. They do say Kim Turner, from the state AG’s office, will run it.

So today I emailed MDEQ and asked.

It’s two days, November 9th and 10th, starting at 9 AM both days. It’s at MDEQ’s office at 515 East Amite Street in Jackson – that’s about three hours south of Southaven. It’s open to the public, but there aren’t many seats, so there’ll be an overflow room. There’s no way to watch it online. And MDEQ wasn’t sure yet if a notice will be posted anywhere.

Think about what that means for people who live near the multiple data centers sitting on the state line between Mississippi and Tennessee.

Jackson’s close to 200 miles from Southaven – that’s about a three-hour drive each way. To get there by 9 AM, you’d have to leave before 6. It’s a Monday and a Tuesday, so most people would have to take off work to go. And if you can’t make the drive, you can’t watch it at all.

And this is why this is important.

That hearing is about the gas turbines that are still being built.

If you read my essay on how 68 of xAI’s turbines got into Mississippi with no permit, you know there are two sets of turbines down there. This is what I have been able to piece together.

In March, Mississippi’s Permit Board OK’d an air permit for xAI’s company down there. It’s called MZX Tech. The permit covers 41 permanent gas turbines with pollution controls.

On April 9th, three groups asked for a formal hearing to fight it. They’re the NAACP, Young, Gifted & Green and the Safe and Sound Coalition.

They raised four problems.

They said the area already has an ozone problem, so the plant needed pollution offsets. They said the air modeling left stuff out. They said xAI should’ve had to look at cleaner turbines. And they said the board broke the state’s open meetings law when it met behind closed doors before the vote.

And that modeling made me raise an eyebrow.

To figure out how much fine dust is already in the air, xAI’s consultant first used the closest state monitor – in Hernando, which MDEQ itself says reads over the federal limit.

MDEQ wrote back that being closest “is not enough justification.” By the next version of the plan, Hernando was out. A Memphis monitor at Shelby Farms – about 16 miles away, on the other side of Memphis – was in.

And the state’s model for the smog-making stuff counted 212 pollution sources around the plant, but not one of the portable turbines already running on the site. HUH?

Now this is the part most people miss.

The permit covers 41 turbines. But this permit is not for the 57 turbines that were counted on the site last spring. Not one of the 57 is in that permit.

An engineer named Kim Laufenberg checked the two lists – turbine by turbine – and swore to it in federal court in June. xAI’s own consultant, Trinity, told the state the same thing back in December of 2025. MDEQ asked if the portable turbines would be folded into the permit. Trinity’s answer was “No, none of these will be.”

So there are two sets of turbines on the same ground. One set has a permit, and most of it’s still being built. The other set is running – and it isn’t in any permit at all. These are the ones that the state said didn’t need a permit because they are mobile.

And the running set works hard. In June, fifteen of those portable turbines ran 20 hours a day or more, on average. That’s from the company’s own records. One of them ran every single hour of the month.

They’re running for a reason. In June, two people from xAI swore in federal court that the temporary turbines were the only power source for two of its data centers. One is Colossus II on Tulane Road. The other one is right across the state line, on Stateline Road in Southaven.

And xAI’s still building. Elon Musk announced a fourth data center in July, called Minihard, right next to Colossus II. In September, Southaven OK’d the site plan for another xAI data center, on its end of Tulane Road.

The permanent ones aren’t finished yet – according to the MDEQ. On September 23rd, MDEQ’s air chief, Jaricus Whitlock, said five of them didn’t count as finished. The company had told the state they were built, and then it took that back.

The turbines that are running never went through a permit, a comment period or a hearing.

So how much pollution are we talking about?

The number comes from xAI’s side.

In the federal lawsuit over these turbines, xAI and MZX hired an air expert named Roberto Gasparini. He figured out how much the 60 temporary turbines could put out if they all ran full blast all year. He looked at nitrogen oxides – that’s the stuff that helps make smog. His answer was 4,590 tons a year.

That’s what they could put out, not what they did or will – and he says so. Real turbines don’t run full blast every hour. But look at what that number is up against. Under the federal permit rules, a plant that can put out 250 tons a year of this stuff is a “major source.” And xAI’s own permit application puts the permanent plant at about 423 tons a year.

The NAACP’s expert got more than 4,400 tons, using numbers from xAI’s consultant. So both sides’ experts landed in about the same place. But the court fight isn’t even really about how much. It’s about whether a turbine on a trailer counts.

So who decided it was OK?

That was MDEQ. In July of 2025, it told xAI the portable turbines were “mobile sources” and didn’t need a permit. The catch was that each one had to stay less than twelve months.

Then this July, the state and the company signed a deal called an agreed order. It gives each temporary turbine a date to stop running. The last ones can run into July of 2027.

That deal has one sentence that matters more than the rest. It says running the mobile turbines without permits “has not violated Mississippi air permitting requirements.”

So I asked MDEQ for the emails and drafts behind that deal – and it sent them to me.

The first draft came from xAI’s own lawyers. Gary Rikard, from the law firm Butler Snow, sent it to MDEQ’s director on July 22nd, 2026. That “has not violated” sentence was already in it. Eight days later, the state signed the deal with that sentence word for word.

To be fair to MDEQ, it didn’t just sign whatever it got – not even close. It added things the company’s draft didn’t have. It made xAI test the pollution from fourteen of the turbines within 60 days. It made xAI send a report every two weeks. It moved up the date after which no new turbines could come in. And it toned down some of the company’s legal wording.

But the line saying no rules were broken stayed exactly how xAI’s lawyers wrote it.

In September, the deal got changed – and the company’s lawyers proposed that change too. One person copied on those emails was Trudy Fisher. She ran MDEQ from 2007 to 2014 – and now she works at Butler Snow.

Oh, and there’s one more piece.

In the federal case, the State of Mississippi filed a brief backing its own agency. In it, the state said MDEQ never used a “temporary” exemption at all. The rule it used only covers “mobile sources.” The state said the twelve-month limit is just proof the turbines are mobile.

That brief came from the AG’s office – the same office the hearing officer in Jackson comes from. Nothing in the record says anything about her.

There’s one more clock running before the hearing.

Mississippi’s agriculture commissioner, Andy Gipson, sits on the Permit Board – and in July he sent the board a memo. It says he wants a list of info from data center companies at least 30 days before “any public hearing or vote” on their permits.

That list covers water use, power bills, air and noise. It asks for two years of audited financial records. It asks who controls 10% or more of the company. And if the company sells data center services, it asks for copies of those customer contracts.

Thirty days before November 9th is October 10th.

Nothing in the record says if that memo even counts for a hearing like this one, since the permit already exists. So on September 30th, I asked MDEQ for anything xAI or its companies filed under that memo. I also asked for anything that says whether it covers this hearing at all.

Meanwhile, the temporary turbines keep running. The company’s latest report to the state came on September 23rd. It says no turbines were retired or removed in the two weeks before. Under the deal, the next two don’t have to come off until December 17th.

So when do the permanent turbines turn on – and when do the temporary ones turn off?

Every time xAI started building a permanent turbine, it had to file a form with the state. Each form has a box for when the company expects to start it up. The first ones said late June of 2026. Others said September. One filed in August said December 27th.

None of those forms says a turbine actually started. And I couldn’t find any record that shows a single permanent turbine running yet.

xAI does have a timeline – we just can’t see it. In the federal case, its lawyers asked to keep one paragraph sealed. They said it covers “the projected timeline for bringing permanent power generation assets online.”

The temporary side has a schedule we can see. The company says eleven were shut down in August. Sixteen more are due to stop by the end of December. The rest come off a few at a time from March to July of 2027.

Now walk through New Year’s Day with me. On that day, the deal still lets 41 temporary turbines run. That’s the same number as the whole permanent plant.

And nothing in the deal says a temporary turbine has to shut off when a permanent one turns on. Each one just has its own date. The only link I found goes the other way. The deal let thirteen temporary turbines run longer, cause the permanent ones were behind schedule.

When MDEQ approved the permit in March, it wrote that there was “no scenario” where xAI would run 68 turbines. That was the 27 temporary turbines on site back then, plus the 41 permanent ones. Today 57 temporary turbines are still on the state’s list – and the deal lets some of them run into next summer, right next to the permanent ones as they come on.

So on November 9th and 10th, the state’s set to hold a hearing in Jackson about 41 turbines that are still being built. The 57 temporary turbines still on the state’s list will be right next door – and some of them have been there for more than a year. But this hearing isn’t even about them.

Every record this essay is built on is on its own page, and the ones that exist nowhere else online are hosted there: the records behind this essay.

If you like facts-first info on all this, consider leaving a tip on Venmo or PayPal – this stuff takes a lot of time to put together. And check out everything I’ve written with citations and receipts at the xAI Files.

Sources

Everything I have written about AI is in one place at rachelandthecity.com/the-ai-files.

The xAI files

Sources

Share this: