Elon Musk's xAI has added 19 portable natural gas turbines at its Colossus 2 data center in Southaven, Mississippi, between late March and early May during an ongoing lawsuit tied to the violation of the Clean Air Act. 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and environmental groups sued in April, arguing xAI ran dozens of turbines at the Southaven location without the required approvals under federal air rules. The complaint described the operation as a "personal power plant" and said 27 turbines represented 495 megawatts of capacity, "enough to power 400,000 homes."

Benzinga reached out to xAI and the NAACP for comment.

Eight of the 19 new turbines were installed after the lawsuit was filed, Wired reported. According to an MDEQ spokesperson, more than 500 megawatts of gas have been generated since mid-March.

Toxic emissions from gas turbines can include nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter and hazardous compounds such as formaldehyde. These pollutants can often be linked to asthma, other respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular problems and certain cancers.

The American Lung Association gave DeSoto County, Mississippi, and Shelby County, Tennessee, an “F” grade for ozone pollution in 2026. The Colossus Gas Plant is the culprit for that score, the lawsuit says.

Ben Grillot of the Southern Environmental Law Center said the group first spotted additional equipment during an April plane flyover and later determined the increase was larger after reviewing the agency emails.

"As indicated by the facility, all portable/temporary turbines are equipped with control technology to minimize emissions. MDEQ is evaluating the situation and will make the facility aware as to when it can no longer bring additional portable/temporary turbines on-site," MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer told Mississippi Today. Schaefer also confirmed the 46 turbines referenced in the emails were not covered by an air permit the state issued in March for 41 turbines.

Last week, the NAACP filed a preliminary injunction aimed at halting turbine operations at Colossus 2. In its filing opposing that request, xAI said the data centers "are essential to the operation of cutting-edge artificial intelligence and other computing tools used by the U.S. government and millions of users worldwide, every day. But those data centers cannot currently function and would have to precipitously shut down, without the temporary power generation equipment in question."

That same day, xAI struck a partnership agreement with Anthropic to use all of the compute capacity at SpaceX’s data center Colossus 1, located in Memphis, Tennessee.

“We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity. This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API,” Claude wrote in a post on X.

The partnership will give Anthropic more than 300 megawatts of additional capacity (over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs) to deploy within the month.

In a statement to Wired, NAACP environmental and climate justice director Abre’ Conner said, "Any company that disregards the obvious environmental and health concerns of Black communities to supposedly power a future that will help us all is sending a clear message about who it intends to serve in that future. As we have done since xAI forced its way into Memphis, we will continue to stand with the communities most impacted by these decisions."

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