Musk’s Colossus 2 data center is suffocating Black communities

Elon Musk’s latest additions to his Colossus 2 data center aren’t just unlawful, they’re suffocating a predominantly Black neighborhood that didn’t ask for it.

You’re jolted awake to a bellowing roar. The sound, which is comparable to jet engines, startles you, and you sit up in the dark to assess the sound.

Looking through the windows, the ones first built in the 1970s, the neighborhood is dead asleep. There’s not a single sign of life.

So you look outside. You stare at the sky, and nothing. No planes, no low-flying army jets, not a cloud obstructing your view – and no stars either.

Your eyes adjust in the dark as you stare out the window, and you see it. In the distance, an enormous, sprawling campus is hard at work, roaring and bellowing around the clock.

Once you assess the immediate danger, you head back to bed. While you lie in the dark staring at the cracked paint on the ceiling, you wonder, “Will I ever sleep through the night again?”

The constant hum and noisy bursts from turbines and cooling systems haunt your once-quiet neighborhood, but you just have to accept your new nightmarish neighbor. Because he’s rich.

Musk’s power plant would likely take years to approve

The once-quiet, friendly Colonial Hill neighborhood of Southaven, Mississippi, has been invaded by the gigantic AI data center, Colossus 2.

Colossus 2, Elon Musk’s AI gigawatt data center, powers SpaceXAI’s chatbot Grok and the billionaire’s other AI projects.

The data center has been around for over a year, but a new development has just made an already struggling neighborhood even more hazardous.

Musk has gone ahead and built 59 temporary natural gas turbines to generate reliable energy 24 hours a day without permission from federal authorities, according to a Reuters investigation.

To keep up with the data center's energy demand, Musk went behind the backs of federal regulators and built these off-grid power plants.

Journalists believe these temporary turbines emit massive amounts of toxic pollutants, which would require a federal permit for the power plant.

They would likely require years of environmental studies and public hearings to be approved.

While local authorities tend to approve permits in just weeks or months, Musk’s massive power plant is so large that it wouldn’t be as simple.

But he went ahead with it anyway and concealed the actual scale.

SpaceXAI has acknowledged it was running 27 unpermitted turbines on campus in January, claiming that the company didn’t need any permits.

But now, Reuters has uncovered 59 turbines, with 57 of them being in Mississippi, just over the state line from Tennessee, where Colossus 2 lives.

While Musk gets to rest easy, almost 2,000 miles away, residents are left to deal with the noise and pollution that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Musk’s data center generates double the safe amount of cancer-causing gases

Analysis shows that, at 80% capacity, these turbines could emit almost 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides, 4,000 tons of carbon monoxide, and 22 tons of formaldehyde per year – and that’s only an analysis of 30 turbines.

To achieve peak efficiency, the turbines would likely operate at 80% or more.

These pollutants are extremely dangerous, as nitrogen oxides contribute to smog and respiratory inflammation, and carbon monoxide depletes the body’s oxygen.

On top of this, formaldehyde is carcinogenic, and exposure to these substances could cause cancer.

Long-term exposure to these substances could cause serious illness in healthy people, but what makes it worse is that the pollutants are being pumped into communities already struggling with high rates of respiratory disease.

Residents say they can’t do anything because Musk is rich

Colossus’s neighbors are predominantly Black Americans who have higher rates of respiratory diseases ranging from asthma to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

COPD is a progressive, incurable lung disease that restricts airflow, causing shortness of breath, chronic coughs, and overproduction of mucus.

Patients have reported feeling like they’re breathing through a straw and dealing with “breathless panic,” which feels as though they’re suffocating.

One of the leading causes of COPD is air pollution and inhaling toxic fumes.

While we won’t see the full effect of Colossus 2 on residents now, we do know how communities living next to Musk’s energy-hungry beast feel.

One resident said he can’t sleep at night due to the noise and feels powerless because Musk has more money than he does.

Another resident told Reuters that she believes SpaceXAI will stop at nothing now that it's got its feet firmly planted in Memphis soil.

She added that Musk clearly doesn’t care about the health and wellness of his neighbors – it’s all just about money.