In Southaven, a town in Mississippi, there is commotion 24 hours a day. It doesn’t stop even at dawn. Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher, assured that “it sounds like an airplane engine, but it’s continuous and very loud.” Sometimes he wakes her up at two or three in the morning.
The noise isn’t coming from an airport, but from the power plant that powers xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company’s largest data center, and has its neighbors up in arms against the facility. Just as it says guardianThe company found a solution so there would be no more neighborhood complaints: buy the entire neighborhood. Of course, with one condition.
Home in exchange for not suing. Elon Musk plans to buy 418 homes for company employees in the neighborhood to silence protests from Colonial Hills residents. As I have gathered guardianAt least 18 owners have already accepted the offer to purchase the mask
In a letter sent to residents, MZX, the xAI subsidiary that runs the complex, said it “needs the land for commercial purposes” but will only buy the property if the owner does not participate in a class action lawsuit it has campaigned to force a neighboring platform company to eliminate noise and reduce air pollution levels that have worsened since the center opened.
“It’s basically going to become Elon Musk’s little playground. Elonville,” laments Elizabeth Rose. This is not the first time that Kasturi has bought a neighborhood for his employees. SpaceX has already done this to house space in Bastrop (Austin).
Very noisy neighbours. The lawsuit that xAI wants to avoid at all costs began in June, shortly after infrastructure activity began. Three neighbors reported near-constant noise and vibration generated by the mask’s infrastructure. One of them, Jason Haley, lives about 800 meters from the thirty turbines that cool the facility and posted videos measuring noise. xAI denies the allegations and says it built walls to push sound.
The city’s mayor said inspectors found no violations of the local noise emission limit set at 70 decibels and assured that the homes would house employees and that it would be “a gesture of good will from a socially responsible company.” Critics note that the WHO analyzes the effects of environmental noise on sleep and the heart.
Turbine without permission. The plant is powered by 69 temporary truck-sized gas turbines. The company defended that, because they were mobile, they did not need an air quality permit. But earlier this year, the EPA (Federal Environmental Agency) determined they needed it. In April, the historic civil rights organization NAACP and several environmental groups filed a lawsuit to preemptively shut them down. The Justice Department tried to shut down that case, citing national security, but a judge refused.
A few months ago, xAI agreed with Mississippi regulators to remove the turbines before July 2027. They will be replaced by a dedicated 1.2 GW plant with 41 approved turbines.
No one wants a data center nearby. Southerners aren’t the only ones opposed to living near data centers. According to a report by the Gallup consulting firm, 71% of Americans disapprove of setting up a data center near their neighborhood. In a Reuters and Ipsos poll, only 14% of respondents would support building one in their community.
Data Center Watch Tracker counted 75 data center construction projects blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026. The short- and medium-term inconveniences they have caused by neighboring protests total around $130,000 million.
Opposition parties doubled to 833, spread across 49 states. New York signed the first state moratorium in July. This is a break of up to one year in permits for plants of 50 MW or more.
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Picture | Flickr (Gage Skidmore), xAI, Magnific
