The fight over who gets poisoned so Silicon Valley can train smarter chatbots has landed in federal court. The NAACP is suing Elon Musk’s xAI for allegedly skirting permits and running gas turbines that are spewing formaldehyde and smog‑forming pollution into Black communities already scoring failing grades for air quality. To keep its “Colossus” data […]
Data Centers
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
Drone Footage Shows Musk’s AI Power Plant Flouting Clean Air Regulations in Black Community
This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action, and produced in partnership with The Guardian. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
A Rural S.C. County Quietly Approved a $2B Data Center During the Winter Storm
As a rare winter storm bore down on South Carolina, bringing conditions that historically paralyze the state for days, local officials in a rural county quietly pushed through a massive $2.4 billion data center without most residents knowing it was even on the table. “There was a public meeting, which most were unaware of,” Jessie […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area
In December, on a two-lane road not far from the ACE Basin, a protected ecosystem and wildlife refuge in South Carolina, Paul Black drove past St. Paul AME Church and the cemetery where his wife’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried, then slowed as the trees opened onto the piney tract. Black is an environmental […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Religion
Meta’s AI Data Center Sparks a Crisis in the Bible Belt Over the Power of Faith
Photo illustrations by Alexandra Watts/Capital B RICHLAND PARISH, Louisiana — Seen as far as 2 miles away, a white cross — the size of a 12-story building — welcomes you to this largely forgotten stretch of Delta country. While cotton no longer runs supreme here, every road, ballot measure, and industrial promise still has to […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
From Mississippi to Maryland, Black Communities Are Taking On Big Tech
When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him. At first, the […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with MLK50. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Marilyn Gooch was already skeptical about one of her newest neighbors, xAI’s supercomputing facility, when her cousin walked across the street in June with a blue mailer from the […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
‘We Deserve to Breathe Clean Air’: Memphis Residents Take on Elon Musk’s xAI
This story was originally published by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Subscribe to their newsletter here. Easter Knox’s brick home in Boxtown has a garden, space for her dog to run and a bench under a sprawling acorn tree planted by her husband. Years ago, he built a large gazebo in the yard adjacent to theirs — a […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Technology
America’s Digital Demand Threatens Black Communities with More Pollution
Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and South Carolina Gov. Ibra Blackwood worked together to bring electricity to rural South Carolina. But to build the power plant that would make it happen, they destroyed the homes of 900 Black sharecropping families. With them, 6,000 graves — including those of formerly enslaved people — were […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Technology
Crypto-Mining Creates New Environmental Injustices for Black Texans
Bitcoin is more than just a shiny new way to lose money. It’s also fueling Texas’ energy struggles as the state prepares for another year of record-breaking heat. And Black communities are caught in the crosswires of climate change, those booming data centers, and the power plants needed to meet both demands. Last year, during […]