Right across the state line from the ever-expanding Colossus II site is 2875 Stanton Road, home to a fleet of gas-burning turbines that generate electricity to keep SpaceXAI (and its customers) online.
The pushback in Southaven, Mississippi over the Stanton Road site has been growing. Just this weekend, there was a public event addressing the issue, hosted by the NAACP and State Rep. Justin J. Pearson.
Tonight, the company announced (in a statement that was also emailed to members of the press, including yours truly) that it will be removing its temporary turbines over the next year:
SpaceXAI is building the world’s largest integrated supercomputer at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. We build our facilities rapidly while upholding the highest standards of operational responsibility, environmental stewardship, and community partnership. SpaceXAI is committed to powering its supercomputers in ways that both reduce costs of energy for the American people and minimize the impact on surrounding communities. Today, we take the next step in that journey.
We have entered into an agreed order with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) establishing a fixed removal timeline for all 69 of the temporary, mobile turbines that currently power our facility in Southaven, Mississippi. We are rapidly removing these mobile turbines as we bring online permanent power from a 1.2 GW power plant we are constructing under our Clean Air Act permit. We will begin removing temporary turbines from the site as early as August 2026. All temporary turbines will be removed by July 2027. Today’s agreed order codifies our commitment to achieve this timeline.
This comes six months after the EPA ruled against xAI, stating that even turbines used in a “temporary” manner were subject to environmental regulation.
More importantly, this news comes one year after MDEQ said xAI could turn the turbines on a temporary basis for 12 months.
The update continues:
The 1.2 GW permanent power plant currently under construction will consist of 41 permanent turbines authorized under a Clean Air Act permit, granted to SpaceXAI in March 2026. The application for this permit, completed more than seven months of detailed regulatory review. SpaceXAI is also investing millions of dollars in sound walls, silencers, and next-generation turbines with advanced quieting technologies through partnerships with the surrounding community. We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community.
Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian has some background on the site:
The company started operating its first three turbines (about 39 megawatts of power capacity) on August 1, 2025. It added another 15 later that month, and then seven more between November and December 2025. The company then added a single turbine in January, four more over four days in March, and then the remainder came in April, May and June.
Of the 60 turbines the company released data for, about 15 ran more than 20 hours a day in June, according to data the company supplied to MDEQ. One, a 35-megawatt turbine made by GE Vernova, ran 24 hours a day.
The amount of time the turbines have run raises the question of whether the machines’ emissions are great enough to require an air emissions permit even with the one-year exemption.
I am all for having fewer turbines spinning in and around Memphis, and I hope the company is true to its word when it comes to decreasing the noise and air pollution caused by these machines.
I also hope that MDEQ and SpaceXAI will continue to update the public on this process and the changes that will come from it.