"Misleading Mailer: Despite locals’ health concerns, the Chamber of Commerce has gone to unusual lengths to promote a data center, including sending a mailer with inaccurate information.
“Concierge Service”: The chamber has a five-member operations team dedicated to xAI, one of Musk’s companies, as it tries to transform Memphis into a global hub of technological innovation.
Community Health Concerns: Residents of a Memphis neighborhood worried emissions from xAI’s gas turbines would add to the pollution from nearby industrial plants that triggers asthma."
"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 Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Her cousin didn’t know what to make of the postcard featuring the logos of nine local, state and federal agencies and the chamber’s assurance that billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company operated “in full compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local regulations and oversight.” The facility — part of Musk’s bid to dominate the AI market — opened at a breakneck pace almost a year before, brought to Memphis, Tennessee, largely due to the efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce.
Across the country, communities are grappling with the boom of data centers and supercomputing facilities, which consume voracious amounts of electricity and water and can emit smog-producing pollutants. In places from Maricopa County, Arizona, to Prince William County, Virginia, residents have used zoning restrictions as a means to keep supercomputers at bay — an option not available to Memphians because the xAI building was already zoned for industrial use."
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