Jason Haley is up to his ears in noise.
The Southhaven, Mississippi, resident — just across the state line from Memphis, Tennessee — lives half a mile from a hyperscale data center with its whirring servers and equipment.
“It really drives you crazy,” Haley said of the noise. “You can’t escape it.
Haley has also been a constant presence on social media for the past year, posting about the steady hum and din.
“It's kept me from sleeping. It's kept me up at night. This type of noise, frequency and tonality, like comes through your house,” Haley said.
The data center is one of four in various states of construction and operation around Memphis, which are owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX. The first, called Colossus 1, went into operation in the summer of 2024. Two are in Memphis proper, and two others are in Southaven.
Collectively, the facilities are called the “Colossus Cluster.” Some estimates put the value of the centers now at about $20 billion – far more than the $14.5 billion-dollar Project Marvel proposal underway in Bessemer, Alabama.
Haley is a plaintiff in a lawsuit asking that SpaceX compensate residents for issues caused by the data center, including falling property values.
As for what the noise sounds like, Haley said the volume, even the pitch, changes day to day. He's used a sound level meter to measure the noise in decibels.
On multiple occasions he’s recorded levels in the 70s, which is comparable to the volume of a vacuum cleaner. However, he points out that comparison doesn’t fully capture what’s happening.
“I could come outside and run my vacuum cleaner,” he said, “and you're not gonna hear it half a mile away inside your house.”
Big promises
When Musk first pitched Colossus to area leaders, big promises were made for jobs and other benefits. But that’s not the way things are panning out, according to KeShaun Pearson, the executive director at Memphis Community Against Pollution.
“Instead of prosperity, we got poison,” Pearson said. “Instead of something that would actually economically benefit us, we got something that is siphoning off our most valuable resources.”
Pearson grew up in the largely Black area of southwest Memphis, where two of the data centers are located. While they’re still being built out, the centers are operating and having a noticeable effect.
Locals said air quality is worse, largely from on-site mobile gas turbines that power the facilities. Pearson pointed to a University of Tennessee study that shows a nine percent increase in levels of hazardous nitrogen dioxide compared to before the facilities went up. That’s in a neighborhood two miles away from the original facility.
“What we do know is that there will be an uptick in premature deaths, because of the increased ozone, the increased formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide that the methane gas turbines will spew into our clean air,” Pearson said.
Pearson’s brother, Justin Pearson, currently holds one of Memphis’ seats in the Tennessee State House. A Democrat, he’s now running for U.S. Congress to represent Tennessee’s 9th District.
He’s on the same page with his older brother, noting the district he represents has a long history of pollution from industry.
“We've been dealing with increases in respiratory illnesses [in] our family members, of our neighbors, of my constituents over these last several years,” Justin Pearson said.
“But things have gotten worse, dramatically,” he said, alluding to the presence of the Colossus facilities. “They're polluting the very air that we breathe, by having these gas turbines. Now in Southaven, they have 59 gas turbines operating illegally, polluting the air of our community.”
Justin Pearson said most of the people impacted are in Memphis, in the communities he represents, just north of Southaven. According to multiple sources, including Reuters, SpaceX installed the turbines without securing federal clean air permits.
Watering Musk's plants
Another issue is how much water the Colossus facilities use. Sarah Houston is the executive director for Protect Our Aquifer, a Memphis-based nonprofit.
She told WBHM that Colossus 1 – the first of the centers – is drawing an average of about 1 million gallons of water a day. Those figures are based on an examination of the facility’s utility bills.
It’s not just the amount that concerns her and others – it’s the pressure such a large draw puts on the aging water system. She noted the city's water system has had more shutdowns in recent years.
“We have these extreme water crises, where we have these deep freezes and these ice storms, where our utility has had to choose water for people or water for the power plant,” she said.
Houston said the Cluster’s needs are also adding to a growing problem of siphoning off water stores in the aquifer.
“The more that we pump from underground, the more we see this pollution getting pulled deeper towards the water supply,” she said. “We're dealing with legacy pollution, stuff that happened, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s.
“Time is catching up with us and we're seeing low levels of arsenic, just above the wells. And with that continued strain, that continued pull, we could have an actual, a serious health threat on our hands.”
WBHM attempted to reach a spokesperson for SpaceX, but we did not hear back. Representatives of the company have previously said they will transition away from their reliance on mobile gas turbines, reducing pollution from the centers.
But earlier this summer, Musk made an announcement about the Cluster, saying he wants the facilities to generate an unprecedented 10 gigawatts of compute power. Industry watchers say any expansion of the Cluster will almost certainly increase the need for power, boosting pollution and noise levels even more.
SpaceX contributes about $30 million annually in local property taxes, and critics say local leaders are largely inclined to let the company have its way. Jason Haley said his concerns are falling on deaf ears.
“Once they're in, they don't really care,” Haley said, referring to the big data companies and their efforts to build out as quickly as they can. “They're just going to do what they want to do. This is a race.”
Sarah Houston likened it to a gold rush, noting that Google and the AI company Anthropic are now leasing compute power from SpaceX at the price of more than $2 billion a month. But like the 49ers and the miners of the Klondike rush that vein could play out.
If that happens, the colossal debt these data companies have amassed will need to be paid back.
“They're playing with fun money right now, but eventually those bills are due,” Houston said.
In the meantime, Justin Pearson said the owners of the data companies are making a mint.
“The minuscule dollars in tax money that our communities are getting is nothing in comparison to the lives that are being lost and damaged due to noise pollution, air pollution, water pollution possibilities that these facilities bring with them everywhere they go,” he said.
It’s a reason activists said to put the brakes, or at least a pause, on hyperscale data facilities. Pearson, Haley, and Houston all agreed people in the Birmingham area should be taking notes on what’s happening in Memphis. There are lessons to be learned on how to work with or push back against big data.
“This is not a hopeless situation, y'all,” KeShaun Pearson told WBHM. “We have seen oligarchs come and go. We are at an inflection point where we can choose different. We just have to continue to organize, continue to fight back.”
“Stay together,” he said, referring to people in Alabama. “Know that we are here with you.”
