The Metropolis of Memphis has launched preliminary air high quality take a look at outcomes from three websites throughout the town, together with one close to Elon Musk’s xAI knowledge middle in South Memphis.
In accordance with metropolis officers, the outcomes confirmed no harmful ranges of pollution. “At each website and for each pollutant examined, ranges have been both too low to detect or nicely beneath established security thresholds,” the town’s report learn.
xAI Welcomes Air High quality Check Outcomes
Checks have been carried out at Macedonia Church in Boxtown, The Hyperlinks at Whitehaven, and Metropolis Corridor Downtown. Memphis Mayor Paul Younger said that the info solely represents a “snapshot in time” and that continued monitoring will happen.
“The Metropolis doesn’t management air high quality laws, however we stepped as much as discover solutions. The preliminary outcomes confirmed no harmful ranges of air pollution at any of the examined websites. We’re dedicated to ongoing testing to proceed to tell and shield our neighborhood,” Mayor Younger said.
xAI, which opened a facility in Boxtown to accommodate its Colossus supercomputer, welcomed the town’s preliminary findings. The factitious intelligence startup shared its feedback in a publish on social media platform X.
“xAI welcomes the unbiased third-party knowledge displaying no harmful pollutant ranges at take a look at websites close to our Memphis knowledge middle. Now we have constructed a world-class knowledge middle in Memphis and we couldn’t have finished it with out the help of the local people and its leaders,” the corporate said.
Critics Are Not Happy
Environmental advocates and native leaders, nonetheless, weren’t happy with the town’s preliminary checks. The Southern Environmental Regulation Middle criticized the town’s strategy, arguing that smog-forming emissions, together with nitrogen oxides from xAI’s generators, pose well being dangers that the town’s testing didn’t account for, as famous in a FOX 13 Memphis report.
“Town didn’t measure ozone air pollution–higher often known as smog–which we already know is a serious drawback within the Memphis space… As neighborhood members have warned for the final 12 months, smog-forming air pollution is a serious concern with the unpermitted generators being run at xAI’s South Memphis knowledge middle,” the group famous.
State Consultant Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) echoed the group’s criticism.
“We don’t want any extra deceptive reviews which can be extra involved with discovering a conclusion conducive to Mayor Younger’s unwavering help of xAI, fairly than discovering the reality. Our evaluate of the data launched by the Metropolis of Memphis earlier this night revealed a evident and demanding omission of their air pollution testing and outcomes: the monitoring of ozone which is a substantial think about air air pollution issues in Memphis,” he famous.
