Data Centers or Neighbors?

I read about what’s happening in Memphis with Musk’s xAI and the reaction from people in Boxtown and the other neighborhoods nearby.

I’m not sure people outside the city get what it feels like to watch something massive move in next to your house, especially when you’re already dealing with air that fails every test for health.

AI generated image

With the way these projects start, there’s focus only on investment and jobs and money, but that’s only half the story. You have to live there to understand the other half, which is that if your kid coughs at night you’re not thinking about city budgets or a fancy substation, you’re thinking about what he’s breathing in.

I did read what the company says about wanting to strengthen the fabric of the community and how much tax revenue is coming. What never gets explained is what “community” actually means in practice, because people in Boxtown have been fighting to "breathe" for generations. They already fought off a pipeline and now they’re told it’s another new era, and yes you can look around and count the factories and power plants to see exactly what those eras have delivered before.

People claim that the company followed all the rules, but if the health department is getting 1,700 comments and national groups are threatening lawsuits, something clearly doesn’t add up.

Nobody in these neighborhoods gets a choice about what they’re breathing. If the company is running turbines without a permit and the people living there already have four times the national cancer risk, you have to wonder how much any new investment is actually worth.

I get why city leaders want the tax money, but you must also understand that no ordinance or reinvestment program changes the fact that someone in Boxtown is being asked to trust a company that didn’t even tell them what was coming.

Funny how nobody leading the project lives close enough to smell the air. I am a full believer of AI technology and how it's already changing the world mostly for good, but my point here is this is not a debate about jobs or progress, the debate is whether people in a place like Boxtown are seen as real neighbors or just a price you pay for somebody else’s data center.

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