Winners & losers: It appears that Elon Musk's recently renamed SpaceXSI has found a way to stop local residents joining a noise-pollution class-action suit against its data centers: buy up their homes on the condition they don't sue.
Real estate agents have been going door to door in the Colonial Hills neighborhood of Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of the tech giant, offering to buy residents' homes if they don't join the ongoing lawsuit, writes The Guardian.
One realtor told a resident that the plan is to buy 418 homes, and that 18 homeowners have already agreed to sell. The realtor and local mayor say the homes will house SpaceXSI staff.
In January, the EPA closed a loophole that xAI had relied on by treating off-grid turbines like temporary "non-road engines." Federal regulators clarified that such turbines must meet the same Clean Air Act requirements as stationary power plants. But the Colossus 1 and 2 sites continue to use gas turbines without the required air-pollution permits. The EPA has said the permit requirements are a matter for the state to enforce.
SpaceXSI has since promised that it will remove all its unpermitted turbines in a year, but noise pollution is still angering residents.
"It sounds like an airplane engine but it's continuous, it's incredibly loud," Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher who lives about two miles from the site, told The Guardian. "I've been woken up at 2am by it, I've been woken up at 3am by it. I sometimes have to just get away from it because it makes me so angry."
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"There's a high-pitched hum and then another sound like an airplane over your house. It's been so torturous I can't sleep; I just leave the house or turn on some music until I fall asleep completely exhausted," said Jason Haley, one of the suit's three plaintiffs. "It drives you insane. You also lose hope because you're being ignored or dismissed. There's no escape."
The homes are being offered for purchase at market value – the average house price in the area is $180,000. Musk himself spends up to four nights a week in an Airstream trailer in the Memphis area as he personally oversees the construction.
A class-action lawsuit was filed against the company in June over claims of near-constant noise, vibrations and other nuisance-level harms from the facilities.
SpaceXSI denies the claims, arguing that has adjusted its power output and installed sound-dampening walls to reduce the impact on the neighborhood.
Southaven mayor Darren Musselwhite said city monitors have recorded no noise levels above the local limit of 70 decibels, though some experts warn that sustained noise at even 50 decibels can harm health.
Musselwhite added that the buyouts won't turn Colonial Hills into a company town. "The buyout has multiple purposes which are to provide homes for some employees and a goodwill gesture from a good corporate citizen for those who perceive the industrial development near them as a negative," he said.
This isn't the first time SpaceXSI has tried to appeal to residents. It tried offering 50% discounts on its Starlink satellite internet service to locals earlier this year, but only around 2,000 people out of 250,000 signed up.