Musk promised his data center would reuse water. That's now stalled. (Politico, 5/5)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-project-musk-ai-spacex-ipo-environmental-project-ee-00896170

When Elon Musk brought xAI to Memphis, Tennessee, the company made a promise to locals worried that its data center would drain the local water supply: They would build a state-of-the-art water recycling plant, a national model for environmental best practices.

Two years later, Musk’s first data center dedicated to his AI chatbot is up and running, but construction has come to a screeching halt at the promised water recycling plant, designed to clean municipal wastewater for use in cooling the superpowered computing center.

The company announced it was stopping work on the water recycling plant in April, a month after its CEO touted it in a meeting with President Donald Trump. Now, Memphis residents are worried about their drinking water in an episode legal experts and scientists say is indicative of a broader pitfall of the data center boom.

“At the end of the day, if they are not required and don’t have any legal commitments to provide this, then it’s anyone’s guess if and when they will continue construction on this plant,” said Haley Gentry, assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.

-snip-

Musk is now saying he needs to focus on buiding a second data center in the area first.

[OGBuzz]

1. I don't think Musk is at all concerned about the peasants not having drinking water.

[AZJonnie]

2. This happening right after a meeting with DJT is almost surely not a coincidence

Buncha racists getting together and pondering "the needs of the people of Memphis"? Not that hard to figure out the calculus they'd come up with. Trump probably offered his buddy a subsidy specifically NOT to build the treatment plant

[flvegan]

3. Hey, idiots: water recycling plant first, data center second. He's a fucking liar.

They all are.