Across much of the U.S., people have little way to know when the air they breathe turns dangerous.

Over recent decades, federal funding for public air monitoring has declined, the number of monitors has fallen, and much of the remaining equipment is aging or located far from major polluters.

Now, the stakes are rising: Wildfire smoke is reaching more communities, data centers are adding pollution, and climate-driven heat waves are worsening ozone levels. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has delayed and rolled back requirements meant to hold companies accountable for their emissions.

As the public monitoring system has weakened, communities have increasingly turned to an alternative: low-cost sensors they can use themselves. 

But a Floodlight investigation finds industry is moving to restrict that option, too.

Since 2024, lawmakers in Louisiana, Ohio and Kentucky have passed strikingly similar bills — backed by chemical or manufacturing trade groups — that curb the use of community-collected data in enforcement actions.

The bills share a common thread: They block regulators from using air-quality data for enforcement purposes unless it meets EPA-approved standards. Similar bills in West Virginia have yet to pass. 

In case after case, proponents have made the same argument: Community monitoring isn’t reliable enough for regulatory enforcement. 

Yet when lawmakers in West Virginia offered a version of a bill that would have let regulators consider community data if it met manufacturer requirements, industry refused to back it. 

The bill “essentially codifies what we are trying to prevent,” an official at the chemical giant Chemours wrote in an internal email. 

An early-warning system in decline

Thousands of small, often-unremarkable instruments serve as the nation's early-warning system for dangerous air — detecting pollution that people can’t always see or smell.

Some sit inside shelters the size of garden sheds. Others are mounted on rooftops or tucked into fenced compounds. Together, these monitors measure pollutants ranging from ozone and carbon monoxide to carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride.

The network grew out of the 1963 Clean Air Act and transformed the way the nation tracked air pollution, giving regulators data they could use to identify dangerous conditions and hold polluters accountable. Since then, air pollution has fallen dramatically across much of the U.S.

But today, the network is “showing its age,” said Chet Wayland, who led EPA's Air Quality Assessment Division for nearly two decades. “And it's getting smaller over time.”

For example:

• Leaks, termites and ants plague monitoring stations in one state while officials in another have resorted to shopping on eBay for discontinued parts, according to a 2020 congressional watchdog report. 
• Adjusted for inflation, federal grants to support the network have fallen more than 35% over the past two decades, while the Trump administration tried unsuccessfully last year to eliminate them entirely — and is trying again this year.
• The number of government air monitors nationwide fell by nearly half over the same 20-year period, according to EPA data.

The decline was especially pronounced among air monitors that track toxic chemicals, including those linked to cancer and other serious health effects. 

For example, the network monitoring vinyl chloride — the carcinogen at the center of the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — shrank by more than half from 2004 to 2025. So did the network for chloroprene and benzene.

Floodlight analyzed the largest industrial sources of air pollution in Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia — where the monitoring legislation was introduced — and compared what each one reported releasing against what public monitors in those states are capable of detecting.

For 71 of the 100 facilities examined, the chemical they release most isn't measured by any government monitor in the state. 

Hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, methanol — no air monitor currently reporting to the EPA measures those toxic chemicals. 

Nelson Roque, an assistant professor at Penn State, co-authored a 2025 study that found nearly six in 10 U.S. counties have no public air monitor at all.

Such gaps matter most in communities already facing higher risks. Black and low-income people bear a disproportionate share of elevated cancer risks from air toxics, according to the EPA. 

“We've realized the value of other infrastructure, and yet not this one,” Roque said. “Last I checked, we all breathe air.”

The shrinking public network has set the stage for another fight: Who gets to measure the air, and whose data counts.

Louisiana: A monitoring gap, and the fight to keep it

Public air monitors in Louisiana — a national hub for oil, gas and petrochemicals — are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals, a recent Floodlight investigation found. 

Community groups have tried to fill that gap. A $500,000 grant awarded under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act would have allowed the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to establish air monitoring in 27 communities it identified as pollution hot spots.

But the group was able to install monitors in only four communities before the Trump administration canceled the grant last year. 

“It's like having your legs knocked out from under you,” said LEAN executive director Marylee Orr.

In 2024, meanwhile, Louisiana became the first state to restrict the use of community air monitoring data.
 

The Louisiana Chemistry Association helped draft the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act (CAMRA), which cites the need for “science-based standards” and bars the use of air pollution data in enforcement or regulatory actions unless it’s captured by EPA-approved monitors. That equipment typically costs tens of thousands of dollars.

In a previous statement to Floodlight, LCA president David Cresson defended the law, saying it ensures “data used to enforce our state's environmental protection laws complies with minimum U.S. EPA standards” and doesn't stop residents from monitoring air quality for their own information — only from using unregulated methods for enforcement purposes.

The same period brought other rollbacks, some sought by the chemical industry’s most powerful national lobbying group. The American Chemistry Council — the LCA’s national counterpart — spent more than $22 million lobbying in 2024, ranking 10th among 9,200 organizations tracked by an independent watchdog group. 

The ACC and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers last year requested a blanket two-year exemption from Biden-era regulations meant to cut certain toxic emissions by nearly 80 percent at roughly 200 chemical manufacturing plants. They didn't get the blanket exemption — but individual plants that applied did.

So far, President Donald Trump’s EPA has granted more than 60 petrochemical facilities exemptions from the rule, and the agency is now weighing whether to rescind it entirely. 

The ACC also successfully lobbied against federal rules that would have required about two dozen chemical plants to conduct fenceline monitoring for ethylene oxide, a carcinogen that contributes substantially to the elevated cancer risk in Louisiana's Cancer Alley.

The national trade group did not respond to Floodlight’s questions about its lobbying or its involvement in Louisiana’s CAMRA law. Nor did it explain its role in promoting similar legislation in other states. 

But in an emailed statement, the ACC said it has invested in community air-monitoring projects and “publicly advocated for expanded access to credible air quality information.” It said it supports monitoring that produces reliable, transparent data and gives communities and regulators information they can use to make informed decisions.

Kentucky takes a page from Louisiana 

Odors from Rubbertown, an industrial complex that housed tire and synthetic rubber plants during World War II, have long bothered residents in west Louisville, Ky. So, in the early 2000s, the city’s Air Pollution Control District, the EPA and others launched a study that confirmed what residents had long known: The air had unacceptably high levels of toxic pollutants. 

A plan was enacted, regulations were revised, and the air was continuously tested. More than 15 years later, regulators announced toxic air contaminants in the Louisville metro area were down by almost 80 percent — with the most dangerous chemicals cut by 96 percent.

Despite the success of expanded air monitoring in Louisville, Kentucky lawmakers have moved in the opposite direction. In March 2025, 10 months after Louisiana’s CAMRA law, they passed House Bill 137, which also restricted how air-monitoring data can be used in enforcement actions. 

Lloyd “Rusty” Cress, executive director of the Kentucky Chemical Council, told the Kentucky Lantern that the bill was similar to Louisiana’s community air monitoring legislation.  The law says air needs to be tested with “scientifically defensible” methods — echoing a phrase used in an ACC blog post in 2023.

The ACC, the American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical and Chemours all lobbied for it.

Jess Loizeaux, a Chemours spokesperson, said the company doesn’t object to community air monitoring. “We object to community air monitoring results being used for enforcement decisions without first verifying the validity and accuracy of the data through official tests performed by trained technicians at the appropriate regulatory authority,” she told Floodlight.

Kentucky’s political push unfolded against a backdrop of major gaps in public air monitoring. Only one of the state’s 25 largest air polluters is close to an air monitoring station that measures the top toxic chemical it emits.

Fewer than a quarter of the state’s counties have an air monitoring station. 

Ohio’s restrictions meet with legal challenge 

Ohio’s new air monitoring rule was tucked into last year’s budget bill with no named sponsor.  It, too, stops regulators from acting on air-monitoring data collected by community groups. 

“When we take away the ability for those folks to have a reasonably priced monitor … for their own protection, we've just taken any tool they had right out of their hands,” said Miranda Leppla, an attorney who sued the state over the new rules last year on behalf of environmental groups.

The lawsuit also challenges another provision in the budget bill that instructs state regulators to remove Ohio’s “air nuisance rule,” which allowed citizens to take legal action against companies whose emissions endanger public health.

One of the plaintiffs, Donna Ballinger, lives in Middletown, Ohio, hundreds of feet from a steel manufacturing plant that frequently rains down black, white and gray particles onto her house and yard, she said. Fumes sometimes burn her eyes and throat, she said, and she often holds her nose when walking between her house and car. 

“My fear is cancer,” Ballinger told Floodlight.

She has an air monitor mounted in her front yard. But Ohio’s new requirement has made it impossible to use the data such monitors collect “as evidence of the nuisance conditions,” the lawsuit says.

The Ohio Chemistry Technology Council backed the measure. The group did not respond to Floodlight’s requests for an interview.

Tony Long, general counsel for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said businesses are concerned that uncalibrated air monitors will spread misinformation.

“Given our litigious nature in this state, we think that the guardrails make sense,” he told Floodlight. “You don't want to be stopped for speeding on an uncalibrated speed gun.”

With more than 90 public air monitoring stations, Ohio has a more robust air monitoring network than some states. Yet none of Ohio's 25 largest air polluters are within 20 miles of a public air monitoring station that measures its top toxic emission. In fact, no air monitor in the U.S. measures the chemical that 10 of them release most.

Ohio’s Syensqo Specialty Polymers plant, which makes a resin used in plastics, released more than 130 tons of volatile organic compounds into the air last year, according to Ohio regulators. 

The nearest air monitoring station is about four miles away — in West Virginia — and doesn’t measure VOCs. 

Industry resistance stalls West Virginia efforts 

West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection runs just 14 monitoring sites in 12 counties. The other 43 counties have no state monitoring stations at all.

None of West Virginia's 25 largest air polluters has a public air monitor within 25 miles that measures the pollutant it releases most. For 17 of the facilities, no air monitor anywhere in the U.S. measures their top toxic emission.

In 2024, a state bill backed by the West Virginia Manufacturers Association would have barred community air monitoring data from use in regulation, enforcement and lawsuits; it passed the House but died in the Senate — partly because industry couldn’t agree on what to include.

A compromise version of the 2024 bill, drafted to address the concerns of some lawmakers, would have let regulators use community data if the monitors met manufacturer standards. Industry refused to support it. 

In emailed comments about the compromise bill, West Virginia Manufacturers Association Bill Bissett said it “neuters” the measure and was “now toothless.” Chemours’ Jeff Fritz wrote, “I do not like this draft,” and said the bill “essentially codifies what we are trying to prevent,” according to emails obtained by Mountain State Spotlight. Neither Bissett nor Fritz responded to requests for comment.

Subsequent bills, introduced in 2025 and 2026, also failed.

Why monitoring matters 

Evidence shows that better monitoring can reduce pollution — and potentially save lives. 

In 2018, the EPA made refineries begin monitoring benzene along their fencelines, and within five years, the number of refineries above EPA’s benzene action level dropped by half, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

While some states have made it difficult to know what’s in the air, others have been proactive: 

• California is funding equipment and training for residents in fenceline communities to monitor for things like pesticides, hexavalent chromium and other toxic chemicals. From 2017 to 2025, the state budgeted $1.4 billion to help communities that have historically been overburdened with air pollution.
• Colorado required four industrial plants to install fenceline monitors that measure hydrogen sulfide, benzene and hydrogen cyanide in real time. The state also bought two mobile vans that regularly sample the same pollutants in surrounding neighborhoods. 
• The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and its contractors operate 33 automated gas chromatographs — sophisticated equipment that collects air samples every hour and provides near real-time readings of volatile organic compounds. 

But in much of the U.S, those who live near industrial plants still have little way to know what they’re breathing.

An unanswered question

Reonda Victor lives in Louisiana's heavily industrialized corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where flares from industrial plants often illuminate the night sky. 

Her mother, grandmother and sister all had breast cancer. Concerned about her own risk, she underwent genetic testing, which showed no predisposition to the disease, she said.

The closest public air monitoring station to her home — which lies in an area where air pollution poses one of the highest cancer risks in the country — tests only for lead. 

Did industrial pollution cause the illnesses that struck her family members? She can’t say. But proper air monitoring could help answer that question, she said.

“Without information, we don’t know.”

Kentucky Public Radio contributed to this investigation.

This article was produced in partnership between Floodlight and The Guardian

The largest planned AI data center in New Jersey is being accused of violating federal law after a Floodlight visual investigation found the site running dozens of unpermitted gas-powered generators. 

Thermal drone footage we captured last week showed the partly completed DataOne facility in Vineland was operating at least 45 of the site's 62 generators at the time.

DataOne has stirred controversy since breaking ground in 2025 due to persistent noise complaints, unpermitted construction and a contentious zoning process. It's located about 40 miles outside Philadelphia and slated to provide AI computing power to Microsoft as part of a $17-billion deal with Nebius, a Dutch AI infrastructure giant. 

Located roughly a mile from two schools, the tractor-trailer-size generators emit substantial amounts of health-harming air pollution linked to asthma, heart attacks and even premature death. 

None have permits.

Federal and state law requires DataOne “to have a final permit before bringing those generators onsite, and certainly before firing them up,” former EPA air enforcement chief Bruce Buckheit told Floodlight. 

Buckheit, who served under multiple Republican administrations, believes DataOne’s activities do “violate federal law” and that the company should immediately stop operating the generators and pay a fine for “their illegal emissions.”

A New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson confirmed that the agency “has issued no permits, nor are any permit applications under review for power generators at the DataOne facility in Vineland.” 

The spokesperson said the agency noticed the generators during a site inspection on July 29 and has yet to make “a full compliance determination.” They declined to answer follow-up questions.

Buckheit said “that one might be seeing administrative enforcement action [soon].”

DataOne did not respond to questions regarding its unpermitted generators but said the company “remains committed to meeting all applicable environmental and permitting requirements.” 

Nebius did not respond to requests for comment by publication. Microsoft declined to comment. The Environmental Protection Agency told Floodlight, after being presented with its findings, that New Jersey’s regulators are responsible for air permitting over DataOne.

DataOne is the first data center in New Jersey seeking to build its own power plant. 

The controversial tactic was pioneered by Elon Musk’s data centers along the Tennessee and Mississippi border and has since gone mainstream: Nationwide, nearly 60 data centers are planning to build their own gas plants, according to research by energy analytics firm Cleanview. 

The “bring your own power” strategy has resulted in yearslong backlogs for gas-powered turbines, with facilities increasingly turning to even less conventional energy sources, such as modified jet engines and portable generators.  

In Vineland, DataOne originally submitted a permit application for more than 30 Bergen gas-burning engines, which are commonly used to propel cruise ships. NJDEP, however, found multiple deficiencies in DataOne’s air permit application for the engines, according to public records reviewed by Floodlight. 

DataOne withdrew the application in May and instead now plans to rely on an array of Bloom fuel cells capable of producing 300 megawatts. Though powered by gas, fuel cells use a combustion-free electrochemical process to generate electricity and result in far less health-harming air pollution than Bergen engines. 

However, the fuel cells still produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, and a Bloom official testified at a planning board meeting that if completed, they could emit more than 2 billion pounds of the climate-warming gas every year. 

Until the fuel cells are operational, however, the facility is relying on the unpermitted gas generators, the first of which appear to have been turned on in October, according to maintenance logs.

It’s unclear how long the equipment has been operational, but thermal drone footage captured by a data intelligence company appears to show 25 of the unpermitted gas generators operating in late June. 

Local residents have complained of a pervasive humming noise coming from the data center for months, sparking a lawsuit in New Jersey state court over noise pollution that many suspect is linked to the generators. Andrew and Stevi Groetsch live less than a mile from the site and say the noise has awoken them in the middle of the night and often disturbs bedtime stories with their kids.

“It's just constant. It never goes away,” Andrew Groetsch said. The couple has complained about the noise since November and hope NJDEP, the county and the EPA will “at least get that part of it shut down and put a closer eye” on the rest of the project.

“If you don't follow one rule, what makes us have any reason to believe that you would then follow others?” Stevi Groetsch asked. “It’s so upsetting.” 

If the DEP decides to issue an enforcement action over the unpermitted generators, it wouldn’t be the first time New Jersey officials have cited DataOne for violations. 

A lawsuit brought by local residents alleges that the Cumberland County Department of Public Health cited DataOne for violating noise ordinances for nighttime sound levels at the site in March. Earlier this month, the City of Vineland issued two stop work orders, including for moving the fuel cells onsite without permission — the same fuel cells meant to eventually replace the unpermitted generators.

“It seems that this industry, in particular, values speed to market more than almost anything else,” Buckheit said. He suspects the company won’t stop operating the generators until they are issued a stop work order because they “seem to believe that it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”

This story is from Floodlight and is published in partnership with The Guardian and with contributions from The Louisiana Illuminator.

Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St. Rose, in southeastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3 a.m. and fled to an all-night IHOP.

In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used. 

So she stopped.

“I shut my mouth like they wanted me to,” Kyereh said.

Along the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — where cancer rates from toxic air pollution are among the nation’s highest — many residents live in the shadows of heavy industry with no idea what they’re breathing.

Turns out, that’s by design.

A Floodlight analysis found that Louisiana’s public air monitors are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals. 

The analysis identified the state’s top 25 industrial air polluters using emissions data that companies self-report to the EPA. Then we used state data to calculate each plant's distance to the nearest public air monitoring station — and to determine which pollutants those monitors actually test for. We found:

• Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities operate without a single public air monitor within five miles.
• Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine is one of Louisiana’s biggest air polluters, releasing an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. The nearest air monitoring station is about eight miles away and measures only ozone.
• No public monitors measure ammonia — despite CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emitting more than 7 million pounds of it in 2024, making it one of the nation’s top toxic polluters, according to EPA data.
• The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area — ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde — aren't monitored by the state at all. 

Industry groups have spent years fighting proposals that would require better monitoring around manufacturing plants. They also helped draft a 2024 law that sharply restricted how community air monitoring could be used in enforcement. 

Lawmakers later introduced similar legislation in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, suggesting Louisiana is one front in a broader fight over who gets to measure toxic air.

What the monitors missed

On Aug. 24, 2023, a leak at Marathon’s southeast Louisiana refinery exposed the limits of the state’s air monitoring system.

At 6:50 p.m., the Coast Guard fielded a report that naphtha — a highly flammable liquid — was leaking at the Garyville facility. More than six hours passed before the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring the air.

Around 7 a.m., the leak ignited a massive fire, sending a plume of black smoke into the air. Two nearby schools opened anyway. Residents within two miles weren’t ordered to evacuate until 10:15 a.m. — more than 15 hours after the leak began.

Naphtha exposure can cause dizziness, headaches and nausea, and a Guardian investigation found at least 29 residents were later treated at area hospitals.

The nearest state air monitor measures ozone — but not the toxic pollutants, including volatile organic compounds, released in the fire — and the plant’s own monitors track just one chemical at its fenceline: benzene. The company’s Los Angeles refinery, by contrast, continuously monitors more than 15 pollutants — as California regulations require.

Wilma Subra, a decorated environmental chemist from Louisiana who examined the fire’s emissions, said better air monitoring likely would have prompted faster school closures and evacuations.

The state’s monitoring network, she said, is “not adequate to protect the health of the community living in close proximity to these industrial facilities.”

‘Emergency waiting to occur’

Community advocates and environmental researchers have spent years pressing for expanded monitoring — especially in predominantly Black communities near industrial facilities. 

Adrienne Katner, an associate professor at Louisiana State University and a former state environmental health scientist, concluded in 2022 that roughly 400 high-emission facilities in Louisiana had no public air monitoring. Communities only learn about toxic releases when there’s a shelter-in-place order or an evacuation, she said.

She called the situation “a public health emergency waiting to occur.” 

Today, Katner says the lack of air monitoring data serves as a shield for polluters. “The theme is, if you don’t look for it, you won’t find it,” she told Floodlight.

Families living near polluting facilities bear the burden of that uncertainty, Katner said: “It’s taking years off their lives.” 

The following year, researchers from Johns Hopkins University drove a mobile laboratory through Louisiana's industrial corridor to measure pollution firsthand. In 14 of the 15 locations they studied, cancer risks from toxic emissions exceeded EPA figures — in some areas by more than 11 times.

“This is a failure of a regulatory framework that’s supposed to protect the citizens.” — Peter DeCarlo, Johns Hopkins scientist and study co-author

Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric scientist at Johns Hopkins who co-authored the study, said regulators miss much of the region's pollution because too few air monitors measure too few chemicals.

“If large emissions from these facilities are happening far away from the air monitors, they're often going to go unnoticed,” DeCarlo said. “But that doesn't mean they're not gonna have an effect on the people who live there.”

Even the EPA has raised concerns. 

In 2023, the federal agency urged state regulators to create a permanent monitoring station in New Orleans’ Irish Channel neighborhood. The area sits just across the Mississippi River from BWC Harvey, a 48-acre storage terminal that handles hot asphalt and other toxic chemicals and has drawn hundreds of resident complaints about noxious fumes. 

A temporary state monitor there had previously recorded elevated levels of harmful particulate matter. But in 2022, Louisiana regulators shut it down.

The Irish Channel wasn’t the only community where the state retreated from monitoring. Louisiana’s 2022 monitoring plan included a section titled “Environmental Justice Considerations,” describing monitors in communities such as St. Rose and the Irish Channel. A year later, the section was gone, as was the St. Rose monitor.

When the EPA urged the state to keep considering environmental justice, LDEQ replied that such considerations were “beyond the scope” of the plan.

LDEQ operates 35 permanent air monitoring stations and says that it maintains “a robust air monitoring network that meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements.” But the agency acknowledges that the network is not designed to monitor pollution in fenceline communities. 

Jason Meyers, who oversees the agency’s 35-person air monitoring team, told Floodlight: “We run our sites well. We have good operators, and [the network] provides very high-quality data.”

The agency has two mobile monitoring vans that respond to incidents, monitor air quality in parts of the state without permanent stations, and fill in when major storms knock out power.

The department also measures toxic air pollutants at 19 sites around the state, but that equipment doesn’t monitor continuously. Most of those monitors sample every sixth day — on a fixed, publicly known schedule — meaning plant operators know when the air will be tested. 

“Financial and technical constraints limit full monitoring coverage” of all toxic air pollutants, LDEQ acknowledged.

While community advocates have pushed for more air monitoring, Louisiana has moved in the opposite direction. Since 2020, the state has lost four air monitoring stations. Expenditures for the LDEQ division that oversees air monitoring fell nearly 15% between 2020 and 2026. Adjusted for inflation, spending dropped by more than one-third. 

Louisiana’s challenges are not unique. Across the country, state monitoring agencies have faced years of stagnant federal support even as equipment and labor costs climbed. The number of government air monitors nationwide fell by nearly half over the two decades ending in 2025, according to EPA data. 

“Your dollars are just not going nearly as far,” said Chet Wayland, who led EPA’s Air Quality Assessment division for 18 years. “The bottom line is that more money is desperately needed for monitoring.”

The EPA does monitor toxic air pollutants at 26 stations nationally — but none are in Louisiana or Texas, two of the states with the largest toxic emissions volumes.

How industry got its way

For years, former Louisiana Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat from Baton Rouge, returned to the Capitol with the same proposal: Require major industrial polluters to monitor toxic air emissions at their property lines and report what nearby communities were breathing. 

Each time, the bill died.

“I got so frustrated because every year this was opposed by industry for no good reason,” Fields, now a member of Congress, told Floodlight. State regulators, he added, “were working totally in concert with industry … and the citizens just had no voice.”

Fields said he repeatedly heard from the petrochemical industry that his proposed bills would cost industry too much. “Well, what is it costing people?” he asked. “It’s costing them their lives.”

After Fields’ failed attempts, state Sen. Royce Duplessis tried again this year with a bill requiring perimeter monitors at facilities emitting toxic pollutants. That measure also failed. 

The Louisiana Chemistry Association and other groups have repeatedly fought these efforts, helping to kill bill after bill in the state legislature. The powerful trade group represents 70 chemical industry companies that operate more than 100 sites across the state. 

The association has found a legislative ally in Republican state Sen. Eddie Lambert, an attorney from Ascension Parish who chairs the state Senate environmental committee — the same committee that repeatedly killed the bills. 

Campaign finance records show Lambert received more than $28,000 in political contributions from petrochemical, oil and gas and other polluting industries since 2020. He has also reported investing in major oil companies. 

He told Floodlight that neither his investments nor campaign contributions from industry have influenced his decisions in the legislature. “I don't take that into consideration at all,” he said.

Lambert added that he was surprised oil and gas companies had donated to his campaigns because he consistently backed lawsuits filed by Louisiana parishes seeking to hold the industry accountable for coastal damage.

In opposing one fenceline monitoring bill in 2021, Lambert contended that “air moves around” and that pollution readings near industrial plants could be skewed by other sources — an argument also made by the chemical industry. An LCA staffer told a state Senate committee that year that requiring industries to conduct fenceline monitoring could “create unnecessary paranoia on the part of the public” and expose companies to lawsuits “based on false readings of air monitors.”

Air quality scientists, however, have found that properly designed fenceline monitoring systems can isolate a facility's emissions from other sources. 

In 2024, Lambert sponsored the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act (CAMRA), which prohibits the use of air pollution data for enforcement or regulatory actions unless it’s captured by EPA-approved monitors — equipment that typically costs tens of thousands of dollars, far beyond the reach of most community groups. 

The LCA helped draft the bill, Daniel Bosch, an attorney representing the group, acknowledged at a state Senate committee hearing in 2024. 

Speaking in favor of the CAMRA law, Brian Landry, the LCA’s vice president of political affairs, told the Senate committee that his group had noticed private and public funds flowing to community groups to do their own air monitoring. 

Community air monitors can reveal pollution hotspots that distant government monitors miss. In some communities, the data have prompted regulators to investigate pollution complaints and helped residents push for stronger oversight.

CAMRA, Landry said, was intended to ensure that any community monitoring data given to LDEQ “for any future purpose is accurate and definitely correct.” 

In a statement to Floodlight, LCA president David Cresson defended the law, saying it ensures “data used to enforce our state's environmental protection laws complies with minimum U.S. EPA standards” and doesn't stop residents from monitoring air quality for their own information — only from using unregulated methods for enforcement purposes.

A top EPA regional administrator at the time, however, called the bill “inconsistent with federal law.”

Despite the EPA’s letter and widespread community opposition, the state legislature passed the bill. 

Critics say the law has stifled community air-quality reporting efforts, which typically rely on low-cost monitors. It’s what stopped Kyereh from her own monitoring efforts in St. Rose. 

After CAMRA became law, legislators in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia introduced similar bills, also using arguments promoted by industry groups. That legislation failed in West Virginia but passed in Kentucky and Ohio.

CAMRA had been law for just two months when Lambert traveled to the Henderson Beach Resort in Destin, Fla., to speak at a conference hosted by the Louisiana Chemistry Association. The group paid his $450 hotel bill. 

“I wouldn't consider that a big deal,” Lambert told Floodlight. 

He said it isn’t reasonable to expect state senators —whose base salary is $16,800 a year plus a $6,000 expense allowance — to cover such costs themselves.

The Louisiana ethics code allows lawmakers to accept lodging and meals from industry groups, as long as they're tied to a public speech and the gifts are disclosed. 

Asked whether Louisiana needs more public air monitoring stations, Lambert said industrial plants already collect emissions data.

“If we already get the information from the plants, why would we want to spend our resources there?” he asked.

Under EPA rules, however, some plants are allowed to report emission estimates rather than direct measurements — and those estimates can be wildly off base. 

A 2025 ProPublica investigation found that when the EPA required temporary physical monitors at industrial sites, 97% of facilities were underreporting emissions. At a Dow Chemical facility in Plaquemine, for example, emissions of vinyl chloride — a carcinogen — were more than 150 times higher than the company’s estimates.

Left to wonder

Tish Taylor lives less than a mile from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant in St. John the Baptist Parish, which made neoprene, the synthetic rubber used in wetsuits. Chloroprene emissions there posed what federal regulators called an “unacceptably high” cancer risk to surrounding communities. 

Denka suspended production in 2025, but DuPont continues to operate on the same campus and has faced its own EPA penalties for emissions violations.

The two closest public monitors — each about five miles away — measure only lead and ozone. 

Taylor loves working in her garden. But when the wind blows on a sunny day, she knows that there’s something toxic in it, she said.

“I just have to wonder how much.”

This story has been updated with more recent EPA data concerning the number of air monitors nationally.

This story is from Floodlight and is published in collaboration with WIRED. Republished by the Texas Tribune.

Omaira Garcia didn’t realize life on her small ranch in Abilene, Texas, was about to change forever until clouds of dust — kicked up by a mysterious project next door — began to engulf her home.

The Air Force veteran said she found out about OpenAI’s plans to build its flagship Stargate data center directly beside her property only after construction began in the summer of 2024. Today, the site’s natural-gas-powered electrical plant sits roughly 500 yards from her house, the exhaust stacks clearly visible from her kitchen window.

“We weren’t given any time to understand what this impact was going to be on us,” the mother of two said through tears. “We’re trapped here.”

OpenAI did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the data center has “contributed meaningfully to the economic development” of Abilene, and its investments are “funding new fire trucks, school expansions, and road improvements across the city.”

As President Trump seeks to fasttrack AI development across the country, he has found a willing ally in Texas governor Greg Abbott, who has previously referred to the industry as the state’s “gold rush” — though his enthusiasm has recently dampened in the face of widespread opposition.

With some 300 data centers already in operation and 200 more in development, Texas could surpass Virginia as the nation’s leading data center market by 2030. Amidst the frenzy to capitalize on the AI boom, a regulatory loophole has allowed dozens of data centers like Stargate to quietly construct massive power sources that emit harmful pollutants with little to no public notice, a Floodlight investigation has found.

Typically, before you can build a major source of new emissions, you have to get a major air permit, which includes extensive environmental reviews and engagement with the local community. But in Texas, regulators have allowed some data centers like Stargate to avoid that process by first obtaining so-called minor air permits — the kind more commonly associated with dry cleaners and autobody shops and rubber-stamped with minimal review. 

“Those lower-level permits get granted very quickly and often without the public knowing,” said Kathryn Guerra, who spent nearly four years at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) before joining the watchdog group Public Citizen. “That feels pretty intentional.”

These minor permits — as well as the nondisclosure agreements many developers require in their dealings with local governments and residents — are how communities like Garcia’s are left stunned when exhaust stacks pop up in their backyards. 

Stargate was first announced in January 2025 as part of a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to construct hyperscale AI data centers across the country. 

Construction was already well underway in Abilene. The 1,100-acre campus, along with its 360 megawatt on-site gas plant, were among the first hyperscale AI data centers to break ground in Texas. A wave of similar proposals has since made the state ground zero for the AI-driven build-out of fossil fuel power plants across the US. 

Lured by prolific gas reserves and an industry-friendly government, AI companies have flocked to Texas seeking to construct what researchers call a “shadow grid” of custom-built power plants capable of fueling entire cities. 

“You haven’t seen anything like that since the fracking boom,” said Jenny Martos, a researcher at Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks energy infrastructures worldwide. Martos found that Texas has put more than 80 gigawatts of new gas plants into its construction pipeline, making it second only to China. Roughly half that capacity is reserved for data centers. 

Martos describes the trend as “enormous” and said it risks “locking in fossil fuel for the foreseeable future.” 

Including Stargate’s Abilene campus, at least 15 gas plants tied to data centers are planned for Texas, according to research by energy analytics firm Cleanview released last month. Permits reviewed by Floodlight show that nine of them combined could emit more than 130 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. That’s the equivalent annual emissions of 35 coal-fired power plants, according to an Environmental Protection Agency calculator. 

While actual emissions are usually lower than estimates, the impact on the climate could still be enormous: If completed, these nine plants have the potential to emit more annual greenhouse gases than most countries do — even if emissions end up being half of what’s permitted.  

Despite ultimately seeking to build a gas plant that could power every home in Abilene more than 20 times over, Stargate’s developers started out much smaller on paper. In 2024, they secured permission to operate on-site power sources through minor permits known as “permits by rule” and “standard permits.” 

Widely understood to be used by low-level polluters across the country, these permits don’t require environmental studies, public notice or public comment periods.

Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief who served under multiple Republican administrations, said state agencies typically use the permit by rule process “for small things that happen a lot,” like gas stations or dry cleaners, so “they don’t have to waste their time reinventing the wheel for common stuff.”

But Stargate “isn’t common stuff,” he said. Under the minor permits, Stargate’s fleet of 10 turbines and 62 backup diesel generators are currently allowed to emit more than 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 1,000 tons of combined harmful air pollutants every year. Despite being permitted for continuous use, Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the turbines will only be used for backup power.

“Normally that permit by rule was conceived of and implemented in a case where an operator wanted a backup generator or three backup generators. When you get to 62, you start thinking, ‘Well, wait a minute, maybe the scale is wrong here,’” Buckheit said. 

Stargate is far from alone. Since 2024, at least 38 data centers across Texas have received minor permits to operate on-site power sources, according to a Floodlight analysis. As a result, Texas regulators quietly sanctioned the use of more than 2,100 backup diesel generators across the state.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did not answer specific questions relating to Floodlight’s findings. Instead, a representative wrote that “TCEQ only issues air permits that comply with applicable state and federal air permitting rules and regulations including applicable public participation requirements.” 

While intended for emergency power, the generators are also routinely operated for testing and maintenance, according to their permits. 

Taken together, the thousands of new generators identified by Floodlight are permitted to emit nearly 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides into Texas communities every year — more than triple the state’s newest coal-fired power plant. (Nitrogen oxides are highly toxic gases associated with severe respiratory illness and even premature death.)

More than half of the data centers identified by Floodlight provided regulators with annual nitrogen oxide emission estimates that were just shy of thresholds that would require public input and more detailed environmental reviews. 

For example, outside of San Antonio, a Vantage data center received permission to emit 99.8 tons per year of the gas — barely below the area’s 100 ton-per-year threshold. 

In several cases, data centers secured these permits before seeking massive expansions later on, deploying a “small first, big later” strategy that watchdogs say limits public input and creates unstoppable momentum for their projects.  

The year after receiving minor air permits for its 10 turbines and 62 generators, Stargate’s developers filed their first major air permit—for 41 more turbines and 18 more generators. If approved, the expansion would make Stargate one of the largest fossil fuel power plants in the state — capable of powering more than 1 million homes and emitting more annual greenhouse gases than nearly 2 million cars. 

“I sincerely doubt that the company made some last-minute decision to suddenly expand,” said James Doty, who spent nearly 30 years monitoring air quality at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 

Stargate’s developers circulated promotional materials in May 2025 saying they had contracts to secure 1.2 gigawatts of power by the end of that year.

To get a major permit for the Abilene campus, Stargate developers will need to equip the additional turbines with the most effective emissions reduction technology available, and the project will need to undergo extensive environmental reviews and public comment periods. But nearly two years after construction began on the project, it may be too late for local residents to do anything. 

“By the time public participation is an option for community members, that facility has already been built, and there's no opportunity for the public to give meaningful input to the TCEQ about whether or not they even want that facility in their neighborhood,” Guerra said. 

Former EPA air enforcement chief Buckheit said Stargate’s staggered permitting approach in Abilene could violate EPA “aggregation” policies, which are intended to evaluate the whole project. The agency’s own handbooks refer to minor permits that precede major ones as “sham permits.” 

“You can't come in with a permit application for two [turbines], and then three months later, you come in with a permit application for two more,” Buckheit said. 

“All of this should have been rolled into one permit,” he added. 

Guerra and Doty, both former TCEQ staffers, agree that their old agency should have required Stargate to obtain major permits to begin with.

“If a data center gets its operating permit, it's too late,” Doty said. “The only chance to stop something like this is to do it at the very, very, very beginning of the process—before the permit is issued—through the public participation process.”

The former regulators recommend concerned residents pay close attention to notices from state environmental agencies to spot upcoming projects and request contested case hearings when possible.

Few of those avenues remain viable for Abilene residents. Guerra believes “it’s a foregone conclusion” that the expansion request will be granted.

Even if Stargate secures the appropriate permits, both former TCEQ staffers doubt the agency is properly equipped to enforce them.

“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability” of the TCEQ to sufficiently regulate, Guerra said, adding that the agency’s enforcement backlog consists of more than 1,400 unresolved cases.

“This past year, they were able to resolve 39 of those 1,400 cases. At that rate, it's going to take them 35 years to resolve all of them,” she said. 

“Every single permit that this agency issues, in my opinion, is one more than they can effectively regulate,” added Guerra, who worked for TCEQ until 2016. 

An agency spokesperson refuted Guerra’s claims, writing that “industry growth has not compromised TCEQ’s commitment to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and the environment.” The representative wrote that TCEQ had conducted more than 100,000 investigations in 2025 (one case can have multiple investigations) and claimed that the low number of enforcement actions taken by the regulator “reflects high overall compliance rates” rather than “a lack of enforcement activity.” 

Guerra said that TCEQ is “full of folks who are very interested in protecting the environment,” but the leadership team — many of whom were appointed by Abbott — has made the agency notoriously lax on enforcement. 

The policies may be drawing investments for the state, but those gains aren’t being felt by some fenceline residents in Abilene. 

Garcia and her husband spent more than a year looking for their “piece of heaven” in the country.

“We took so much time to get it, and my kids absolutely love it. But under these conditions, we no longer have that,” she said. 

In addition to concerns about air pollution, Garcia said the data center has transformed the quality of life on her once-quiet country road. Trash regularly lines the fences and gridlock traffic tied to building the massive facility has at times made it difficult to leave her own driveway. 

Crusoe wrote that the company takes “quality-of-life concerns seriously” and is committed “to being a responsible neighbor throughout construction and operations.” 

Yet despite prominently featuring in a Floodlight/PBS short documentary on the topic, Garcia said Stargate’s developers have yet to reach out to her or her family.

Garcia said she wasn’t made aware of Stargate’s recent expansion plans until Floodlight informed her of the pending major air permit applications. Already coping with the presence of 10 gas-powered turbines beside her property, the plan for 41 more came as a gut punch. 

“I can't even begin to understand what kind of impact that's going to have on me and my health in the future,” she said. 

She tried to put the house on the market after learning about what was being built next door, but said she didn’t get a single offer. Realtors suggested she convert it into an Airbnb for Stargate workers but Garcia said she can’t afford to buy another home to live in while keeping the one beside the data center.

“It feels almost impossible unless Stargate purchases it, because what other homeowner is going to want to deal with what we're dealing with?” 

The dilemma has left her feeling helpless. 

“I don't know what the future looks like.”

Texas is ground zero for the AI industry’s massive fossil fuel build out occurring across the country. Lured by prolific gas reserves and an industry-friendly government, AI companies have flocked to the Lone Star State in droves, erecting custom-built power plants capable of fueling entire cities.  

The state has put more than 80 gigawatts of new gas power plants into its construction pipeline, more than any country besides China. Roughly half of those gas plants will provide power exclusively to data centers, according to Global Energy Monitor.  

Floodlight teamed up with PBS’ science and nature series Overview to investigate what’s really happening at OpenAI’s Stargate facility — one of the state’s largest operational data centers — and to show how the AI boom is already impacting the people who live in its backyard. 

“We’re trapped here,” said Omaira Garcia, an Air Force veteran who lives with her family directly beside Stargate in Abilene. Garcia can see the data center’s 10 gas-powered turbines from inside her home and was shocked to learn Stargate’s developers are seeking to expand their on-site power plant to a total of 51 turbines and 80 backup diesel generators.  

“I can't even begin to understand what kind of impact that's going to have on me and my health in the future,” she said.   

Floodlight and PBS also spoke with former Texas environmental regulators who said their former employer let the plant begin operations with no public input by granting it minor permits more commonly associated with laundromats and autobody shops.

“When a data center pursues these lower-level, pre-construction authorizations — that grant them the authority to begin operating with no public notice requirement and no public input or participation — that feels pretty intentional,” said Kathryn Guerra, who provided regulatory compliance assistance at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Environmental Assistance Division before joining the watchdog group Public Citizen. 

Even with proper permits, however, Guerra said she seriously doubts her former agency is equipped to properly enforce environmental laws when it comes to the AI boom.

“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to sufficiently regulate,” she said.  

Watch the video above to experience life inside the wild west of the AI fossil fuel boom and see rare thermal imagery documenting pollution at one of the nation’s most high-profile data centers. 

This story was published in collaboration with Verite News and the Louisiana Illuminator. Republished by The Guardian, The Lens, WWNO and others.

For more than two years, Louisiana State Senator John “Jay” Morris helped pave the way for Meta to build one of the world’s largest data centers, called Hyperion, in Richland Parish.

The Republican attorney lobbied a utility regulator for a key approval. He co-sponsored two bills that enabled the land deal between Meta and the state. And he voted “yea” on two additional bills that provided the trillion-dollar tech company with tax breaks worth an estimated $3.3 billion.

Now, a Floodlight investigation has found that while Morris used his political position to advance the project, he and his business partners were buying and selling the land around it over the past 15 months.

As recently as February, Morris and his partners sold hundreds of acres to utility giant Entergy for a methane-burning power plant to provide electricity for the data center. 

Morris’ recent land deals haven’t been disclosed until today, according to Floodlight’s review of ethics filings, votes, media coverage and state Senate records. It’s unclear how much money he has made from these transactions — Louisiana law does not require buyers and sellers to publicly disclose sale prices. 

Experts told Floodlight the senator’s actions may violate state ethics laws — such as La. R.S. 42:1112(A), 42:1120 and 42:1101 — which prohibit government officials from participating in official actions that benefit them financially, require them to recuse themselves from voting when a conflict exists and prohibit the use of public office for private gain.

"What makes it particularly egregious is not one isolated vote, but a sustained pattern: creating legal authority for a specific land deal, backing a huge tax break, lobbying a regulator, quietly positioning personal real estate around the project,” said Professor Dane Ciolino, an expert in governmental ethics at Loyola University New Orleans. 

In an interview with Floodlight, Morris denied wrongdoing. He said his land holdings are public record and that the tax breaks he voted for applied to all data centers — not just the Meta project. 

“ It makes a nice story if you can try to show that I have some sort of conflict,” Morris told Floodlight. “But under Louisiana's ethics laws, I don't.” 

After years of maintaining a relatively low profile in the legislature, Morris has become a prominent political figure since Governor Jeff Landry took office. He’s chair of a judiciary committee, a member of three financial committees and joined the powerful State Bond Commission in 2024.

He’s also recently become a lightning rod for controversy at the statehouse after authoring bills that would eliminate Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts and take away the seat of a Black court clerk who had just been elected in New Orleans.

Morris told Floodlight his maps are intended to protect Republican incumbents in Louisiana's House races. As for eliminating a court clerk's post in New Orleans, he said he simply wanted to streamline court operations in New Orleans — and held nothing against the man.

“You can find some pundits and lawyers to say bad things about politicians. It's pretty easy, we're a popular target. But I haven't done anything wrong,” Morris said. 

“I just hope you'd write a fair story.”

Entergy and Hyperion

In Northeast Louisiana’s Richland Parish, former farmlands are transforming into a vast expanse of concrete and steel.

Hyperion spans more than 3,650 acres, an area more than twice the size of Rayville, the town beside it. Once up and running, it’s expected to consume more than six times the amount of energy each day than the city of New Orleans. 

Despite public opposition, state officials including Morris have pushed the project forward as part of a nationwide data-center buildout. Since construction began over a year ago, locals have complained of severe air quality issues from dust blowing off the vast construction site and relentless traffic from heavy commercial vehicles around once-quiet rural streets. 

“Yes,  there are a lot of complainers, and a lot of the complainers are from out of state,” Morris said. “But the people in our area are generally happy about it.” He argued that the project’s benefits include new high-paying jobs, an increased tax base and money pouring into the education system.

Meta told Floodlight that the company is “committed to creating a positive impact” in Richland Parish, that it works actively to limit the impact of traffic on local residents and is investing in local schools, nonprofits and small businesses.

It was Entergy — not Meta — that initially pitched state officials on the project, according to a trade publication’s interview with Susan Bourgeois, who helped negotiate the deal as the head of the state’s economic development agency. 

The Louisiana Economic Development agency issued a statement saying that “any inference that Senator Morris inappropriately influenced LED or any of our projects is simply incorrect.” The administration “makes no apologies for bringing diverse partners together to drive the outcomes and opportunities our state has so long deserved,” its spokesperson said.

Entergy has claimed in regulatory filings that Hyperion’s immense power needs will require a historic buildout of power plants — enough to fuel a more than 50% increase in its statewide power-generation capacity, according to reporting from the Times-Picayune.

Morris, who grew up in the area, owns and co-owns two dozen properties spanning over 2,000 acres surrounding Hyperion, including at least three that share a border with the complex, according to the Richland Parish Assessor’s office. He’s held many for over a decade.

“I bought the property for farmland and the rent that's derived therefrom. But would I hope that there would be some economic development someday? Of course. Absolutely,” he said. “But was I counting on it? Did I know it would happen? No. Nobody can read the future.” 

But now that the future has arrived in Richland Parish, Morris has been on a buying spree.

Broadening power, weakening oversight

Morris bought seven properties within five miles of the data center since the Meta announcement in December 2024 — plus a 165-acre tract about 10 miles southwest.

The timing of those land deals shows how closely he mixed official actions with personal business dealings. 

In 2024, Morris co-sponsored and voted for a wide-ranging bill that, among other things, gave LED new authority to lease state-owned property. 

The state had purchased a large tract of land from the family of Fred Scott Franklin, Sr. — Morris’ business partners — nearly two decades earlier for a deal that fell through with a different company. But shortly after the 2024 bill passed, LED used its new authority to lease the site to Meta. 

Four months after Meta signed the lease, Morris and the Franklins paid $1.2 million cash to buy an 80-acre plot just across the street from the project site. Morris signed the deed in early 2025. Less than two months later, one of the senate committees he’s part of began considering a second bill that would play a pivotal role in finalizing the state’s deal with Meta: giving LED the authority to sell state-owned property. 

By late April, Morris had signed on as co-sponsor and voted for its passage. 

By early May, Morris and the Franklins had begun monetizing the property in a more immediate way: turning it into a dirt quarry for eventual use on the Meta job site, the senator told Floodlight.

Three months after that second bill was signed into law, LED sold Meta the property that the tech company had been leasing, which was just a stone’s throw from Morris’ land. 

That series of events raises serious ethical concerns, according to La Koshia Roberts, a former chair and currently the longest-serving member of the Louisiana Board of Ethics — the body that investigates potential ethical misconduct by government officials. 

“ The fact that he actually voted and didn't recuse himself is a major concern of mine,” Roberts said.

“When you have your elected officials who are not only drafting proposed legislation that he or she knows will benefit them financially … that's one problem. But then to have that person continue with this knowledge and not disclose it, not even to his body, not even to the committee, is problematic."

Yet during those legislative proceedings — which concerned a dramatic overhaul of the state agency in charge of economic development — Morris never mentioned his interest in the state’s largest economic development project. 

“ A lot of my colleagues know that I have land holdings in Richland Parish, some of which are near the Meta site,” Morris told Floodlight. “But no ... I didn't put it in the record and announce it. But there was nothing to require me to do that. And I don't know why I would need to do that.”

The Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics states that an official with a substantial financial interest in a governmental proceeding must recuse from voting and disclose their interest if they continue to participate in discussions about the matter.

“He should not have voted for it,” Roberts said. 

Morris said the bills he co-sponsored were not targeted at any particular data center, and that although he signed on in support, he had nothing to do with drafting them. 

“ The LED bills were part of a broad restructuring that Secretary Bourgeois was pushing. I had no idea that any of that was needed for the Meta development,” he said.

According to Ciolino, the government ethics expert at Loyola, Morris’ strongest defense is that the bills and tax break applied broadly to LED’s restructuring or all data centers — not just the Meta project. “That matters,” he said. “But it does not end the analysis.”

The question isn’t just whether the bill’s text was general — it’s whether Morris had an economic interest in it greater than that of a general class or group of persons, Ciolino said, referring to a specific section of Louisiana law.

“A senator who owns dozens of nearby parcels, co-owns adjoining land, sells dirt for the project, and later sells land to Entergy for a project power plant has a far more particularized economic stake than ordinary citizens or even ordinary landowners in the region.”

Old friends

Morris explained that he and his business partners, the Franklins, are close. He and Franklin Sr. have been friends since nursery school.

They own several properties together, including the one across the street from Meta. The Franklins have transferred Morris at least $200,000 since 2015 as part of a mutual business endeavor renting out farmland, according to Morris’ financial disclosures and Fred Scott Franklin, Jr. The  family has also contributed over $15,000 to Morris’ election campaigns over the past 16 years, according to state campaign finance data. 

Franklin Sr. and Morris were also co-owners, along with a third man, of a company called FMB Downtown Ventures, which hasn’t been active for well over a decade, according to Franklin Jr. 

Franklin Jr. often represents his family in media appearances and at business events. He confirmed that Morris and the Franklin family are close and have a long history of purchasing and co-owning properties, which they often lease for use as farmland. 

He said that Morris was not involved in any negotiations with Meta. “ I would very much disagree that Jay Morris was an active participant in landing Meta to Richland Parish. I just don't think that's accurate,” said Franklin Jr. “I don't think he's any more responsible for it than whoever else voted for the sales tax exemption in the legislature.” 

The Franklins are one of the largest local beneficiaries of the Meta project: They owned nearly all of the land that the data center is being built upon. State officials dubbed the property the “Franklin Farms Megasite,” and Entergy has referred to the power plants that will be attached to it as the Franklin Farms Power Stations. 

When Entergy, LED and Meta held a press event to announce the project and perform a ceremonial groundbreaking in December 2024, Fred Scott Franklin, Jr., was on stage holding a shovel. Governor Landry and Entergy’s CEO stood alongside him. Morris was also there and prominently featured in a promotional video Entergy circulated on Instagram to tout the event. 

“This project that Meta and Entergy have come together to bring to Northeast Louisiana most importantly will bring jobs and will bring economic development to a region that’s needed it for so many years,” Morris said in the video. 

Morris said he didn’t remember being filmed, hadn’t known the video existed and hadn’t received any payment from Entergy for being featured.

“ I guess they randomly saw me and asked me a couple of questions or something,” he said.  

‘I was under an NDA’

To build three new gas-fired power plants for Hyperion, along with 100 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, Entergy needed a key approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

And on Aug. 20, 2025, before the commission voted 4-1 to approve Entergy's $3.2 billion plan, Commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan disclosed on the record that Morris had personally lobbied him to approve the plants.

"I also heard from Senator Jay Morris, who represents in the northeast, in support of the issue," Coussan said. 

Four weeks after the commission’s vote, Morris and the Franklins together signed agreements to sell nearly 300 acres to Entergy for one of the company’s methane-burning power stations for Hyperion. They had co-owned the property for roughly 15 years prior to the sale.

Coussan, a Republican, had served alongside Morris in the state legislature until his election to the commission in 2024. Morris described him as a friend and, in a single exchange, alternated between saying he “didn't reach out” to Coussan, was “pretty sure I didn't even talk to him,” and “probably did talk to him some.” Later, by email, he said, “I’m sure we likely discussed it.”

Coussan told Floodlight that any conversation he had with Morris was part of his due diligence as a commissioner.

He also said he only learned of Morris’ land deals from being contacted by Floodlight. 

“ No, we didn't talk about his property, nor do I think it was relevant to my deliberations,” Coussan said. “I actually don’t see what the story is.”

Entergy Louisiana told Floodlight that it “acquired two sites near the proposed facility that offer access to necessary infrastructure, including electric transmission lines, natural gas supply and pipelines, and transportation routes. The location was selected in part due to these advantages, as well as its proximity to the customer’s site, which had been owned by the state for more than 20 years.”

Morris pointed out that his land holdings are reported publicly in his annual financial disclosures. But his most recent disclosure is from 2024 — making the past two years of his land deals difficult to piece together. 

He was also clear that he did not disclose his Entergy negotiations to Coussan ahead of the vote. 

“ I'm really sure he didn't know that I was gonna sell any land to Entergy because I was under an NDA, and I couldn't say anything to him anyway,” Morris said.

The NDA (nondisclosure agreement) is a previously undisclosed fact: Morris indicated he had a confidential commercial relationship with Entergy when he contacted Coussan — one that obligated him not to discuss his pending business with the company. Under Louisiana ethics law, the question is not whether he was allowed to discuss the deal, but whether he should have disclosed his personal financial interest to the regulator as part of that conversation.

Morris also sold rights of way to Entergy across four other properties he owns for the company to build transmission lines and, in one case, establish an access road and lay water, sewer and other utility lines. 

How much Entergy paid Morris for the property and rights of way remains unclear — neither he nor Franklin disclosed the values of any of their land deals when asked by Floodlight. But when property values rise, it drives up the prices that companies like Entergy must pay landowners to build across their land. Under state law, the legal standard of “just compensation” requires Entergy to pay an amount consistent with the land’s value.  

And property values beside the data center have skyrocketed. 

“I would argue just compensation is a lot different now than it was before all this started,” Franklin Jr. explained. 

Due to another new law passed that same year, and which Morris voted for, the roughly $12 million the state received from selling land to Meta went back to a special fund that LED controls and can use as it sees fit to advance similar economic development projects around the state. 

The Meta deal is the first of several similar Landry-administration projects moving through LED on the same statutory authority Morris helped create. Landry’s office did not respond to Floodlight’s request for comment.

Over recent years, the Louisiana Legislature has weakened ethics laws, according to Roberts. Because of that, “ it is imperative on the public to be substantially more aware of potential unethical or questionable actions, and to demand more from their elected officials,” she said. 

When asked how he responds to experts alleging that his conduct violated ethics rules, Morris replied:

 ”They're wrong. I would guess whoever you talked to probably has an axe to grind or is politically opposed to me — to what I do. But they're free to turn me into the ethics board, which I'm sure would do nothing. 

“But if they think it's egregious, why haven't they turned me in?”

Louisiana State Sen. John "Jay" Morris spoke with Floodlight for more than 30 minutes by phone on May 16 about his role in bringing Meta's Hyperion data center to Richland Parish and the land deals he and his business partners, the Franklin family, have made before, during and after the project's announcement.

Experts told Floodlight the senator’s actions raise a serious issue of a possible violation of state ethics laws designed to prohibit government officials from self-dealing; Morris responded that he has no conflicts under the law and did nothing wrong.

The Republican attorney said his land holdings are public record and that the legislation he supported applied to all data centers, not just Meta's. Asked about his contact with a utility regulator ahead of a key vote on the power plants that will fuel Hyperion, Morris disclosed that he had been under a nondisclosure agreement with Entergy at the time. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Floodlight: The gist of the story is that you had involvement in your official capacity as a state senator in helping pave the way for this data center to come to Richland Parish.

Morris: I would say I had involvement, not minor. I didn't carry any bills per se, but I voted for bills that would apply to all data centers. But this is obviously the biggest one that's coming, and it's coming to the area that I grew up in. I'm originally from Richland Parish.

Floodlight: There are a few different bills that I was looking at in particular. There were the tax abatement bills that you voted for, but then there were the two bills that had to do with the powers of Louisiana Economic Development. And basically, the timeline of it looks like first you co-authored the bill that gave LED the power to lease property, and shortly thereafter, they leased property to Meta. And then in the next session, in 2025, you co-authored a bill that then gave LED the ability to buy and sell property, and they shortly thereafter then sold the same property that they had been leasing to Meta.

Morris: I didn't know that they sold property to Meta. But, the bill about the tax rebate, that's applicable to any data center … We wanted to make sure that we were open for business, and apparently, you cannot attract a data center without some sort of tax abatement on purchases of computer equipment.

Manufacturers already have a complete exemption on the purchase of manufacturing machinery and equipment, but data centers didn't. And a state is not gonna attract any of them unless you have that. So that was critical for not just the Meta data center but any data center that might wanna come to the state.

In any event, there's no conflict. I mean, Louisiana's ethics laws are that you can't offer a bill that is just designed for one company. But if it affects a multitude, or any company that might wanna take advantage of it, there's nothing wrong with that. It would be impossible for us to even function if that were the case.

Floodlight: Did you disclose your land holdings when you were involved in those bills?

Morris: Yeah, it's public record. I've got a list of my land holdings in my Tier 2 disclosure that I have to file every year (with the Louisiana Ethics Administration). And you can look in the public records in Richland Parish and see everything I own or that any company I'm affiliated with owns. And I've had that land the Franklins and I sold to Entergy for, geez, maybe 20 years or something like that. 

Floodlight: Your land would be in the annual disclosures, but was it put into the legislative record at any point, and were your colleagues made aware of it?

Morris: A lot of my colleagues know I'm from Richland Parish, and a lot of my colleagues know that I have land holdings in Richland Parish, some of which are near the Meta site.

But no, I didn't put it in the record and announce it. But there was nothing to require me to do that. And I don't know why I would need to do that.

Floodlight: Did you ever recuse yourself from any decisions involving the data center?

Morris: There were no decisions on this particular data center. The other two LED bills you were talking about — a continuing effort to restructure LED — I had nothing to do with drafting those bills, although I did apparently sign on as co-author to one. 

Those bills were being put together by legislators involved with the restructuring of LED so it can do a better job and … to make it a more effective agency. If they didn't have the right to buy and sell or lease land to provide for economic development, their hands are tied, you know? Not that my vote would have made one difference one way or the other, but I don't recall there being many votes opposed to either of those bills, but I can't remember that far back.

But I mean, look, I understand it makes a nice story if you can try to show that I have some sort of conflict, but under Louisiana's ethics laws, I don't. And I didn't market the property to Entergy. They actually came to the Franklins. I don't think they even knew I had a half interest in it.

Floodlight: You reached out to (Public Service) Commissioner JP Coussan ahead of the vote to approve the power plant that they're now gonna build on that land that you sold.

Morris: I don't remember reaching out to him, but we're friends. We served in the House together. We served in the Senate together, and we chat every now and then. We may have talked about the approval process. I don't remember. But I didn't reach out to him ahead of the vote to encourage him to vote yes or no on anything.

Floodlight: He said you spoke in favor of the approval of the power plant.

Morris: Of course I'd be in favor. He was already in favor of it. We need the power plants. Entergy needs them, and of course Meta needs them, but so do other customers. It's a really positive thing for Louisiana because Meta's coming in and underwriting all these new power plants, which is gonna benefit a lot of people in the state. 

Floodlight: Did Commissioner Coussan know about your land interests near the site?

Morris: I'm really sure he didn't know I was going to sell any land to Entergy because I was under an NDA, and I couldn't say anything to him anyway. I didn't call him to encourage him to vote for it. But I probably did talk to him some and he may have asked me what I thought, but I don't even remember. I certainly didn't lobby him to vote for it.

Floodlight: I spoke to several lawyers who are experts in governmental ethics. One said your actions were, quote, "egregious." How do you respond to that?

Morris: They're wrong. I would guess that whoever you talked to probably has an axe to grind or is politically opposed to me, to what I do. They're free to turn me into the ethics board, which I'm sure would do nothing. But if they think it's egregious, why haven't they turned me in?

Floodlight: That person highlighted the fact pattern that all of these things in isolation maybe don't rise to the level of an ethics violation, but all of them together do sort of speak to both you using your position to influence this deal and also profiting from it.

Morris: So 20 years ago when I was buying land, that was some sort of nefarious thing? 

Floodlight: Well, in the story, we focused on the past 15 months and the land deals you’ve done in that time. 

Morris: It would be different if I had run out and bought some property right before this Meta deal — if I bought land after I learned about Meta coming, and then profited from it. That would be egregious. But the fact that I had land 20 years ago, and the fact that there was a bill coming that would attract data centers like Meta and like others that I think pretty much every Republican voted for — it just doesn't hold water.

Floodlight: You were featured in a promotional video for Entergy announcing the Meta deal. Have you received any compensation from Entergy outside of those land deals?

Morris: I didn't know I was in the promotional video ... I never got any compensation for it. I don't even remember that ... I guess they randomly saw me and asked me a couple of questions.

Floodlight: There's a development on Highway 183 and Thomas Road. You co-own it with the Franklins. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Morris: There's no development there. There's some dirt being taken out of there, but that's it. 

Floodlight: So it’s a quarry or something?

Morris: Yeah, it’s like a dirt pit. 

Floodlight: Are you selling the dirt to Meta?

Morris: No. We’re not selling anything now. We were selling it to a contractor that was in turn selling the dirt to Meta. We didn't have a contract with Meta or with any of the big contractors building the Meta site. But somebody down the food chain wanted dirt, and we had the ability to haul it.

Floodlight: It looks like you bought up some land in the path of the new transmission lines.

Morris: I don't think so. I wouldn't want a transmission line coming right through the middle of it. I've got transmission lines going through my property already, and I certainly don't want any more. That wouldn't have been an investment strategy.

Floodlight: What would you say to those who look at the facts and your real estate holdings and wonder if you're acting in your own interest as opposed to the community's?

Morris: I would say that the encouragement of economic development is positive for everybody, including me, but not limited to me.

This story is from Floodlight, and produced in partnership with High Country News. Sign up for HCN’s newsletter here. Republished by Inside Climate News, Mother Jones, Re:Public, Truthdig and others.

At the end of a dirt road along the northeastern edge of Montana’s Crazy Mountains, a simple sign warns visitors they are now entering private property. 

For fifth-generation Montanan Brad Wilson, the notice marks a defeat with implications far beyond the Crazies.

“The fate of our public lands and our rights are in jeopardy right now,” Wilson told Floodlight.

Wilson is a former sheriff’s deputy and lifelong hunter. For most of his life, he has lived in the jagged shadows of the Crazy Mountains — their snow-capped peaks and twisting valleys watched him grow from a boy herding sheep on his grandfather’s ranch to a grey-haired hunter tracking elk herds across their remote slopes. 

“The loss of this access means a lot to me and everybody else,” he said beside the gate, looking down and hiding the wet corners of his eyes. 

The road beyond the gate next to Wilson leads into what was, for more than a century, one of two historic public trails into the east side of the Crazies. The U.S. Forest Service relinquished the public’s access to the trail early last year as part of a land swap with the Yellowstone Club — an exclusive mountaintop retreat for the megarich located 100 miles away in Big Sky. 

“It doesn't make any sense to me to give this up,” said Wilson.

For many Montanans, the swap has come to symbolize the growing influence of wealthy private interests spreading across America's public lands and provides a glimpse of what could come under the Trump administration. 

There are more than 600 million acres of federally owned public lands across America — from iconic national parks and monuments to forests, grasslands and seashores. But now, nearly 90 million of those acres are at risk of some kind of development due to what critics describe as an unprecedented shift in policies under the first and second Trump administrations. 

In Arizona, a sacred Indigenous site was handed over earlier this year to a copper-mining company. In Utah, Republican Sen. Mike Lee attached a provision last summer to the federal budget that would have sold up to 3.2 million acres of public land across the West. And just last month, the U.S. Senate voted to overturn a 20-year-old mining ban on federal lands in Minnesota, clearing the way for a foreign-owned copper mine.

Perhaps nowhere in the country is the fight over public lands — and the big-moneyed interests pulling the strings — more on display right now than in Montana’s Crazy Mountains.

“This is a really simple issue,” said Andrew Posewitz, a Montana public lands advocate and the son of a renowned conservationist. “The public had some really good land and some really good access in the Crazy Mountains. Some really rich people decided they liked the Crazy Mountains a lot … And now the public doesn't have that access.”

Every American — not just Montanans — should care, he warned. 

“Because it is very much a harbinger of potentially what could come.”

Perched more than 7,000 feet above sea level, the Yellowstone Club was built atop former public lands acquired through land exchanges with the U.S. Forest Service in the 1990s. It has since converted more than 15,000 acres outside Big Sky into one of the most exclusive communities on the planet. 

The club’s membership has included familiar names: celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Tom Brady and Paris Hilton; tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt; and financial elites like Bill Ackman, Warren Buffett and Robert Herjavec. 

Inside its gates, the Yellowstone Club has an 18-hole golf course, a concert venue, a movie theater, a dedicated fire department, hundreds of luxury homes and nearly 3,000 acres of private ski slopes. Initiation runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and an undeveloped lot inside the gate has sold for as much as $10 million, according to Forbes. 

CrossHarbor Capital Partners, a Boston-based investment firm, bought the Yellowstone Club out of bankruptcy in 2009. 

In the 17 years since, the firm has expanded its Montana portfolio — developed through a subsidiary called Lone Mountain Land Company — to become one of the largest luxury-resort footprints in the Rocky Mountains.

"They're gobbling up mass swaths of Montana," said Erik Nylund, who served as a staffer for former Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester and met often with club representatives. "They will throw money around at anybody and everybody to get what they want."

In 2016, the Yellowstone Club drew criticism after more than 30 million gallons of its sewage overflowed into the headwaters of the Gallatin River, drawing over $300,000 in penalties and financial commitments from the company — and outraging locals.

The Yellowstone Club declined an on-camera interview for this story. In a written statement, a company representative noted that numerous lawsuits against the club over its impacts to local waterways “have been dismissed by federal judges” and the club has spent millions to treat its wastewater “to the highest standards the State of Montana assigns.” CrossHarbor also did not respond to an interview request. 

The club has also become a favorite refuge among high-level Trump administration officials: Energy Secretary Chris Wright owns a home there; Vice President JD Vance reportedly spent Christmas at the club; and Trump himself hosted a campaign fundraiser there in 2024. 

And the man in charge of most of America’s public lands is also a member.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum oversees 500 million acres of federal land in the U.S., and has referred multiple times to these parcels as “assets on America’s balance sheet.”

Since early 2025, Burgum — along with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins — has helped the Trump administration pursue major overhauls of public lands management, including a $1 billion cut to the National Park Service budget, opening the Arctic to potential oil and gas drilling and repealing the 2001 Roadless Rule, the safeguard that has kept new roads and clearcuts out of nearly 60 million acres.

A real estate developer and the former governor of North Dakota, Burgum owns a $22 million condo at the Yellowstone Club, according to Montana property records reviewed by Floodlight.

It’s held through an entity called Lone View, LLC. Burgum disclosed last year that he rented it out in 2024 for income between $100,001 and $1 million. Burgum also holds a separate ownership stake in the club itself that he valued at up to $250,000 and that paid him nearly $22,000 in 2024.

Burgum's latest financial disclosure form shows he did not divest from any of these interests upon taking office. A representative declined to answer if the secretary would abstain from any future decisions involving the club or its affiliates. Meanwhile, Burgum has partnered with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to explore ways for public lands to be sold in order to make room for more affordable housing across the country. 

“He shouldn't be involved in residential development on public lands while he owns that,” said Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer to the George W. Bush administration. “Let someone else handle that — he's got a deputy.” 

Burgum’s office did not answer Floodlight’s emailed questions, but responded to our inquiry with this statement: “Secretary Burgum has complied with all federal ethics requirements and remains committed to protecting America’s ability to responsibly use and care for our federal lands for the profit and benefit of future generations.” 

In the past, Burgum has argued his policies aim to lower the national debt and address the nation’s housing crisis. 

“They'll say the words ‘affordable housing’ and there's not going to be anything affordable about it,” said Nylund, arguing that only luxury home builders and private resorts would be interested in developing America’s largely remote and inaccessible public lands. 

“It's all about development,” he said. “And if you've taken a ride to Big Sky or the Yellowstone Club lately, you've seen what development looks like, and it's a bunch of mansions.”

Despite their distance from Big Sky, the fear of luxury resorts replacing wilderness hangs heavy over the Crazy Mountains.  

“The wealth that’s coming here is just changing our way of life,” fifth-generation Montanan Brad Wilson said. 

Wilson, 71, lives a quiet life in Wilsall, a tiny town at the foot of the Crazies. The walls of his small home are adorned with antlers and family photographs dating back to the 1800s. 

"I grew up with a pack on my back hiking those mountains," he said. "Both of my sons grew up in the Crazy Mountains ... And I cannot tell you how special they are to me — because I get choked up sometimes."

The Crazies resemble a mountain fortress — an island of jagged peaks rising more than 7,000 feet above the surrounding high plains, complete with secluded river valleys and alpine lakes. Yet their beauty belies a long history of heated conflict rooted in century-old decisions.  

In the late 1800s, Congress paid the transcontinental railroads for their work by giving them every other square mile of federal land across whole regions of the West, which resulted in a checkerboard pattern of private and public land ownership. 

Anyone could continue to use public roads and trails that crossed through these newly minted private parcels, according to congressional acts and court rulings. Over time, however, those parcels in the Crazies were bought up by some of the richest people in the state, some of whom objected to the public crossing through their land. 

“They began to do things that violated those rules, such as blocking these roads, blocking these trails,” said Posewitz, the Montana lands advocate. 

Wilson first noticed the change around 2016, when he encountered a blocked trail on the west side of the Crazies that his grandparents had used nearly a century ago. He was furious. 

“All of a sudden I'm like, ‘No, you can't do that. That’s ridiculous,’” Wilson recalled. 

Around that time, a U.S. forest ranger began to defend public access in the range by putting up Forest Service signs along contested trails. The big landowners weren’t happy. They reached out to Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines and Trump’s then-Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue. It wasn’t long before the ranger was reassigned. 

Daines and Perdue did not respond to Floodlight’s repeated requests for comment on the ranger controversy, and Forest Service officials said they wouldn’t talk about it. However, Mary Erickson, the former ranger’s boss, did talk, and she denied any political interference. 

She said the ranger “wasn’t reassigned,” he was “just assigned to something else while the investigation was in place.” She acknowledged the move looked punitive but said it was for the ranger’s own protection as the process played out.

Nylund served as Senator Tester’s natural resources liaison at the time, and said he worked closely with the Forest Service. To him, the ranger controversy exemplified the growing influence of Montana’s elites on the Crazies. 

“The political forces of the country came down on this district ranger and they put him in his place,” Nylund said. 

The ranger was eventually reinstated in 2017 after being cleared of any wrongdoing. Around the same time, Nylund said he was approached by a high-end consultant for an unnamed client seeking to swap land in the Crazies with the U.S. Forest Service. 

The unnamed client? 

“That was the Yellowstone Club,” Nylund said.

Nylund later learned that in order to get the land they needed for an “expert ski run” in Big Sky, the club agreed to help the Forest Service solve access disputes in the Crazies by organizing a land exchange.

“We didn’t have the time and resources to resolve some of that,” said Erickson, the former Forest Service supervisor. But she said she made it clear that “the Yellowstone Club wouldn't call the shots, and I do feel like that was true the whole way.” 

Multiple people involved with early discussions around the land swap said the Yellowstone Club’s involvement in the exchange was kept secret and only revealed years into the process. Once the information did get out, the club’s representatives worked to reassure locals that they had no intention of developing the Crazies.

“Then out of nowhere, it's announced that they are purchasing the Crazy Mountain Ranch,” said Emily Cleveland, a program director at Wild Montana — a conservation group that works to protect public lands and wildlife in the state

Crazy Mountain Ranch is an 18,000-acre former dude ranch located at the foot of the range’s southern end. Cleveland called the club’s move a “bait and switch.” 

“It just really changed our ability to trust them at their word,” she said.

The Yellowstone Club is now converting the ranch into what it describes as “a private membership experience” featuring a luxury spa and a new 18-hole golf course. In response, shell-shocked locals have taken to posting “RANCHES NOT RESORTS” signs along the roads. 

“I about fell over,” Wilson recalled of learning the news. “It just shows the deception and the nontransparency of this whole thing.”

A club representative told Floodlight that, “At the time of those early discussions, there were no plans or intention to own land in the Crazy Mountains … This development came near the end of the exchange discussions and only enhanced the benefits to the public.” 

However, the ranch began illegally drawing water to irrigate its golf course in 2024 and Montana regulators sued them the following year. 

“There’s a very famous saying in Montana that ‘Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting,’ and when you take water that you’re not entitled to, that's a big deal here,” said Posewitz. 

The club said it underestimated the time it would take to get regulatory approval, and later reached an agreement with the state to stop watering its golf course until proper permits were in place.

A Yellowstone Club representative declined to answer if the group is planning to acquire any more land in the Crazies, instead writing that they expect to be “a good neighbor for many years in the Shields Valley community.” 

Fears surrounding the luxury developer’s potential impact on the Crazies reached a fever pitch after the Forest Service authorized the landswap the club helped orchestrate in January 2025. 

The deal, called the East Crazy Inspiration Divide Land Exchange, moved nearly 4,000 acres of public lands into private ownership. In return, the public got more than 6,000 acres of private lands. On paper, it looked like a bargain: Appraisals obtained by Floodlight put the value of the land the public gained at more than $9.6 million and the land it gave up at more than $8.5 million. However, the swap enraged some locals because most of the low-lying accessible hills the public could enjoy were given up for high-elevation areas.

“All of the sort of prime habitat, that all went into private ownership, and then the tops of the mountains all went into public ownership,” said Posewitz.

The independent appraiser hired by the Forest Service seemed to agree. She described one section of land the public was getting as “very steep and difficult” to reach. Hunting would be impossible on most of the property. A person “would have to be a skilled rock climber” to navigate it, she wrote.

The land swap also solved the checkerboard issue that has plagued the Crazies for decades by consolidating public lands in the center of the range.

“What it's resulting in is a ring of private ownership around a chunk of public land that has very limited access,” said Posewitz.

Critics argue the exchange only benefits large landowners in the Crazies, several of whom run high-end hunting operations that rely on the range’s valuable natural resources.

Yellowstone Club member David Leuschen, for example, has acquired a nearly 8,500-acre ranch along with remote inholdings — including entire mountains — and is among the largest private landowners in the Crazy Mountains. Leuschen did not respond to requests for comment.

“The landowners now have access to the public lands in a really exclusive way,” said Cleveland of Wild Montana. She said the exchange gives these landowners “easy access into that country where the public has to hike 20 miles of backcountry trail to get in there” and “opens the door to a much more realistic development scenario.”

The most contested piece of the deal was the trail network. Two historic public trails had appeared on Forest Service maps for more than a century. The exchange abandoned the public’s claim to both. 

In their place, the Yellowstone Club agreed to pay for a new 22-mile trail on mostly public land, at a substantially higher elevation, as part of a 40-mile backcountry loop. 

“Can you imagine elderly folks and younger folks trying to hike that,” asked Wilson on a visit to the future trailhead. “It's not hiker friendly at all. Definitely not hunter friendly.”

He looked up at the nearly vertical wall of shale rock where the trail is slated to start. 

“It’s ridiculous,” he said.

Erickson, the former supervisor, promises the new trail “will meet all Forest Service trail standards.” She said the exchange will resolve access disputes, create more wild country in the Crazies and strengthen public access in the range.

Proponents of the exchange also say the swap increases access to Crazy Peak, an important cultural and religious site for Crow tribal members. Leuschen, who owns the mountain, has reportedly agreed to allow tribal members to access the peak through a formal agreement.

Critics, however, have questioned why granting such access would be contingent on the land swap. No independent third party has ever seen the agreement and Leuschen has denied its existence. The Forest Service said it is not involved in the agreement’s “management or oversight” because it’s between two private parties, and a spokesperson did not respond when asked to confirm the agreement’s existence. 

“Our concern was that it never materialized into something that was durable,” said Cleveland about the supposed agreement.  

“The Crazies are an incredibly important, sacred place for the Crow Tribe. And to use that as perceived leverage in getting support for this land exchange, you know, just didn‘t feel right to us,” she said.

Tribal officials did not respond to Floodlight’s multiple interview requests, but some have expressed the tribe’s stance on the land swap in lukewarm terms in the past.     

“There’s an assumption that we’re for it or against it. Really what matters is what gives us more access to the landscape,” Aaron Brien, the Crow tribal historic preservation officer, told a local TV station. “I want all Crow land should be back to Crow people.”

Considering the complexity of the swap, it's perhaps no surprise the public saw the deal as highly controversial. Roughly two-thirds of the more than 1,000 public comments submitted to the Forest Service opposed the exchange, according to a Floodlight analysis. Many cited the loss of historic public trails, low-elevation lands and the growing influence of Yellowstone Club. 

“We don't look at that as that's an opposition,” former forest supervisor Erickson said. “We just look at that as, right up until the very end, people are trying to tell you what they hope you can get more of.”

Nylund, the former senate staffer, sees it another way.

“The public spoke, the Forest Service ignored them,” he said. “When one unelected bureaucrat can relinquish public access to hundreds of thousands of acres of public land and we don't get a say in it? That's a crisis.”

The proliferation of high-end private resorts, combined with the Trump administration’s pro-development policies, have only increased alarm among advocates across the country who say America’s public lands are now entering a very different era.

“America has always had this balance of people who seek to exploit her natural resources and those who seek to defend them,” said Posewitz. 

That balance is now shifted, he said, because “those people who are supposed to be defending our interest … are actually actively facilitating the exploitation of these natural resources for the benefit of very, very few.” 

“We’re losing pieces and pieces every day,” said Wilson during a recent drive along the eastern edge of the Crazies. Despite the power imbalance, he draws energy from the words of famed Montana conservationist, Jim Posewitz.

“Make ‘em take it from you,” he said. 

A controversial Montana land swap orchestrated by a secretive club for the megarich has come to symbolize the growing influence of wealthy private interests spreading across America's public lands.

Floodlight's Evan Simon goes in search of the Yellowstone Club, a mountain top retreat for the rich and famous that locals say is "gobbling up vast swaths of Montana." Members of the exclusive club include celebrities, tech titans and top Trump administration officials — including the man in charge of most of the nation's public lands.

A nexus of political and economic power in the state, the club quietly played a key role in a controversial land swap in the remote Crazy Mountains last year that has outraged local hunters and conservationists. Simon heads deep into the Crazies to see the impacts of the swap that critics say only benefitted wealthy landowners in the area who now enjoy nearly exclusive access to the range and its valuable natural resources.

The proliferation of high-end private resorts, combined with the Trump administration’s pro-development policies, have only increased alarm among advocates across the country who say America’s public lands are now entering a very different era.

"People should care about what's happening in the Crazies, because it is very much a harbinger of potentially what could come." — Andrew Posewitz, Montana Public Lands Advocate

Read more in our new investigation:

This story was published in partnership with Type Investigations with support from the H.D. Lloyd Fund for Investigative Journalism, and in collaboration with Verite News and WWNO/WRKF.  Republished by The Nation, Louisiana Illuminator and The Lens.

A dozen federal judges have presided over some of the most consequential environmental lawsuits in Louisiana’s history despite having investments in or business connections to the petrochemical companies being sued, an investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF and Type Investigations has found.

Their ties took various forms: holding stock or corporate bonds while presiding over the cases, having previously worked as attorneys for the oil companies, receiving large sums of money from investments in the companies prior to hearing the cases, leasing mineral rights to defendants or having a spouse who was a partner at a law firm defending the oil companies. 

But even when they appear to have direct conflicts of interest, almost none of those judges broke the ethical rules governing the judiciary.

“To the extent they're following the rules, they can't really be faulted,” said Charles Geyh, a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and an expert in judicial disqualification. “But from a systemic standpoint, do you really want judges to be drawn from a pool of people who have a stake in the industry?”

Examples include: 

• Judge Carl Barbier of the U.S. Eastern District Court of Louisiana held over $100,000 of corporate bonds in five oil companies while presiding over four different cases in which one or more of those companies was a defendant. 
• Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, of the same court, reported that she or her husband traded tens of thousands of dollars of Exxon and Chevron stock while she presided over a case in which both companies were being sued. 
• Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of oil companies in one of the cases after receiving over $100,000 in mineral royalties since 2013, when the litigation first arrived in federal court. 

Judges must be impartial in their rulings and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Yet, in practice, that standard is poorly enforced. The judiciary itself decides in most cases what constitutes a conflict, and its current guidelines state that judges may even receive payments from defendants while a case is ongoing — so long as the judge’s ruling will not impact the amount they get paid.

In Louisiana, where many judges profit from petrochemical investments, the question of whether the courts can be trusted to fairly judge the oil industry has enormous stakes. 

Enormous stakes 

For decades, oil companies working in Louisiana dredged canals through wetlands and dumped billions of gallons of waste in unlined pits that leached salts and toxic heavy metals into the surrounding soil and waters. That pollution killed cattle, crawfish, oysters, crops and wetland plants. It has also seeped into aquifers that provide drinking water to local communities and contributed to a land-loss crisis that threatens to wipe southern Louisiana off the map.

Now, through a series of about 40 related lawsuits, the state and several parishes are seeking tens of billions in damages from hundreds of these companies to pay for the cost of cleaning up the mess. The litigation could rank among the most expensive environmental damage cases in U.S. history if the plaintiffs succeed. 

Last year, a Louisiana jury’s verdict in one of these lawsuits found Chevron liable for $745 million in damages. The oil companies have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to move the cases from state to federal courts, where judges could decide to vacate the jury’s verdict. (Federal courts already dismissed an early case in the series before it ever reached a jury).

If the oil companies prevail with the Supreme Court, which is expected to release a decision this spring, the cases will likely wind up back on the dockets of the federal judges named in this story.

An investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF and Type Investigations found that 12 of the 46 federal judges who have already made rulings in the coastal damage lawsuits had investments in or business connections to petrochemical companies that were defendants in the cases.

Since 2013, nine of these judges have collected nearly one million dollars in income from their investments in the defendants, according to an analysis of their financial disclosures. That income was gained during the period while the cases have been litigated in federal courts, though not exclusively while the cases were on each of the judges' dockets.

It's difficult to determine if and how financial ties influenced judicial decisions — and many of these judges, like Barbier, actually ruled against the oil companies. But even the appearance of impropriety can undermine trust in the rule of law.

“It's only natural for the public to be increasingly suspicious about whether those judges are a little too friendly with the industry to be impartial arbiters,” said Geyh. 

Even beyond the direct ties to the defendants, judges’ investments in the fossil fuel industry more broadly could raise eyebrows. The outcome of these coastal damage cases could impact the industry at large, with the potential to establish a roadmap for anyone seeking to hold oil companies accountable for environmental destruction.

Where’s the money coming from?

The stakes of these cases are enormous for the oil companies, as well as for their investors — possibly exceeding a hundred billion dollars in liability, said the author and historian John Barry. 

The industry’s damage has accelerated the state’s coastal erosion: Since the 1930s, an area about the size of Delaware has slipped into the sea.  

In response, Louisiana spent decades creating its Coastal Master Plan to repair its wetlands and address the land loss. But enacting it will require tens of billions of dollars over the coming decades. 

Where that money might come from is an open question, and one that these lawsuits seek to resolve. 

 “Without money, there's no master plan,” said Barry. “The stakes are the existence of Louisiana. It’s pretty simple.”

In his former position on the board of a New Orleans flood protection agency, Barry was an architect of a lawsuit that became a model for the dozens of parish lawsuits that followed it. His team argued their case in front of Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown starting in 2013 — but she dismissed it, finding that the flood protection agency had no standing against nearly 100 oil companies and keeping the case from ever reaching a jury. She later presided over two additional coastal damage cases. 

Brown and her husband traded tens of thousands of dollars in Exxon and Chevron stock while those companies were defendants before her. She held the stocks for about 18 months, while the price of both increased significantly. She then sold them before issuing any additional rulings  — likely keeping her within disqualification rules.

At the time, Brown’s husband was one of Entergy’s most senior executives, and the couple held millions of dollars of the company’s stock. Entergy was a defendant in one of the coastal damage cases, though not one over which she presided. 

"I always take great care to ensure that I comply with all judiciary ethics guidance, rules and rule of law," Brown wrote in response to our findings.

The statute has limitations

Federal recusal rules set a high bar for when a judge must step aside — and impose no real penalty when they don't. 

Congress requires judges to recuse themselves whenever their impartiality "might reasonably be questioned," including when they hold any financial interest in a party. But words like "reasonably" and "financial interest" leave wiggle room, and judges themselves decide whether a conflict exists. The only remedy when they get it wrong is an appeal — a thorny process with a high bar for success.

However, experts widely agree that if a judge owns any amount of stock in a company that is a party to the case, they are required to step aside.

One judge appears to have crossed that bright line.

U.S. Fifth Circuit Court Judge Edith Jones held roughly $50,000 of ConocoPhillips stock while voting in 2024 on a case where a ConocoPhillips subsidiary was a defendant.  

That ruling likely violated the federal disqualification statute and Code of Judicial Conduct, according to three judicial experts.

Ways to fix this

Louisiana’s federal judges have so many ties to the oil and gas industry that some cases have led to mass recusals. In one coastal damage case, nine judges recused, including at least five who had investments in the defendants. 

The judiciary also has a poor record of policing its conflicts. The Wall Street Journal found in 2021 that over 130 federal judges nationwide had failed to recuse themselves despite owning stock in companies involved in cases they oversaw. 

Relatively simple judicial reforms, like requiring judges to put their holdings in blind trusts, could eliminate many of the conflicts that cause these situations, according to Geyh.  

“You kind of expect that there are certain sacrifices you need to make in order to preserve public perception of your impartiality, your integrity, and your independence,” Geyh said.

In a small step forward in 2022, the courts updated their conflict-screening procedures and lawmakers passed the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which established stricter disclosure rules and a requirement that judges’ disclosures be made available to the public online.

This investigation relied in part on those documents.

Disappearing communities

As the dispute over who should pay to clean up the coast enters its 13^th year of litigation, the communities living with the destruction are losing ground fast. 

“Most people don't have a clue about how extensive the damage can be to landowners,” said lawyer Warren Perrin, who estimates the oil companies have caused hundreds of acres of his family land to disappear into the water. 

Perrin traces his family roots back to the Acadians, or Cajun people, who settled in Louisiana in the late 1700s. He says the loss of wetlands, increasing flood risk, and pollution caused by oil companies has taken a toll on the close-knit Cajun family and community in Vermillion Parish.

“ As we lose the lands, people move away,” he said. “The intensity of the culture is destabilized as more people move away.”

If the oil companies get their way, it’s not clear where the money to preserve these lands will come from — or how much longer the coastal parishes can hold on. 

Despite the odds, Perrin’s family is working to restore the coast in whatever modest ways they can, dumping boulders and rebuilding the coastline to keep their land from becoming open water.

“I'm a chronic, hopeless optimist that it will work out and we're gonna save our lands,” he said. “It's a struggle. But I believe in the system of justice, in our laws — usually the right thing happens.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

Over the course of a yearlong investigation, Floodlight, Type Investigations and WWNO/WRKF examined the federal judges involved in a series of environmental damage lawsuits with huge stakes for communities in southern Louisiana. 

Our methodology began with building a detailed timeline to track the group of more than 40 connected cases through more than a decade of appeals that spanned four federal courts and 46 total judges. The timeline documented the shifting names and case numbers of each lawsuit, as well as the judges who made rulings in each case and the dates of their orders. We also built a searchable, comprehensive data set of all the lawyers, law firms, companies and judges involved in each case. 

We then investigated each of the 46 judges by reviewing thousands of pages of the financial disclosure reports they are required to file annually, as well as publicly available mineral lease agreements, land records, senate confirmation testimony and court records to build dossiers that documented the financial holdings and employment histories of each of the judges and their spouses. By comparing those findings to the database of companies and lawyers involved, we identified 12 judges with connections to defendants in the cases. 

Along the way, we spoke to experts in judicial ethics and disqualification, government officials, lawyers and judges involved in the series of cases, as well as landowners whose properties were damaged by oil extraction. Their perspectives helped us capture the full context of the court cases, the judiciary’s rules, and the consequences for people dealing with the damage alleged in the lawsuits. 

People we contacted for this story:

• Charles Geyh, professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law 
• Arthur Hellman, professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh School of Law
• Russell Wheeler, nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution
• Vernon Valentine Palmer, co-director of Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law at Tulane University Law School
• Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court
• Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, attorney and former judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Warren Perrin, attorney and author
• Mike Veron, attorney and author
• Allan Wolf, author
• John Barry, author, historian, adjunct professor at Tulane University
• Lyle Cayce, clerk of court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

Despite overwhelming public opposition, Mississippi regulators on Tuesday approved an operating permit for 41 gas-powered turbines to run at xAI’s Southaven power plant.

The new turbines will help power Grok, xAI’s controversial chatbot. A recent Floodlight visual investigation confirmed the plant was operating more than a dozen of the 27 unpermitted turbines already located at the site. The Environmental Protection Agency has long required that such pollution sources be permitted under the Clean Air Act. However, Mississippi regulators maintained that because the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don't require permits for the first year in operation. 

The permit granted to xAI this week is for 41 additional turbines at the site that will operate continuously. The machines could emit more than 6 million tons of greenhouse gases and over 1,300 tons of harmful air pollutants every year, according to xAI’s permit application — making the expanded facility one of the largest fossil fuel power plants in the state.

Southaven residents have described being bombarded by ceaseless noise and pollution from the 114-acre site for months. Hundreds turned out to a February hearing to denounce the project and xAI’s plans to expand the site, and not a single community member spoke in support of the project at the Tuesday hearing. 

Advocacy groups like the NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center criticized the seven-member permitting board after their unanimous vote to approve the permit.

“Mississippi state regulators appear to be more interested in fast-tracking xAI’s personal power plant than conducting a thorough review of its impacts and having meaningful engagement with the families that will be forced to live with this dirty facility — and its pollution — in their communities,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney with the SELC.

The final permit was approved at a hearing in Jackson — nearly three hours from Southaven — held on an election day. 

Floodlight spoke with several residents after the hearing for their reactions (their quotes have been lightly edited for clarity). 

Shannon Samsa, physician’s assistant, executive director of the Southaven-based Safe and Sound Coalition.

“I’m disappointed, but not surprised. It was pretty obvious this permit was going to be pushed through at any cost. It feels like the decision had already been made before the public hearing last month, no matter what residents said. 

“That being said, I do want to be clear that this is not the fault of my community. We did our part. We spoke up, raised concerns, and tried to warn them. We did not create this situation or approve this project.

“The people who had the power to stop this project chose not to. The consequences of this decision do not belong to me or to any of the residents who tried to warn them. They belong to the officials and agencies who approved this project anyway, and they will have to live with that on their conscience, not us.

“My husband and I are probably going to relocate after I start my career later this year. I don’t know that we’ll move completely out of DeSoto County just yet, but we’ll definitely be trying to put some distance between us and xAI as soon as we possibly can. We were hoping to stay in the same apartment that we’ve been in for nearly 10 years for a few more years, so that we could save up to buy a house and have children, as well as pay my student loans down. But that doesn’t seem like a realistic or safe option for us anymore.”

Jason Haley, Southaven resident

“I expected them to approve it. Our concerns aren’t taken seriously. There’s too much money involved to worry about the current and future impact on people. One of the guys on the board announced his retirement right after approving it.”

Krystal Polk, Southaven resident

“The asking of public concerns and comments were just a formality. The decision was already made. Musk is allowed to play by a different set of rules, and money and power can buy anything at this moment, even at the risk of human health. 

“I am disappointed and disheartened that no one on the board had the courage to stand for what was right. It was not in their backyard and therefore they believe it does not affect them. I pray no one they know becomes a statistical number from the detrimental effects of the power plant.

“But I will not give up fighting for myself and others.”

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage captured in late January 2026, shows xAI running the unpermitted turbines at its custom built powerplant in Southaven, Miss., nearly two weeks after an Environmental Protection Agency ruling reiterated that doing so requires a state permit in advance. The ad hoc gas plant's sole task is to power the datacenter behind Grok and is part of an increasing reliance among AI companies on fossil fuels.

Read the full investigation in our original story, co-published with The Guardian:

Curious how we pulled off this project? Read our Q&A with reporter Evan Simon:

Last month, we published an investigation into Elon Musk’s Mississippi power plant fueling Colossus 2, the massive data center powering xAI’s Grok chatbot. Using thermal drone imagery, our reporting showed more than a dozen gas turbines operating at the site without state permits.

Published in partnership with The Guardian and republished by newsrooms in Mississippi and beyond, the story and its striking images have reached more than 1.5 million people so far, underscoring the national stakes of what’s happening in this small city.

Now, Floodlight reporter Evan Simon has released a mini-documentary of the investigation. 

I caught up with Evan to talk more about what it took to report a first-of-its-kind story like this — from getting his drone piloting license to how a bad storm nearly ruined our plans.

— Rosie Gillies, Floodlight director of audience

For readers just coming to this story, what did Floodlight’s investigation find about how xAI is powering its Mississippi data center, and why does it matter?

We used a thermal drone to prove Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company was violating longstanding Environmental Protection Agency rules under the Clean Air Act. The images we captured of xAI’s custom-built gas plant in Southaven, Miss., were the first of their kind, revealing the true scope of a hastily built facility that until then had remained largely hidden from public view. 

Most importantly, though, the thermal images proved that xAI was running more than a dozen unpermitted turbines at the site — a clear violation of federal law, according to a former EPA air enforcement chief I spoke with. 

Why does it matter? Well, as AI data centers proliferate across the country, they are increasingly relying on “behind the meter” gas plants like the one in Southaven for power. Our investigation documented the brazen rulebreaking occurring at one of the nation’s largest data centers and exposed how state and federal regulators have done nothing to stop it. 

At what point did you realize that standard reporting tools wouldn’t be enough for this story and that thermal drone imagery could actually show what was happening on the ground?

I’ve always been drawn to using new reporting tools, especially those that can help visualize environmental threats in compelling and unique ways. I’ve used tracking devices to investigate plastic recycling claims and handheld gas detectors to hunt down leaking, abandoned oil wells. I’d been interested in using thermal cameras ever since I read about how the Southern Environmental Law Center used them to catch xAI running more than 30 unpermitted turbines in Memphis last year. I immediately wondered if there was a way to incorporate that kind of technology in my reporting. SELC had flown a photographer with a handheld thermal camera in an airplane, but I was most interested in using a drone. 

So, I started researching and found that thermal drones were often used to inspect industrial facilities, and once I started hearing about xAI’s gas plant in Southaven, I prepared for a trip to Mississippi.

Can you walk us through the logistics and constraints of using a thermal drone for reporting, including legal considerations and how you planned the flight?

Lifting the thermal drone into the air that day took months of preparation, and I think that might help explain why Floodlight appears to be the first newsroom to have done something like this. 

The journey actually began months prior, when Floodlight supported my wish to get a Part 107 drone operator’s license. Once I passed my test and had my license, I had to log a lot of flight hours to feel comfortable enough flying the drone on assignments. 

Safety and legality are the most important aspects of any drone flight, and the Mississippi deployment was no different. I consulted Federal Aviation Administration airspace maps and used a flight plan approval process to ensure we would be flying legally at all times. I also had to make sure there was a safe and legal place for me to take off that would provide a good view of the gas plant while also allowing me to keep my eye on the drone at all times. 

I tried flying from a nearby park, but the ceiling of the controlled airspace wouldn’t allow me to get high enough above the treeline. While I could have flown from the side of a public road directly outside the facility, for safety reasons, I wasn’t keen on the likely prospect of being approached by private security while operating the drone. 

Thankfully, Krystal Polk, one of the Southaven residents whom I planned to interview, owned a home directly across the street from the plant, and she was more than happy to let me fly from her backyard. Despite being so close to the facility, fences and treelines prevented her — and most Southaven residents — from ever getting a good look at it. So she was eager to see it for the first time. 

With all the pieces coming together, we booked travel to Mississippi and rented a high-end thermal drone typically used by search and rescue teams as well as utility inspectors. The plan was to have it delivered just ahead of my arrival. Unfortunately, though, Winter Storm Fern knocked out my travel plans and any possibility of flying during the window we had planned. The drone actually sat in a hotel storage room for nearly a week before I was able to get there. Thankfully, the hotel staff kept it safe for us (shoutout to the front desk crew!), and the drone rental company was extremely understanding about the delay in our production. 

By the time I got to Southaven, the storm had passed but the city was practically shut down. The unplowed highways and roads were nearly impassable and most of the city was holed up in their homes waiting for the snow to melt. Thankfully, the skies were clear and all my sources were still available. When I got to Krystal’s, I made my final safety checks, confirmed I had legal permission to fly, and finally took off. 

Once you had the thermal footage, how did you make sure the findings were solid?

As soon as the thermal drone lifted above the treeline, I could see multiple massive stacks emitting very strong heat signatures that looked like giant burning candles. While it seemed fairly obvious that these turbines were operating, I needed to be 100% sure. Also, I wanted to see if we could establish just how many were running at the time. So we shared the images with several leading experts including Bruce Buckheit, former director of the EPA’s Air Enforcement Division, who served decades in the agency under multiple presidential administrations. After several conversations with him and two other experts deeply familiar with this kind of equipment, we felt confident reporting that at least 15 turbines were operating at the time.

It’s also important to understand that the thermal drone was only one of many reporting tools used for this project. In addition to interviews with local residents, we also heavily relied on public records requests. Emails we obtained between xAI consultants and Mississippi regulators confirmed that 27 unpermitted turbines were located at the site and some had been operating since at least November. 

I’m sure all this effort to confirm that the unpermitted turbines were indeed operating (which was fairly obvious to anyone within earshot of the facility) might seem odd to some of the residents I spoke with, but when you’re reporting on the illegal activities of a company owned by the richest man in the world, we had to be rock solid with our findings in every way imaginable.

What are you reporting on next as this story continues to unfold, and what questions are you still trying to answer?

More and more AI datacenters are building their own gas plants and with the lack of public notice or regulatory enforcement I saw in Southaven, I want to know just how many similar plants are out there and skirting environmental regulations in the race for AI dominance. We have another similar investigation in the works that I won’t get into ahead of publication, but I believe there is a real need for this kind of reporting going forward, and I think it’s incredibly important that journalists continue to hold the AI industry accountable for its impact on public health and the climate. This reporting is not just about xAI or one Mississippi city. It is about how quickly AI’s fossil fuel infrastructure is scaling, whether environmental oversight can keep up, and what it means for our changing climate.

This article was produced in partnership between Floodlight and The Guardian. It was republished by Capital B, Grist, Mississippi Free Press, MLK50, Tennessee Lookout

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Miss., despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.

State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don't require permits. However, the EPA has long required that such pollution sources be permitted under the Clean Air Act.

Any exemption for these machines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all,” the agency wrote in a January final ruling.

However, thermal images captured by Floodlight — and analyzed by multiple experts — show more than a dozen unpermitted turbines still spewing pollutants at the plant nearly two weeks after the EPA's recent ruling. 

“That is a violation of the law,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations.

xAI, which is seeking permits for dozens more turbines in Southaven, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The EPA, which under Trump has initiated a record low number of enforcement actions, declined to answer questions about the turbines at Musk’s AI facilities and referred to local authorities on permits.

The first and only public hearing on the matter is scheduled for February 17, and the public comment period is still open.

The Trump administration has made AI a priority, but as data centers proliferate across the country, regulators are struggling to keep pace with the industry’s increasing reliance on custom-built power sources and their public health impacts on surrounding communities. And Southaven, where state regulators are at odds with federal guidance, is a prime example. 

The turbines there help power Grok, the company's controversial chat bot, and emit harmful pollutants linked to health problems such as asthma, lung cancer and heart attacks.

"The risk of living next to this type of power plant is well documented,” said Shaolei Ren, a UC Riverside associate professor who specializes in the health impacts of data centers. "From the health perspective, we know that this is not good." 

Southaven residents have voiced concerns for months over the noise and pollution emanating from the 114-acre site that is largely hidden from public view — a site xAI is looking to expand. 

“For them to be releasing so much pollution in such a populated area, not to mention that there are at least ten schools within a two mile radius of the facility, is really concerning,” said longtime resident Shannon Samsa. “It's horrifying to me that we're allowing this in our community.”

From Memphis to Mississippi

The Southaven turbine cluster is part of xAi’s rapidly growing footprint along the Tennessee-Mississippi border. That expansion began in the spring of 2024 in South Memphis, next to historically Black neighborhoods, with the construction of Colossus 1, which the company touted as the world’s largest AI supercomputer.

The Southern Environmental Law Center released thermal images in April revealing that xAi had been operating more than 30 unpermitted gas-powered turbines at that site.

“We were hopeful that the health department would step in,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at the SELC. “That never happened.” 

County officials in Tennessee maintained the turbines did not require a permit despite longstanding EPA policy that they do. In July, amid local pushback, the county permitted 15 turbines for use at Colossus 1.

On January 15, the EPA reiterated its decades-old policy that such machines need a permit. By then, xAi had already built a second data center in the area, Colossus 2. To power it, the company parked 27 turbines just across the stateline in Southaven, Miss., a diverse suburb of Memphis with higher than average levels of air pollution. 

“When you're talking about these turbines, think of the jet engine,” said Buckheit.  

Despite the EPA’s recent directive, Floodlight’s thermal imagery — analyzed by multiple experts — shows 15 unpermitted turbines in operation at Southaven. Public records obtained by Floodlight show 18 of the 27 turbines have been used since November, at least.

“One might easily have expected, since this has been going on for some months, at least [issue a] stop work order,” said Buckheit, who served during the Republican Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations. He also said the EPA could refer the case to the Department of Justice. 

“But apparently that didn't happen.”

Playing by a different set of rules

An EPA spokesperson did not answer Floodlight’s questions relating to its enforcement options, instead saying, “EPA does not approve the operation of gas turbines at facilities, that would be the state or local air permitting authority.” 

Air permits are traditionally handled by state agencies. However, according to its own website, the EPA is responsible for making sure these agencies comply with federal regulations and “generally will take enforcement action” if a state government fails to “take timely and appropriate action.”

xAI “violated the Clean Air Act the first time, and now they're gonna copy and paste and do it again,” said Anderson. “I maybe had some naive hope that the regulators who are most in the day-to-day business of implementing the Clean Air Act in Mississippi would do the right thing.” 

In response to Floodlight’s questions, a spokesperson from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said the EPA’s recent rule leaves permitting decisions to state authorities. 

“The turbines currently operating at the Southaven facility are classified as portable/mobile units under state law and therefore remain exempt from air permitting requirements during this temporary period,” they said. “Nothing in the EPA’s January 15 rule altered that determination under Mississippi regulations.”

Longtime resident Krystal Polk said she had no idea xAI was coming to Southaven until black fences were set up across the street from her house. The area, she said, was once quiet and serene, with an abundance of wildlife, but is now bombarded by ceaseless noise and pollution. 

“I do feel like xAi is playing by a different set of rules,” she said. 

An asthmatic, Polk said she was forced to empty out the home that’s been in her family for generations and cancel her plans to retire there out of concerns for her health.

“We are a casualty of the whole data center race,” she said. “I feel that my voice doesn't matter.”

The spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said the agency takes public concern around emissions, noise and overall quality of life seriously, and though the turbines — in their view — do not require permits, all “applicable air quality standards still apply.”

AI’s increasing thirst for fossil fuels 

Despite lofty sustainability goals put forward by industry leaders, data centers across the country are increasingly turning to fossil fuels to power the AI boom by using custom-built power plants like the ones seen in Southaven.

Roughly 75% of this power comes from natural gas, according to a recent report by CleanView, which tracks clean energy and data center projects. 

“Nearly every project we reviewed mentions renewables, hydrogen, or nuclear in its public announcements,” the author wrote, but renewables aren’t scheduled until 2028 or later.

And “nuclear is a decade away,” he said.

Now, xAI is seeking to expand in Southaven, applying in January for a permit to operate 41 turbines at the site. 

The facility could emit more than 6 million tons of greenhouse gases and over 1,300 tons of health-harming air pollutants every year, according to xAI’s permit application. That would make it among the largest fossil fuel power plants in the state. The company also purchased property in Southaven for a third data center that, when completed, will make the Colossus cluster — spanning Memphis to Southaven — one of the largest data center complexes in the world.

“It would be devastating,” said Samsa, the Southaven resident. “No community in their right mind would want something like this in their backyards.”

Samsa, a physician’s assistant, had hoped to raise a family in Southaven, but the presence of xAi’s gas-powered turbines has made her and her husband reconsider. She has helped collect more than 1,000 signatures for a petition demanding Mississippi authorities shut down the plant. 

“I don't want my children to be growing up around such massive amounts of air pollution,” she said. “I don't want them to have to live in a place where their health and their overall well-being is not considered over economics.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.