Elon Musk's xAI company plans to construct a large natural gas power plant in Southaven, Mississippi. The state's environmental department has scheduled a meeting for Tuesday to decide whether to grant the company a crucial permit.

The NAACP, along with other civil rights and environmental advocates, has attempted to delay this meeting. They argue the scheduling is too rushed and conflicts with some residents' voting plans. These groups also stated that choosing Jackson, nearly 200 miles from Southaven, as the meeting location would hinder participation from residents directly affected by the plant.

"This is not only a civic engagement issue but also places an undue financial burden on Black residents and individuals from low-income and other communities living near the proposed facility," the NAACP wrote in a letter dated March 8th but made public on Monday, addressed to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).

They requested the hearing be rescheduled and relocated closer to the proposed facility site.

The MDEQ rejected this request on Monday. In its response to the NAACP, the department wrote that its permit board "regularly meets on the second Tuesday of each month, a practice consistent for decades," and that the regulator "considers matters from across the state."

This meeting occurs just over a month after Musk merged his reusable rocket company, SpaceX, with xAI. The combined entity is valued at $1.25 trillion. Since founding xAI in 2023, Musk has been attempting to position this artificial intelligence company as a competitor to OpenAI in the booming generative AI market.