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Samuel Hardiman is an enterprise and investigative reporter who focuses on local government and politics. A native Rhode Islander who lives Downtown, he enjoys tennis, golf and reading.
There are 382 articles by Samuel Hardiman :
“You can’t have 50 different cities with 50 different laws,” Lee said as the Memphis City Council pushes to put local gun-control measures on the November ballot. “Trying to override that is just picking a fight.”
With a focus on tree-trimming and milder weather, Memphis Light, Gas and Water reported a drop in area outages from 2023 to 2024.
In the past, TVA has struggled to provide enough power, but environmentalists say the continued investment in natural gas could mean further harm to neighborhoods already surrounded by heavy industrial users.
After weeks of questions, Shelby County Health Department leaders confirmed that the EPA has approved an air monitoring station for xAI’s Memphis Supercomputer ZIP code.
Deemed Colossus, the xAI supercomputer is the “most powerful AI training system in the world,” Elon Musk wrote on X Monday, Sept. 2.
“There’s a lot of issues that are unknown, and there’s a lot of contamination. ... So how do we address that, and where are those sources coming from?” the science director at Protect Our Aquifer said.
He said the city council’s lawsuit to get the referendum on the ballot could hurt efforts to work with Republican leaders of the legislature. Memphis City Council sues Election Commission over gun-control voteRelated content:
“We won’t back down and d--n sure won’t be bullied,” Memphis City Council Chair JB Smiley Jr. said, as council members announced the lawsuit.
The EPA considers turbines, such as the ones being used at the xAI supercomputer in Memphis, a significant source of hazardous air pollutants.
Energy costs continued to climb for Memphians last week when the Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors voted to raise electric rates.
State reps. John Gillespie and Justin J. Pearson were some of the Memphis-area legislators pushing for local gun-control measures on the Nov. 5 ballot after a threat from state Republican leadership.
Memphis City Council member Dr. Jeff Warren said he was disappointed by the news. “Cities are different animals from (the) countryside,” he said.
“Common sense says local governments can’t override state law to give a 12-year-old a driver’s license, and they can’t override other state laws either,” Hargett said in a statement emailed to The Daily Memphian. TN Repubs threaten to withhold sales tax over Memphis gun votesRelated content:
The planned $112.5 million private development High 5 could transform Liberty Park, formerly known as the Mid-South Fairgrounds, and bail the City of Memphis out of an underwater wager.
New Memphis Area Transit Authority documents detail which jobs the transit system plans to cut as it attempts to right-size its operations.Related content:
A survey of Memphis residents finds 17% don’t know who Mayor Paul Young is, and 35% have never heard of Interim Police Chief C.J. Davis.
After xAI’s supercomputer came online, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence startup revamped its plans for a greywater facility to include other large water users.
After the City of Memphis spent $74.5 million of its fund balance in fiscal year 2024, The Daily Memphian filed a Tennessee Public Records Act request to see how the money was spent.
The meeting hosted by MLGW alongside Memphis City Council member Pearl Walker came after months of community worry about the project, which promises to add the electrical equivalent of several thousand homes to the utility’s distribution system. Related story:
Environmental activists have raised concerns about emissions from the site as well as impact on the region’s drinking water.
Liberty Park, formerly known as the Mid-South Fairgrounds, could see a broad transformation in the coming years with $112.5 million in private development now cleared for takeoff.
The treated wastewater from the plant would replace demand on the region’s supply and save hundreds of millions of drinking water a year from industrial use.
The request comes amid the backdrop of some grassroots opposition to the project in Memphis and growing awareness nationwide of the demands supercomputers and other data centers have placed on electric grids and water supplies.
The Republican primary winner is likely to face a spirited general-election challenge. State House District 97, which includes parts of East Memphis and Bartlett, is among the most competitive in the state.
Longtime Tennessee Sen. Sara Kyle faces a Democratic primary challenger on the August ballot — Erika Stotts Pearson, a perennial candidate for higher office.