Ghost Permits fuses atmospheric data from Sentinel-5P, optical imagery from Sentinel-2, and public permit records — and independently documents when industrial facilities start emitting, with or without a permit. The sky itself is the witness. We just published its testimony.
The state's permit office had no record of turbines at 3231 Riverport Road. At the same time, 400 kilometers overhead, Sentinel-5P was logging a nitrogen dioxide plume exactly where the turbines stood.
We cross-reference atmospheric chemistry, 10-meter optical imagery, and public permit databases. Each stream is independent. When they disagree, the paperwork is wrong — not the physics.
Sentinel-5P TROPOMI Sentinel-2 Optical Permit Databases
(daily NO₂ / HCHO) + (10 m imagery, VLM) + (public records)
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
Anomaly onset Equipment count Filing timeline
│ │ │
└─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┘
▼
Evidence Brief + Confidence Score
(independent of official filings)
The satellite doesn't care who filed a permit. It just records what's burning.
— the premise of this entire projectThe atmosphere logged the story in real time. Everyone else found out later — from aerial photographers, from local news, from lawsuits. This is the timeline as the sky saw it.
Environmental regulation runs on filings — documents submitted by the same companies being regulated. When those filings lag operations, the gap is pollution. The gap is cancer rates. The gap is which communities get warned and which find out when the turbines are already running.
The Sentinel satellites overfly Memphis daily, whether anyone is looking or not. Our job is to look — and to make what they recorded legible to regulators, journalists, lawyers, and the neighborhoods downwind.
— Ghost Permits · est. 2026 · open data · open methodology
Live Sentinel-2 imagery, NO₂ anomaly curves, the LFM2.5-VL turbine count, the permit-gap analysis, and the full evidence brief — for each of the three Memphis sites.