The wealthiest man on the planet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, also happens to be the CEO of several other companies at the same time including SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and The Boring Company. Musk isn’t known for keeping promises at Tesla or any of those other companies, and now his Boring Company was caught lying — for a second time. A Clark County, Nevada environmental regulator fined The Boring Company $492,297.08 for continuing to illegally dump drilling fluids into sewers and manholes around Las Vegas a day after a Clark County Water Reclamation District (CCWRD) inspector told TBC to stop.
Fortune originally reported on the news after it obtained the notice of the violation via a records request. Apparently the drilling fluids that The Boring Company was illegally dumping contain several chemicals, including some toxic chemicals like MasterRoc AGA 41S. Boring Company employees have allegedly received burns from exposed skin coming into direct contact with these chemicals.
The Boring Company has been in hot water before
Because of The Boring Company’s illegal disposal of drilling fluid from two project sites, CCWRD said its crews had to clean 12 cubic yards of drilling mud, drilling spoils, and miscellaneous solid waste from one of its sewage treatment facilities. The $131,297 fee for that service was included in the nearly $500,000 fine, with the remainder primarily coming from “the egregious nature of the violations, the substantial damage to district infrastructure, the district emergency resources expended responding to the violations, and Boring Company’s acknowledgement of the violations.”
According to Fortune, “The violation records show that several Boring Company executives attended a hearing with CCWRD at the end of September and that Boring Company acknowledged responsibility and agreed not to expand Boring’s operations to new drilling locations “until certain conditions were met.”
In June 2023, The Boring Company was cited for drilling without a permit when it exposed the foundations of two pillars that hold up Las Vegas’s elevated monorail, causing the monorail to pause operation for a day. Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has investigated The Boring Company and issued several citations including eight in 2023 alone, though TBC is disputing the violations and will defend itself in an upcoming hearing. In September, TBC was fined nearly $250,000 for violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times in the last two years.
Unsurprisingly, the Musk-run company has no comment
CCWRD told Fortune it received a complaint about The Boring Company and went to investigate. The investigator walked into the project site to find drilling fluids and spoils were actively being discharged into two on-site pipes that connected to sewer lines, and into two manholes. The documents state that TBC employees refused to stop dumping the toxic fluids into the public sewer when the inspector asked them to. Apparently, the employees paused the dumping for a while, but only long enough to confirm that the inspectors had left the property. Then they resumed the illegal dumping. Fortune reached out for comment, but The Boring Company did not respond.
Inspectors returned the following day to find the discharge pipes replaced and back in operation dumping the potentially toxic debris into the sewer. CCWRD issued a cease-and-desist order later that day. The Boring Company sent a letter to CCWRD where it acknowledged that “water was improperly discharged to the sewer system,” and claimed that it was investigating the matter, had taken action, and physically disconnected certain sewage connections and sealed leaks in its tunnels. To date, the Boring Company has only successfully created four miles of tunnel underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center that are in operation today, despite making much grander promises over the years.
