Earlier than and after the 2024 election, Elon Musk made it clear he disliked environmental regulations and thought of them a barrier to innovation, particularly given the short timelines his corporations desire to function on.
The billionaire spent greater than $250 million to help elect President Donald Trump and, within the first months of Trump’s second time period, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency, making cuts to the federal bureaucracy and regulatory staff, together with environmental companies, earlier than a dramatic falling out with the president.
Musk-controlled corporations have additionally developed affect in Texas, a state already identified for a lighter contact on environmental regulation. Along with his lobbyists’ profitable track record in the Texas Legislature, Gov. Greg Abbott cited Musk as inspiration for the state creating its personal DOGE-style workplace.
A brand new investigation from ProPublica, the Texas Newsroom, the Houston Chronicle and the Texas Tribune has discovered Musk and a Houston-area member of Congress have pushed Texas and native officers to rent Musk’s Boring Co. for a $760 million flood control project in the city.
Reporters Lauren McGaughy and Yilun Cheng discovered that Rep. Wesley Hunt helped pitch Boring’s involvement although the corporate builds tunnels narrower than those extensively studied by flood management specialists for the mission. An engineering professional warned that the quantity of the tunnels the corporate is proposing might not be enough throughout a flood emergency. One other stated that the proposed tunnels, which might be constructed at shallow depths, may intervene with current utility traces and bridge foundations.
Boring has described its mission in pitches to lawmakers as an “modern and cost-effective resolution.” However specialists and a few native officers query whether or not Boring needs to be awarded the contract. One Democratic county commissioner advised the newsrooms that Musk shouldn’t be concerned within the Houston mission, arguing he has proven “blatant disregard for democratic establishments and environmental protections.”
Hunt, Musk and representatives from Boring didn’t reply to the newsrooms’ request for remark earlier than publication of the Aug. 28 story. After publication, Hunt and Musk defended the project on X, the social media platform that Musk owns. Musk claimed that the tunnels would price lower than alternate options and that extra tunnels may improve circulate, however he supplied no additional particulars.
Officers in Houston haven’t selected a contractor for the tunneling mission but, and it stays to be seen which environmental rules will come into play.
Prior to now, Boring has discovered methods to navigate round environmental guidelines. A Boring tunnel mission in Las Vegas has skirted environmental, building and labor regulations, a earlier ProPublica and Metropolis Forged Las Vegas investigation discovered.
Different Musk-owned corporations have confronted comparable criticism. Over the previous 12 months, environmental teams have additionally raised concerns about an xAI supercomputing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Musk didn’t reply to ProPublica’s request for remark.
Adam Kron, a senior legal professional on the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, stated any firm ignoring or avoiding rules fully reminds him of the fracking increase within the early 2010s, when corporations moved rapidly to drill, poisoning some local communities’ groundwater within the course of. “There’s a gold rush mentality of getting on the market [first] and paying the superb later, as soon as you possibly can show it,” Kron stated. “When you’ve gotten that type of tradition, you do see extra of the infamous makes an attempt to not search the proper permits or not adjust to the requirements.”
Right here’s what to learn about Boring and different Musk-affiliated corporations’ historical past of bumping up towards environmental rules.
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Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Photographs
Boring Co.
In Las Vegas, a earlier ProPublica investigation discovered Boring was capable of skirt constructing, environmental and labor rules by structuring a transportation mission as a totally non-public enterprise and leaning on its native connections.
Boring is establishing a deliberate 68-mile tunnel system beneath Las Vegas the place Teslas ferry passengers beneath the town’s city core. The mission prevented prolonged opinions by constructing its first part close to the conference middle beneath the auspices of the tourism authority. Since then, Boring has acquired county approval for dozens of extra miles of tunnels beneath obscure holding firm names.
Since Boring’s Las Vegas mission started, it has been cited or fined for wastewater violations. It additionally paid retroactive charges for permits after being caught tunneling with out them, reporters Daniel Rothberg and Dayvid Figler found. Employees for the corporate have filed complaints with the state Occupational Security and Well being Administration about “ankle-deep” water within the tunnels, muck spills and extreme chemical burns. Nevada OSHA fined the company greater than $112,000, after an investigation in 2023, however Boring has disputed the regulator’s allegations and contested the violations.
Boring had already been hit with multiple violations over its management of industrial wastewater at its headquarters in Bastrop, Texas, by the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality. The corporate, whereas usually denying the allegations, was finally fined greater than $9,000 and required to make adjustments on the website, in line with a TCEQ spokesperson. In 2023, the corporate utilized for a allow to dump greater than 100,000 gallons per day of business wastewater from Boring and SpaceX into a close-by river, but it surely was met with local resistance. A 12 months later, Boring agreed to transfer wastewater to a new city treatment plant, anticipated to open in early 2026.
Boring didn’t reply to ProPublica’s request for remark.
xAI
In June 2024, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce introduced xAI, Musk’s synthetic intelligence firm, was organising an information middle at a former manufacturing website within the southern a part of the town. That got here as a shock to some members of the Metropolis Council, one among whom told NPR she first heard about it on the local evening news.
Inside a couple of months, Musk stated the info middle, dubbed Colossus, was on-line. The power primarily powers the corporate’s chatbot and generative picture maker, Grok, which is built-in into X.
The electrical energy wanted for the computing energy was double what the native utility may instantly present, so xAI used methane fuel turbines to deliver the info middle on-line, burning fossil fuels and not using a allow or air pollution management applied sciences for almost a 12 months.
“It’s an precise fuel plant in the course of a neighborhood, and also you don’t want any allowing?” Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who lives 3 miles from the info middle, told CNN in May. “One thing has failed drastically and considerably with our system of checks and balances.”
In January, amid wider neighborhood push again, xAI utilized for a allow for 15 turbines on website. Opponents have aerial imagery they are saying reveals greater than 30 turbines showing to be operational on website as late as April. Firm officers have stated they wouldn’t set up air pollution controls on any of the generators till the allow was authorised, which happened in early July.
The corporate maintained permits weren’t vital to start out due to an exemption for turbines on website for lower than a 12 months, a rationale Shelby County’s Health Department agreed with. Wendi C. Thomas not too long ago reported for ProPublica and MLK50: Justice By way of Journalism on how the city’s Chamber of Commerce went to unusual lengths to promote xAI. Memphis’ mayor has backed and defended the project, saying the town will handle air pollution issues with “independent environmental consultants” and “community benefit policies.” Tennessee’s governor has touted the alternatives the power will deliver to the town. The EPA was starting to look into whether the exemption applied to xAI in October of last year; new EPA head Lee Zeldin recently met with the company.
Neighborhood members packed an April listening to on the permits, and state representatives for the realm have questioned the mayor’s belief in xAI, particularly as the corporate plans to arrange a second information middle in Memphis.
Environmental advocates have stated that xAI wanted permits due to the dimensions of the turbines and the scope of the air pollution. In early April, the Southern Environmental Regulation Heart estimated the generators may produce, in a 12 months, between 1,200 and 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, a smog-forming air pollution related to poor respiratory well being in close by areas, in addition to the carcinogen formaldehyde.
The corporate’s turbines are just a few miles from a traditionally Black neighborhood already thought of a poisonous air air pollution sizzling spot due to greater than a dozen polluting amenities close by, together with a metal plant, a refinery and energy plant. The county has seen persistently low air high quality and the best fee of ER admission for asthma attacks in Tennessee. ProPublica’s air toxics map confirmed a cancer risk hot spot four times the national average close by earlier than xAI moved in.
Rules and allowing are in place as a result of unchecked air pollution can have wide-ranging impacts on a close-by neighborhood, no matter business, stated Jennifer Duggan, government director on the Environmental Integrity Undertaking, a watchdog nonprofit. “The environmental legal guidelines on the books are designed to guard public well being and our pure assets. If there isn’t any enforcement, when there are violations of these legal guidelines, then there isn’t any safety from industrial air pollution for these communities.”
Whereas the impression to a neighborhood is dependent upon the business in query, in addition to size and seriousness of the air pollution, Duggan stated, it might imply elevated danger of untimely mortality, greater well being care prices, misplaced college days, misplaced productiveness for staff, delivery defects and even psychological trauma.
Permits usually require amenities to function safely and set up air pollution controls, Duggan stated. If these controls will not be put in — or turned off — “then you definitely’ve bought extra air pollution within the air than the legislation permits,” which places folks in danger.
The corporate didn’t reply to ProPublica’s request for remark.
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Brandon Bell/Getty Photographs
SpaceX
Whereas SpaceX commonly launches its Falcon rockets to ship satellites and astronauts into orbit, Musk’s final aim for the corporate is far additional afield. Starship, SpaceX’s large mixed reusable rocket and launch car, is meant to finally assist ship people and cargo to Mars, and it’s presently a part of NASA’s effort to return astronauts to the moon.
However this system has already run into points right here on Earth, together with violations of unpolluted water rules throughout launch checks and a cross-border investigation into falling particles.
Starship’s launch pad is alongside the Texas shoreline, lower than 5 miles from the Mexico border, surrounded by a state park and a nationwide wildlife refuge established to guard the biodiversity of the decrease Rio Grande River. Among the many animals on this refuge are fragile shorebird populations. When requested about Starship checks in 2018, Musk stated on the Texas website “we’ve bought numerous land with no person round, and so if it blows up, it’s cool,” a remark that angered the residents of a nearby village.
The primary Starship launch vaporized a part of the launch website and threw debris as far as 6 miles. Then the EPA and Texas Fee on Environmental High quality stated Starship launches in 2023 and 2024 violated the Clear Water Act for discharging untreated industrial wastewater. SpaceX utilized for a wastewater allow in July 2024 and later stated it “fundamentally” disagreed with the allegations from regulators however settled for about $150,000 to “focus our power on finishing the missions.” In February of this 12 months, state regulators granted SpaceX a permit.
Starship’s fast-moving schedule has suffered setbacks this 12 months, with explosions throughout three launches or checks to date. Mexico has threatened to sue over particles and potential environmental contamination crossing over the border. SpaceX said in response there have been “no hazards to the encompassing space.”
However the Federal Aviation Administration not too long ago authorised SpaceX for up to 25 Starship launches a year, and the Trump administration has signed an executive order asserting makes an attempt to “eliminate or expedite” environmental review of rocket launches by the FAA, ProPublica’s Heather Vogell and Topher Sanders reported.
SpaceX didn’t reply to ProPublica’s request for remark.
Tesla
Whereas the recognition of electrical automobiles like Tesla in California has led to a notable decline in carbon pollution from cars there, the corporate’s manufacturing unit within the state has been repeatedly admonished for releasing poisonous air air pollution and different poisonous chemical substances into the encompassing neighborhood. Tesla’s Bay Space facility has acquired extra air high quality warnings previously 5 years than all different corporations in California, save one: a Chevron refinery, in line with reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
By 2022, the corporate had been fined by each the native air high quality district over well being issues and the EPA for breaking federal air high quality legal guidelines. In June 2024, the district ordered Tesla to correct ongoing violations of toxic air pollution coming from the factory’s paint shops, allegations the corporate denied. The corporate is presently within the technique of implementing an abatement plan, in line with a spokesperson for the Bay Space Air District.
Individually, dozens of California counties sued Tesla in 2024 over claims of illegally dumping hazardous waste produced at its facility and native service facilities. The corporate settled the lawsuit for $1.5 million, not admitting to wrongdoing however agreeing to 5 years of obligatory coaching and impartial waste audits.
Musk had already moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in 2021, partially over complaints about California regulatory tradition. However, as the Journal reported in November 2024, Texas regulators have additionally cited the corporate for actions at Tesla’s large Gigafactory simply exterior of Austin, together with for dumping untreated wastewater, releasing air pollution in extra of its allow after which not reporting it.
A former Texas worker despatched a whistleblower memo to the EPA in 2024 accusing the corporate of asking workers to mislead authorities regulators, the Journal reported, together with creating an “elaborate ruse” throughout an inspection to ensure a troubled furnace handed an emissions take a look at. Each the EPA and Texas environmental regulators opened a “preliminary inquiry” associated to the memo in November 2024, in line with the Journal. The EPA didn’t reply to ProPublica’s query in regards to the standing of the inquiry and pointed us to the TCEQ. A TCEQ spokesperson stated it couldn’t remark “to help the integrity of all felony investigations carried out by TCEQ.”
Tesla didn’t reply to the Journal’s request for remark. However a day after the story was printed, Musk reposted an X user who talked about the Journal story, including the message: “Legacy media is a sewage pipe of lies.”
Tesla didn’t reply to ProPublica’s request for remark.
The folks affected by environmental violations will not be simply the close by neighborhood, Duggan stated, however the staff at polluting amenities as properly. “They’re actually on the entrance line in sure industries,” she stated.
