Comments
ENVIRONMENT -
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company spent years pitching cities on a novel solution to traffic, an underground transportation system to whisk passengers through tunnels in electric vehicles. Proposals in Illinois and California fizzled after officials and the public began scrutinizing details of the plans and seeking environmental reviews.
But in Las Vegas, the tunneling company is building Musk’s vision beneath the city’s urban core thanks to an unlikely partner: the tourism marketing organization best known for selling the image that “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”
The powerful Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority greenlit the idea and funded an 0.8-mile route at its convention center. As that small “people mover” opened in 2021, the authority was already urging the county and city to approve plans for 104 stations across 68 miles of tunnels.
The project is also realizing Musk’s notion of how government officials should deal with entrepreneurs: avoid lengthy reviews before building and instead impose fines later if anything goes awry. Musk’s views on regulatory power have taken on new significance in light of his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump and his role in a new effort to slash rules in the name of improving efficiency. The Las Vegas project, now well under way, is a case study of the regulatory climate Musk favors.
Because the project, now known as the Vegas Loop, is privately operated and receives no federal funding, it is exempt from the kinds of exhaustive governmental vetting and environmental analyses demanded by the other cities that Boring pitched. Such reviews assess whether a proposal is the best option and inform the public of potential impacts to traffic and the environment.
The head of the convention authority has called the project the only viable way to ease traffic on the Las Vegas Strip and in the surrounding area — a claim that was never publicly debated as the Clark County Commission and Las Vegas City Council granted Boring permission to build and operate the system beneath city streets. The approvals allow the company to build and operate close to homes and businesses without the checks and balances that typically apply to major public transit projects.
Meanwhile, Boring has skirted building, environmental and labor regulations, according to records obtained by ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas under public records laws.
In June, a Clark County official documented water spilling onto a public street from a Boring Company worksite near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The county issued a cease-and-desist letter. Clark County Public Works
It twice installed tunnels without permits to work on county property. State and local environmental regulators documented it dumping untreated water into storm drains and the sewer system. And, as local politicians were approving an extension of the system, Boring workers were filing complaints with the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration about “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and severe chemical burns. After an investigation, Nevada OSHA in 2023 fined the company more than $112,000. Boring disputed the regulators’ allegations and contested the violations.
The complaints have continued.
“The Boring company is at it again,” an employee of the Clark County Water Reclamation District wrote to the agency’s general manager and legal counsel in June, after video showed water spilling from a company-owned property into the street near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Tyler Fairbanks, a Boring Company manager, emailed the county official, saying “we take this very seriously and we are working to correct what is going on.” In August, a Las Vegas Valley Water District staffer documented a similar issue. On both occasions, the county issued cease-and-desist letters but did not fine Boring.
Financial penalties wouldn’t put a dent in the company’s bottom line, John Solvie, a Clark County water quality compliance manager, told county Public Works Director Denis Cederburg in an email. Still, the concerns were significant enough that Solvie asked if the department would “consider revoking permits (essentially shutting down their operations until they resolve these issues).”
A county spokesperson declined to answer how the incidents were resolved, or whether the Public Works Department had ever revoked any of Boring’s permits. Solvie and Cederburg declined to comment.
Boring did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story.
(This article was first published at ProPublica.org by Daniel Rothberg for ProPublica and Dayvid Figler, City Cast Las Vegas)
