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Elon Musk’s Boring Co is feuding with Texas over driveway regulations amid construction in rural town

  • Boring Co built a driveway in the rural town of Bastrop after failing to get a permit for safety reasons regarding the site plan
  • The company’s dealings with the town are an illustration of how Musk’s businesses push the boundaries of or simply ignore regulations

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Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc, speaks during an unveiling event for the Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, California, on December 18, 2018. Photo: AP
Bloomberg

While Elon Musk is publicly making a big deal about moving to Texas and cozying up to the governor, behind the scenes his tunnel-building venture, Boring Co, is wrangling with local authorities in the state over a host of seemingly mundane permitting issues.

Since Boring bought land last May to create a research and development centre in Bastrop, Texas, a rural area outside Austin, the company has put workers up on mobile homes at the site without authorised sewage facilities, failed to get air and stormwater permits and built a driveway without first getting official approval, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request.

The company’s dealings with Bastrop are yet another illustration of how Musk’s businesses often push the boundaries of or simply ignore regulations that bind other companies. In recent years his Tesla Inc restarted production at its Fremont plant in defiance of pandemic rules to stay closed, Boring tried to build a tunnel in Los Angeles without going through an environmental review process and the US Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the disclosure of Musk’s stake in Twitter Inc.

Boring staff mentioned in this article did not reply to requests for comment.

Texas was supposed to be different. For a start, officials including Governor Greg Abbott gave him a big welcome. “Woohoo!” a Bastrop development official emailed County Judge Paul Pape, the presiding officer of the county government, after Boring closed on the property. “Elon Musk is now a Bastrop County property owner! Project Submarine has landed!!”

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