Neighbors of Elon Musk’s The Boring Company have concerns about the company’s permit application.

Tesla  (TSLA)  CEO Elon Musk is known for his campaign against climate change as he advocates for protecting the environment through sales of his company’s electric vehicles that do not produce polluting emissions.

Musk has even criticized environmentalist billionaire and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates for being a hypocrite about fighting climate change by betting against Tesla with a $500 million short position.

The billionaire last year dismissed criticism that betting against Tesla disqualified his environmental credentials.

“I don’t think that whether one’s short or long Tesla is a statement about your seriousness about climate change,” Gates said during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit on May 4. “I’m putting billions of dollars into climate-change innovation, I applaud Tesla’s role in helping with climate change.”

“The popularity of electric cars will lead to more competition for selling those cars. So there’s a difference between electric cars being adopted, and companies becoming infinitely valuable,” Gates said.

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Elon Musk Solving Problems

In addition to solving climate change caused by pollution, Musk set out to solve traffic gridlock with The Boring Company, which builds networks of tunnels to operate electric vehicles below cities through high-speed tunneling projects. The Boring Company has already built its first piece of such a system beneath Las Vegas, the LVCC Loop system, which connects the Las Vegas Convention Center’s New Exhibit Hall with the existing campus.

The greater ambitious plan is to connect the Las Vegas Strip to downtown, the airport, Allegiant Stadium (where the National Football League’s Las Vegas Raiders play), and the Las Vegas Convention Center. The entire project would be a 34-mile tunnel project with at least 55 stations that would connect the whole city using self-driving Teslas — sort of a Tesla subway system.

The Boring Company might have some good ideas for building subterranean tunnels to relieve traffic in big cities, but it’s going to have to stay out of trouble to be successful. The Bastrop, Texas, company on March 20 received three notices of violation from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regarding its stormwater permit for failing to provide site inspection personnel (minor violation); failure to design, install, and maintain effective erosion controls and sediment controls to minimize the discharge of pollutants (moderate violation); and failure to post a TCEQ Large Construction Site Notice in a location where it is readily available for viewing (moderate violation).

The Texas agency, however, noted that the three violations have been resolved. The company had two other violations in May 2022 that are also listed as resolved.

Texas Neighbors Oppose Wastewater Discharge

The Boring Company on July 15, 2022, applied for a permit to operate a wastewater treatment facility for its tunnel boring equipment manufacturing and testing facility with on-site residences. It would dispose of up to 142,500 gallons of treated process wastewater and domestic wastewater per day through surface irrigation of 63 acres of non-public access land and discharge it into the Colorado River, Teslarati reported.

Residents of Bastrop are concerned about the quality of the wastewater being discharged into the Colorado River.

“We have a well, and we take baths, and we drink that water every day. So, if there’s a problem, I need to know quickly,” Bastrop resident Chap Ambros told ABC-TV affiliate KVUE.

TCEQ held a public hearing to allow residents to have their say and for The Boring Company to explain its wastewater treatment process. Bastrop residents near the discharge area voiced their opposition to the Boring Company’s permit, Teslarati said. Some neighbors of the facility are concerned that the company will not adhere to TCEQ rules and will end up tainting the Colorado River’s water supply.

Musk, the environmentalist, needs to reassure Bastrop residents that the water discharged into the Colorado River will indeed be clean, or he could end up being the environmental hypocrite.

The company’s permit application is still pending.