A county environmental regulator has fined Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, nearly $500,000 after the company dumped “drilling fluids” into manholes around Las Vegas, which led to “substantial damage” to the broader county’s infrastructure, according to a notice of violation sent to the company last week.
Clark County Water Reclamation District (CCWRD) claims that this summer, Boring Company employees refused to stop dumping drilling fluids when inspectors arrived at its project site near the center of town and directed them to stop, according to the violation. The next day, Boring apparently “feigned compliance” only to continue dumping the wastewater after a company manager “assumed district inspectors had departed the property,” according to a cease-and-desist letter. CCWRD says that its crews ultimately had to clean 12 cubic yards of “drilling mud, drilling spoils, and miscellaneous solid waste” from one of its sewage treatment facilities because of Boring’s discharges across two of its project sites, according to the notice of violation, which was obtained by Fortune via a records request.
