Elon Musk’s plans for a river in a Texas city outside of Austin worry the locals.
In an effort to reduce traffic in cities, Elon Musk’s The Boring Company strives to fast construct tunnels for utilities, transit, and freight. In the course of the procedure, it is applying for a license to daily discharge more than 140,000 gallons of treated wastewater into a river close to its Bastrop, Texas, facility.
At a public hearing on the permission request on Tuesday, Bastrop resident Chap Ambrose, who also lives across the street from the company’s main construction site, said that the wastewater permit was a huge concern. Based on what I observe, I simply don’t trust this corporation to create public infrastructure.
Two years ago, The Boring Company opened its first office in Bastrop. Ambrose’s vacant block has since changed into a constantly active construction site.
Ambrose Told KVUE that The Transformation Was Unquestionably radical.
According to a June 2022 Bloomberg report, the business has already broken multiple regulations during the same two years. It kept staff in mobile houses without access to sewage systems, erected a driveway without permission, installed three silos without stormwater or air quality licenses, and refused to add space for vehicles to access the road when safety demands were made.
According to Austin-based transportation consultant Lyndon Henry, “it’s very unusual, especially for a big firm like that, to simply flout state safety standards.” They should not be disobeying safety regulations involving anything so basic and basic as an entrance driveway, in my opinion.
Because of this, as KXAN reported in October 2022, many locals expressed skepticism when Boring associate Gapped Bass LLC submitted for a permit to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in July 2022 to discharge up to 142,500 gallons of treated wastewater daily into the Colorado River. (The Colorado River in Texas is not the same as the river in danger that flows through the American West.)
Read More: Government Sends $2.4 Million to Nevada for Cloud Seeding.
Many Were Ready to Voice Their Concerns.
At Bastrop, Texas, The Boring Company should NOT be permitted to discharge treated sewage into the Colorado River. Our local farmers and ranchers use that river for irrigation, and the community uses it for recreation. Kelly Greene, a Bastrop resident, commented to TCEQ that this shouldn’t be permitted.
Bastrop Mayor Connie Schroder told KVUE she isn’t convinced by the notion even though the TCEQ’s initial evaluation found that the discharges will have a negative impact on water quality.
Like many communities, the City of Bastrop prefers to treat wastewater at cutting-edge treatment facilities, and fortunately, one is now being built there, according to Schroder.
At a TCEQ session that was open to the public, dozens of locals expressed their concerns. Sean Hensley, a local, told HuffPost that he wished for the TCEQ to deny the permission unless Elon Musk and his children agreed to regularly go swimming in the Colorado River.
Not Everyone in Attendance Was Opposed to The Notion.
According to Bastrop County Water Control and Improvement District Treasurer Ron Whipple, where there are people, there will be wastewater. Progress cannot be stopped.
Environmental consultant Rajiv Patel, the person who submitted the permit, represented the corporation at the hearing. He said that because there was no wastewater infrastructure on the company’s property, they had to construct their own facility until they could connect to the public system and hand responsibility for the treatment plant over to the local government.
The strategy we’ll discuss today is a stepping stone along the road map, according to Patel.
Yet by saying for the first time that some of the water will come from another SpaceX facility, he also raised some doubts.
In principle, many locals said they supported Musk and his company, but they also wanted to ensure that everyone in their neighborhood followed the same regulations.
During the hearing, Ambrose told KVUE, “I think honestly I’m excited about our community getting together and saying billionaires have to follow the law.”
