Environmental regulators have once again fined the Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunneling venture. This time, it must pay $500K for violations it committed while digging the latest expansion for its Vegas Loop underground people-mover. According to Fortune magazine, Boring dumped toxic drilling fluids into manholes around Las Vegas in August 2025, “substantially damaging” public infrastructure.

Elon Musk (left) and Steve Davis, president of Boring Company, speak during a Los Angeles event in 2018. (Image: Patrick T. Fallon/Getty)

This latest violations were brazen and deliberate, according to the notice obtained by Fortune via a records request. Boring “feigned compliance,” the notice said, only to continue dumping the fluids after a company manager “assumed … inspectors had departed the property.”

A 2024 photo from OSHA shows a Vegas Loop tunnel through which Boring Company employees were forced to walk, flooded with a sludge containing dangerous chemicals. (Image: OSHA)\

As a result, the Clark County Water Reclamation District said, its crews had to thoroughly clean 2,400 gallons of toxic drilling mud and solid waste from one of its sewage treatment plants.

All manhole covers on or near the Strip are part of a storm drain system that routes untreated rainwater runoff to Lake Mead, from which Las Vegas draws approximately 90% of its drinking water.

Fine by Musk

In 2019, when construction began on the Vegas Loop, Boring was fined $90K by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection for discharging groundwater into storm drains without a permit.

Then, in 2023, it was fined $112K more by the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration for serious safety violations including serious skin burns suffered by 15-20 employees when hazardous chemicals leaked from hoses they were tasked with connecting.

A Tesla navigates the Vegas Loop. Locals disparagingly refer to the system as “the Tesla tunnels,” since the system was originally pitched as being designed for autonomous trams carrying up to 16 passengers each. (Image: The Boring Co.)

This latest news comes a month after a report by ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas podcast co-host Dayvid Figler exposed 800 new environmental violations that Nevada regulators had Boring of in the past two years.

Of course, to the world’s richest man, $90K, $112K and $500K in fines are mere subway tokens. So Boring continues violating regulations and treating the resulting fines as a cost of doing business.

“Environmental regulations are in my view largely terrible,” Musk said during an interview at a Buenos Aires political conference in June.

“You have to get permission in advance, as opposed to say, paying a penalty if you do something wrong, which I think would be much more effective,” he said. “To say, ‘Look, we’re going to do this project. If something goes wrong, then we’ll be forced to pay a penalty.’ But we do not need to go through a three- or four-year environmental approval process.”

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