Documents show Elon Musk's companies have pressured Bastrop County officials to approve a stream of permits at breakneck speed.
Earth pours out of a tunnel tube at left at the SpaceX facility, next to the Boring Co., in Bastrop, Texas, on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. The Boring Co. constructs and tests tunnels for use in cities for transportation and to alleviate traffic congestion.In August 2021, a handful of Bastrop County residents noticed something big unfolding on quiet Walker Watson Road.
One year later, the commercial rocket company SpaceX, another Musk-owned firm, started building a 521,000-square-foot structure across the street from The Boring Co. property. Pugh wrote that staff had been “regularly hounded” by Boring Co. and Starlink employees and consultants to “expedite and approve permit applications that are incomplete and not in compliance with the Commissioners Court regulations.”
Collier sees strong similarities between her corner of Bastrop County and Boca Chica, near Brownsville in South Texas, where SpaceX has snapped up many residential properties near its spaceport. The company ceremoniously renamed the community “Starbase.” The Boring Co. has offered to buy out homeowners in Bastrop County, too.
Musk companies have a strong allure for local officials, with promises of jobs and the high profile that a publicity-seeking billionaire can confer. In addition to its South Texas launch pads, SpaceX operates a rocket-engine development and testing facility in McGregor near Waco. And last year, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from San Jose, Calif., to the Austin area, where it’s built a $1 billion, 10 million-square-foot factory on 2,500 acres fronting the Colorado River. The facility is churning out Model Y sedans and is expected to begin producing Cybertrucks next year.
Musk launched the company in 2016 with a mission to “solve traffic, enable rapid point-to-point transportation and transform cities” via networks of tunnels. The company is looking to build underground loops for electric vehicles — such as Teslas — to move people from place to place faster than driving on streets and interstates.
“Three months ago, this was a cow pasture,” said Chap Ambrose, a computer programmer who lives adjacent to The Boring Co. site on Walker Watson Road. In another email to Gentsch, also in March, Pugh noted several problems county officials found during an inspection of the property on Feb. 24. They included a discrepancy between the number of houses the company said would be located on the property and the number actually built; an RV and two trailers that weren’t in the original design plans; and septic holding tanks that a contractor was servicing without a legally required permit.
But the company still hadn’t resolved the septic tank problem as of May 17, county officials said in a letter to The Boring Co. They warned that continued use of unauthorized holding tanks could result in a Class C misdemeanor charge, fines and court costs. “In addition, we have been regularly pressured by Mel Hamner and Adena Lewis to expedite permit approvals at the expense of other customers,” he wrote.“Now, in addition to being pressured by Mel and Adena, I am being requested by you to expedite permit processing and apparently Carolyn Dill has been engaged in this process to pressure me to issue permits in an unreasonable short time frame,” Pugh wrote.
The tunnel company’s property has at least 10 single-family, modular homes for employees, according to records obtained by the Express-News. The company also has an Austin Chai Wala food truck on-site and is planning to open a 15-student Montessori school on the property in January, according to emails from company officials.While Musk’s companies have been busy building their operations on Walker Watson Road, neighbors Collier and Ambrose are mourning the loss of their quiet way of life.
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