A Wall Street Journal report delved into the violations that Tesla committed as Tesla chief Elon Musk is now tasked to slash government spending and regulations. Journal obtained emails from Texas regulators to Tesla that alleged that Tesla dumped toxic pollutants near Austin, Texas — including untreated wastewater into the city’s sewer. A whistleblower sent a memo to the Environmental Protection Agency complaining that Tesla asked him to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls.
The report said Tesla dumped untreated wastewater filled with toxins from a 6-acre evaporation pond it built into the Austin sewage system without permission. A dead deer was found in the pond containing sulfuric and nitric acids.
Former employees said that at Tesla’s Austin facility, managers ignored workers who raised environmental concerns as Elon Musk pushed employees to move fast. And Musk’s grouse against government regulations is not unknown. He posted several times that regulations have been strangling America to death.
According to WSJ, the whistleblower said that in 2022 Telas engaged in an elaborate ruse to cover up a faulty furnace door when environment officials inspected the factory. The furnace door was not closing and was leaking toxins into the air, pushing the floor temperature for factory workers up to 100 degrees. During the inspection, Tesla reduced the amount of fuel going into the furnace and temporarily closed the door and thus got a passing grade in the process. The furnace was not running at its actual operating conditions and the problem was not fixed until months later.
‘Delete mountain of choking regulations’
As the co-chief of the Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will chop the government’s expenditure and ‘unnecessary’ regulations. “The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more. We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good,” Elon posted earlier this month.
