Musk is not a champion of the environment. And Tesla is a massive polluter.
Musk Says He Wants to Save the Planet
The Elon Musk lie of the day is his claim to want to save the planet. Please consider Musk Says He Wants to Save the Planet. Tesla’s Factories Are Making It Dirtier.
Elon Musk made big promises to Wall Street about Tesla’s TSLA new Model Y SUV in 2022, and the company was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans.
The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines.
Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.
A Journal investigation shows that Tesla bosses were aware of the problems but sometimes chose short-term fixes to avoid slowing production. Former employees said they feared they might lose their job if they drew attention internally to potential environmental hazards, because senior managers didn’t consider such issues to be mission critical. As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast and complaining frequently in public statements that unnecessary regulations are strangling the U.S.
He has said the mission of Tesla, which is the largest maker of electric cars in the U.S., is to “protect life on Earth.” Yet across his business empire, Musk’s companies show a pattern of breaking environmental rules again and again, federal and state government filings and documents show.
Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., facility has accumulated more warnings for violations of air pollution rules over the past five years than almost any other company’s plant in California, according to a Journal analysis of informal enforcement actions in the EPA’s compliance database. It is second only to a refinery owned by oil-and-gas behemoth Chevron, which is in nearby Richmond.
One environmental-compliance staffer in the Austin plant claimed that “Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls,” according to a 2024 memo from the employee to the EPA that was reviewed by the Journal.
The staffer sent the detailed memo alleging environmental violations at Tesla to the EPA. The memo, including hundreds of pages of state regulatory documents, as well as photos and videos, was reviewed by the Journal. The EPA’s criminal-enforcement division and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality earlier this month opened a preliminary inquiry related to the former Tesla staffer’s allegations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Multiple employees left Tesla without severance pay after declining to sign nondisclosure agreements to keep quiet about their work for the company, including environmental and other noncompliance issues they witnessed, people familiar with the negotiations said.
Tesla has continued to draw the attention of regulators. On June 4, 2024, Austin Water regulators notified Tesla that it had violated its permit with the city when it discharged to the sewer system more than 9,000 gallons of wastewater that wasn’t properly treated for pH, according to documents released under public-records requests. On Aug. 30, 2024, TCEQ notified Tesla of five violations, including exceeding its permitted emissions limit for certain air pollutants and not disclosing deviations, according to the documents.
Some environmental engineers and others at Tesla were fretting about a roughly six-acre, triangular-shaped “evaporation” pond Tesla built to hold wastewater from construction, chemical spills and its paint shop.
The pond was filled with toxins, including sulfuric and nitric acids, and the algae-colored water had begun to smell of rotten eggs, former employees said. At one point, employees found a dead deer in the water, they said. For a time, Tesla discharged untreated pond water directly into the sewer system without permission from Austin Water, the water utility for the city, according to former employees and emails from regulators.
Sometimes during rainstorms, Tesla discharged a sludgy mix of mud and chemicals from occasional spills outside the plant, turning a ¾ mile stretch of the Colorado River into a mucky brown slick, according to pictures and videos viewed by the Journal.
Even when it wasn’t raining, the Gigafactory generated vast amounts of industrial wastewater as it built cars—about 500,000 gallons a day, currently according to the water utility—and like most companies it was required to obey certain rules in disposing of it.
Throughout the day, water flowed from across the factory into three large tanks, where much of the contamination was supposed to be filtered out before being released into the local sewer system.
The company had assured regulators multiple times that its system was working, according to state regulators and emails reviewed by the Journal. But the system wasn’t completely separating out pollutants, according to former employees and an April 2022 email reviewed by the Journal.
On Sept. 20, Austin Water issued two notices of violations to Tesla for exceeding the pH limit in its permit, according to state regulators and emails to Tesla provided by the city of Austin under a public information request.
Problems mounted a few days later when an outside lab that Tesla hired to test its wastewater notified environmental staff that the company had exceeded its permit level for zinc, according to the memo and former employees.
Environmental staff notified Austin Water, but one member refused to comply with a request from Tesla managers to lobby the regulator not to consider the violation as a “significant non-compliance,” according to the memo.
In late November, Tesla again urged the environmental staffer to reach out to Austin Water. The staffer refused.
That same week, Tesla fired the staffer for “pushing back on their requests” according to the memo.
Musk is a brilliant person, but he is also a proven liar and a cheat.
I am all for reducing ridiculous regulations. Moreover, labeling carbon dioxide as a pollutant is more than a bit of a stretch.
But I draw the line at releasing toxic sludge into rivers and ignoring safety issues on furnace doors.
Given that Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, I see no reason for Tesla’s environmental policies. There is no excuse for these sickening actions.
OK Elon, it’s time to cleanup DOGE, and eliminate government waste.
But how about cleaning up your Tesla plants first? Can’t you afford it? Isn’t $333 billion enough?
Can You Eliminate Government Waste?
Here’s your chance to try: An Interactive Exercise: What Would You Do to Balance the Budget?
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has a nice interactive site that lets you adjust exemptions and set tax rates. Have a go at it. Click above to see whaty I suggest.
All of this new-tech gee-wiz stuff is killing the planet exponentially more and faster than a residential gas stove or hot water heating boiler.
Would it appease your objections if he did it in China instead of here? You oppose tariffs on Chinese imports but the reason things are made there instead of here is to avoid environmental regulations, US taxes and to pay slave labor rates of pay. Very few companies manufacture in China solely for logistic reasons
DOGE is coming for you. No place to hide.
The sooner the Human Era is over the better.
He wants to be the tough guy king of the incels,but he ended up First Lady.
🤣 🤣 🤣
This is the best comment here. Well done sir!!!!
This New York town doesn’t want to be a climate experimentA developer wanted to build a facility to capture carbon. Locals saw an environmental menace.https://grist.org/health/biochar-sewage-new-york-upstate-moreau-climate-experiment/
Well Mish, President Trump picked Elon Musk to determine which regulations are stupid, not you. And he built this plant in Texas, not California for a reason: Texans are happy to give up their lives to prove ALL regulations are stupid! Thank you Texans for help maximizing Elon’s wealth! You’re the best!
The residents around the Texas Tesla plant have been complaining for awhile now.
All major manufacturing plants have some environmental issues. What they all don’t have is a liberal newspaper going after them with three top tier liberal reporters who do this for a living.
Thanks Mish for allowing my links in the previous post. There is a lot being left out of this article. The plant could not have been built without proper water management guidelines being met. The system could be having problems for a variety of reasons, one being sabotage by disgruntled employees. Another could be incompetent system managers.
The one the article focuses on however is Elon. It makes it sound like Elon himself is doing this deliberately. I guarantee Elon is not engaged with a gray water system on that level. It’s like blaming the base general for Soldiers in the motor pool allowing used oil down down the drain. Total nonsense.
Why is Austin ALLOWING its water to be poisoned by TESLA? ☮️✝️
Elon bought politicians that allowed it, just like he bought the president.
Like it or not, the next administration will go down in history as the Musk-Trump administration.
I’m excited also Al.
Excited to finally get some intelligence?
– Musk is not a champion of the environment. And Tesla is a massive polluter.
> I was not aware that Musk Himself, stated that He was a champion of the Environment. I know Mush has stated that He is a Friend of the environment, as am I and Millions upon millions of others.
>> The “Media”, and many in/on “Social Media” have “Considered” Him as such, but I myself, was silly enough to “Consider” that Joe Biden was America’s President too, so that means obviously nothing at all now does it?
– Musk Says He Wants to Save the Planet
> Most Excellent! I do to!!!
– Elon Musk made big promises to Wall Street about Tesla’s TSLA new Model Y SUV in 2022.
> He Did! All Automotive Companies did the same thing with their Vehicles too! Didn’t nearly ALL Automotive Companies in America “Scale Back” Production, and put into place new contracts? Hmm… Where Are ALL Their Names?
– the company was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans.
> Did it ruin the plans? Was Mush directly responsible for this environmental issue? Is Musk directly responsible for any of these issues as the Owner? If so, “EVERY AUTO MANUFACTURER OWNER IN AMERICA” (and around the World) has some serious explaining to do, now don’t they…
>> Musk Owns a Company. The company is run busy “Responsible” Management. It’s their Job to see after day to day activities, issues, and decisions. Do you think they call up Musk, when they have to use the bathroom? Get serious…
– OK Elon, it’s time to cleanup DOGE, and eliminate government waste. But how about cleaning up your Tesla plants first? Can’t you afford it? Isn’t $333 billion enough?
> He Will to be certain. If Tesla falls in the categories to be looked at, they most certainly will be!!!
Let’s not sling arrows at targets that are made up. Let’s not lay fault where it doesn’t specifically reside. Nothing Musk has done is any different than what Biden, Harris, Trump, and every Leader before them has done. He see’s problems and wants to fix them. He will put the rules in place however, and play by them once fixed, while many others will be looking at ways to skirt the law, before the ink is dry, and you know it!!!
Thanks for posting this Mish!
I find the intensity of the Musk promotion simultaneously nauseating and hilarious. He represents a modern day version of a trojan trans-horse constructed and delivered to us by the mythical Deep State. The push to sell electric cars feels strangely similar to when Crisco and margarine were promoted to replace butter and animal fats. I’m sticking with butter.
He was delivered by Trump. He’s part of the GOP package.
Deep state owns the GOP now. They’re all musk fluffers because they want some of his sweet sweet cash. That’s capitalism.
Apparently, some people think he’s still a Democrat… Now that’s Funny!
I agree the polluting is disgusting if true, but more disgusting is lack of existing regulatory law enforcement by government authorities. For them to point out problems is one thing, mostly useless as the company knows what it is doing. What I do not see in the article is any meaningful enforcement action. penalties need to effective, and to be effective, responsible management needs to face jail time as financial penalty is just a cost of doing business, not a sufficient deterrent.
We should just do away with electric cars. They aren’t good for the environment. No one seems to care how the metals that go into them are gotten. Like most green bullshit, it’s all a farce.
I knew there were would be bunch of Musk worshippers defending this in the comments. You all are just as bad as the fool cult like supporters of the Democrats. Always turning a blind eye and making excuses for your political “savior”. As long as Musk continues to say dog whistle like shit about trans people, the size of the Fed government, immigrants, etc you all give Musk a pass on dumping toxic water into the environment. Had Musk done this 8-9 years ago when he was still blowing on the liberal dog whistles you all would have skewered him. Pathetic….
You are being lied too. Musk doesn’t give a fuck about you or the environment. He says what he needs to because it’s convenient and beneficial for him to say it. That’s why he cozied up to Trump. He saw an opportunity to shift policy, and boat loads of Federal money, in a direction that benefits him. The dude is a genius at convincing people he’s a genius. He’s a once in a life time salesman, but that’s about it. Musk will continue to suckle from the sore chapped teet of the taxpayer while all of his sycophants praise him for doing it.
Over the years I’ve reached the conclusion that alot of people simply want a dictator, but only if it’s “their” dictator.
They never seem to figure out that it’s never been ‘their’ dictator. They just eagerly swallow the lies.
Another little detail that Musk should deal with is in the application of punishments: it is bit ridiculous applying sanctions to a company when the crime is committed by people a the top. This is the case whether financial or manufacturing companies where those responsible for major crimes walk free. There should be no authority without responsibility. Another example of the rich walk free.
People like him, you mean?
Musk is not an elected official. He’s a drugged up clown that bought his way into the government with the money he won gambling daddy’s money.
Triggered!
…Says the guy having a hissyfit all over the thread.
Biden’s fault. He brings the jobs back home. Supposed to be in developing countries.
Buh buh but buh Biden!
Austin has a deer infestation problem:
https://www.austindailyherald.com/2017/06/council-bans-deer-and-geese-feeding/
Austin has droughts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtVgK9WXBtc
Austin has 2700 laid off Tesla workers:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/04/23/tesla-layoffs-austin-texas/73426415007/
Austin is progressive liberal. Musk is a staunch conservative:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/the-people-fleeing-austin-because-texas-is-too-conservative.html
Musk wants to “save the planet Mars” not “save the planet Earth” just like “to protect and to serve ( capital owners ) “ not the public at large
The omission is deliberate when being non-specific is actually the intention to maximise misinterpretation with plausible deniability while maintaining the veil of the moral high ground
Musk wants attention… even more than he wants money.
“Why are you poisoning Austin’s water?”
Where else is he supposed to poison the water?
The places where most of his customers reside.
Dear Elon: while you’re saving the planet, get Trump to release all the remaining federal records of the ’63 JFK killing in Dallas Tex., still classified secret after all these years that he promised to release during his first White House MAGA stay. Promises promises.
And lets get a look at Epstien’s flight log.
When you get to a certain level of bigness, you begin to feel that the laws no longer apply to you; that you are immune. It’s part of the incentive to avoid all taxes. You feel you are a superman, unhindered by the normal cycles and vicissitudes of life.
That delusion can come back to bite you in the ass if you don’t take good advice from your underlings and get things under control. In Musk’s case, he is apparently firing them rather than listening to them. This is a big mistake. The ordinary mortals working for you are more clued in with reality than your superman-sized big head is, and can point you in the right direction. Without them, you are truly rudderless and sunk.
You can read more of my writings by going to: dark . sport . blog … on the net.
That insurance executive that got gunned down in the street learned this the hard way.
He could always move production out of the states and say fu.
And give up all that sweet subsidy money and tariffs on his competitors?
“The pond was filled with toxins, including sulfuric and nitric acids, and the algae-colored water had begun to smell of rotten eggs, former employees said.”
Let me add my allegations of my own.
a. Is Elon secretly cultivating super algae that can survive toxic environments perhaps to populate Mars?
b. WSJ hired a diversity journalist who cannot logically connect two sentences?
And there it is, the dumbest thing I’ve read all week.
Which one? Enlighten me.
It’s lies written by a disgruntled ex employee that smelled something and leaked his humus out to the gullible media.
There is nothing fake news can do to stop DOGE, so get over it. Fake news is hemorrhaging cash fast. This article is really grasping at straws.
Slashing the bureaucratic monster in half is only the beginning for DOGE. With its newfound resources and backing, the MAGA movement will see the complete marginalization of the deep state in upcoming elections, including its radical liberal politicians and RINOs.
What we are witnessing is the “primal scream of a dying regime” as the War Room would say.
Lol…….
DOGE is a drugged up incel, a creepy little dwarf, and a shaved bearded lady.
What we’re witnessing is the circus of stupid rolling into town.
Are you an ex-lover of Musk? You sound triggered and heart broken.
get back in the clown car, it’s not time yet
“As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast and complaining frequently in public statements that unnecessary regulations are strangling the U.S.”
This is the money shot. If you set up a company culture where speed is more important than other parameters, this will be the result. Always. Musk needs to step up so long as this is a complete accounting of what is occurring. Which is also a leap of faith.
Find me a factory, refinery or any other large scale industrial operation that does not have the occasional issue with the regulatory state…I’ll wait.
Agreed. Also, I don’t know about Texas regulations, but citing California doesn’t really mean much to the average person interested in environmental concerns. We all know that, according to California, everything causes cancer and out to kill us. Nothing there is packaged without the cancer warning label. It’s simply ignored anymore and doesn’t pack that alarming punch anymore.
I will also have to agree that hazardous pools of wastewater needs to be dealt with. Finding wildlife in them is bad news. I wonder if they’ve put up fencing to make an attempt to block it as the power plant near me does with their many cooling ponds?
F- Musk and his shadow-banning.
What city in the country did more Californians relocate to the last 10 years. Loud-mouth Numbskull.
The oligarchy does as it damned well pleases and neither political party not only doesn’t do anything about it its unaware of what is required.
Its all about changing the monetary paradigm.
I feel so much better about everything knowing that Elon and the tech bros really have my back.
The Fremont factory is operating for a decade. The Texas giga factory is operating for some time, and the WSJ only came out with this investigative piece now?
I wouldn’t dare to refute the allegations, but Musk fired a lot of people recently, and the Journal wasn’t able to speak directly to any?
This speaks volumes about the MSM more than anything else.
Red states like Texas will get their comeuppance from rampant capitalism gone wild. Austin should deliver the sludge to Elon’s residence. A natural gas factory blows up in Texas every year or two. I grew up in Texas but left it behind long ago. My health has improved by leaps and bounds since. Deregulation at all costs also has costs but Republicans don’t care about the people it affects. The important thing is catering to businesses that pollute.
Gotta admit multi-lane freeway ramps are actually kinda impressive in Houston. The one I saw just soared …
Red states have plenty of problems. TX utilities being unprepared should have been a wake up call.
Sometimes during rainstorms, Tesla discharged a sludgy mix of mud and chemicals from occasional spills outside the plant, turning a ¾ mile stretch of the Colorado River into a mucky brown slick,
Elon, much like Trump think very highly of themselves. Both make promises that are never kept. I don’t trust either one of them. Elon been milking the system for years thanks to government grants. Now lets put USA in the hands of the man that claims cars can run on autopilot.
Until 2 years ago, the lefties loved this guy. Let’s call a duck a duck.
Sometimes, you have to stop supporting the genious guy https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1ha5i07/
Their worshippers don’t care. They’ve wrapped their entire being into the lies they’re told, and now death is the only thing that will end their stupidity, and they’ll stand before god and call him woke.
You really have to lay off the sugar quicksand at the bottom of the cereal bowl.
“But I draw the line at releasing toxic sludge into rivers and ignoring safety issues on furnace doors.”
At last. I was wondering where your limit was for getting things at the lowest possible cash cost. I’m glad to see you have one, I was beginning to wonder.
Do these limits apply to other countries too, or is releasing toxic sludge into rivers and ignoring safety issues acceptable if it happens overseas?
Please keep in mind we are living in Musk Simulation #59 and these Tesla manufacturing oversights will be corrected in Musk Simulation #60.
Hence the Eu plan to tax imports based on how mucn they pollute.
Might this be one of many hit-pieces we see on Elon/Tesla?
I’ll wait for Telsa’s rebuttal and see both sides. No point adding to the hysteria over a little pH imbalance (fixed with HCL or Na2CO3…hard to know why it wasn’t except a new plant will have initialization troubles.
A similar hit piece came out from MSM (CNBC) quoting EPA on SpaceX. Here’s the detailed response from SpaceX:
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1823080774012481862
Excerpt: To give you an idea of how much: a single use of the deluge system results in potable water equivalent to a rainfall of 0.004 inches across the area outside the pad which currently averages around 27 inches of rain per year.
Ps – I’m not an Elon fan-boy but do hope the US can have industries other than finance, fast-food and Deliver services (aka Snowcrash)
The only reason Musk is under attack by WSJ is because he is supporting Trump. All the American car companies and many others will surely be polluting water as well but we need to investigate only Tesla. Mish you haven’t still figured out the anti-musk bias at WSJ
Musk poisons the environment for the very same reason Trump sells Trump Guitars for $10,000 that are made in Indonesia not America. Neither Musk nor Trump nor any billionaire is perfect. Most big business men have conflicts of interest which makes them look like hypocrites.
I say by and large, Musk and Trump are doing more good than harm, but these people aren’t going to make America Great Again. I was born, raised and educated in a very great America. And that was a Golden Age that’s never coming back. You had to be there to understand.
BTW: You can still get your Trump Guitar by Christmas if you order now…. And then you can drive to the Christmas party in a nice, new Tesla…
Just in — A statement from the President Elect regarding Elon’s Austin situation
No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Elon’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Elon was singled out only because he is my friend – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Elon via unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Elon, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
Do you have a link to this?
Musk is real “piece of work.”
He thinks this will hasten colonizing Mars.
When they shut the EPA down, you’ll have to rely on state & local authorities, for environmental protections.
Local is good … local officials can better balance good paying jobs against a couple sick fish and a dead deer that wandered where it shouldn’t have (before we condemn Tesla, how many deer die in car crashes near Austin?)
Musk is not interested in eliminating govt. waste. He wants to eliminate Govt. oversight so that he & other mega-industrialists continue to do whatever they want to do with little regard for the environment or their employee’s welfare.
Your a great mind reader or a fool not sure of which, I’m thinking the later. He doesn’t need the money. His motivation is other.
I have loved your site for years I’m surprised by this left wing hit piece. Still do. I post your links regularly.
First a 100 degrees in casting metals is hot? How about 800f you can not be in there long your eyes will burn in a few seconds. Spent an entire shift running in and out out. How about 400 f? You can stand and talk not too bad you just put on more clothes and work in it. 100-200 degrees is normal in a reheat weekend tear out. Sometimes the 40 ton slabs still glowed red on the edges. Its not too hot worked many a 12 hour shifts in steel reheat furnace. Metal is hot and things break.
Rotton egg smell? That’s normal for many older Japanese cars, is it toxic? No. Two acids in a small pond, is that deadly? Perhaps if you jump in. Can it form toxic compounds? Absolutely. Don’t drink it. Morse then likely in very small quantities. Chemists are exposed to these chemicals all the time.
A small pond is highly unlikely to get into the water supply which is by river I believe,
Did you request a rebuttal?
History is replete with stories of the mega-rich laying waste to parts of the country because no one would stop them, and who cares if we wreck a little bit of the Earth. Imagine a country with nothing but oligarchs buying off government officials and polluting with reckless abandon. Why wouldn’t he? You stole the country from the Indians. Why wouldnt I pour toxic waste on your kids? What you gonna do about it? Your stupid kids arent gonna amount to anything anyway. Video game monkeys.
Omg. You live on stolen lands meme. When are you leaving Scott. Work a government job your whole life and have nothing but contempt for the country. Be the change you are looking for. Exit the land you are on.
I have contempt for wealth misused. And I retired earlier this year. I dont matter anyway. The public has spoken. The Orange Whip is here for 4 years.
Sure you do. Chin up. Stolen land. Leave. Or else you are full of shit
Are you ok? Aren’t you the one who said he was leaving? Did you need a hand with boxing anything up? There are some illegals you can hire in front of Home Depot or by the Uhaul store.
You should immediately give your home to native americans. How can you sleep at night knowing you stole land from other people?
My people werent here till 1920. The damage was already done.
And Elon arrived in the US long after your family did. Yet you claim he is using stolen Indian land. So your guilt is worse than his. Plus Elon is an immigrant from Africa so you think it is OK to be racist against him?
simps here worship the people that abuse them and destroy their lives. “Thank you sir, may I have another!” Is their catechism.
Usual crap. Like John Kerry flying all over crying about cow farts.