Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) 277
Elon Musk's Boring Company has settled a lawsuit preventing the company from building a tunnel beneath the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. "[T]he cancellation of the Westside tunnel project is a major blow to Musk's grand plan in the City of Angels," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Los Angeles Times reports that the project's demise began shortly after the Boring Company obtained a preliminary exemption to skip California's environmental review process and start digging. The city's authorities have been friendly to Musk's plans, but a group of residents in the Westside area filed an environmental suit in May alleging that the tunnel violates state law. The crux of the group's argument was that the Westside tunnel is part of a larger project that the company outlined with a map late last year. According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project, stating that a full environmental review can't "be evaded by chopping large projects into smaller pieces that taken individually appear to have no significant environmental impacts."
The Westside group did not get a ruling on its lawsuit; instead, it seems the two parties settled. The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, but it sent a statement to NBC News that reads: "The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter of Brentwood Residents Coalition et al. v. City of Los Angeles (TBC -- The Boring Company). The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium."
The Westside group did not get a ruling on its lawsuit; instead, it seems the two parties settled. The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, but it sent a statement to NBC News that reads: "The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter of Brentwood Residents Coalition et al. v. City of Los Angeles (TBC -- The Boring Company). The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium."
Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we worried about the disruption of the natural habitat of Lumbricus terrestris?
This is why we can't have nice things. If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole. If the whole has an impact, then if none of the other parts had any impact, then whatever part happens to be last must, by definition, have the same impact as the whole. This is basic logic.
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's assuming 0 impact.
What if you divide up the chunks so numerous, the negative effect is a rounding error? Companies find loopholes like this all the time.
This also assumes each chunk doesn't affect each other. One chunk could affect another
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasting the resources and energy on an "environmental study" is itself arguably detrimental to the environment.
However, some "beyond rigorous" geological/seismological studying wouldn't be a terrible idea...
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, we should consider the environmental impact of NOT building the tunnels, and everyone continuing to commute with SUVs on the freeway.
NIMBYism is destroying America.
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:2)
we should consider the environmental impact of NOT building the tunnels
Said more efficiently (fewer words) than I'm generally capable of.
Respect. :)
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I think they are concerned about the environmental impact of having a hyperloop station in their neighbourhood where certain undesirables could appear out of nowhere, mug whoever is around in the area and disappear again.
Sure, we should (Score:2)
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.
The way to test this assertion is by actually trying to get one working.
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If they are going to build a big long squiggly tunnel underneath LA, then maybe it makes sense to make sure it will have more than one purpose - capacity for power, fibre-optics and other services.
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its underground you piece of shit.
Did you do a EIR for the DOD when they used 2500 nukes in Navada ?
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Ah, yes, the ol' outside the environment [youtube.com] argument...
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, Elon Musk is such a genius he can't do basic paperwork
That's... not true. Things have nonlinear effects. It's sorites paradox.
Or, put it another way, no given xray (or cigarette) is likely to give you cancer. But getting 100 xrays a day (or smoking 5 packs a day) is likely to cause you to get cancer. That's why it's illegal to split a project into smaller pieces.
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But even still, the subsequent parts have nonlinearly increasing effects. The only way you get the whole not equal to the sum of its parts is if you don't evaluate them as you do them, but rather pre-evaluate each part in isolation, which is an entirely different thing.
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh no, Elon Musk is such a genius he can't do basic paperwork
Musk's mistake was attempting any major project in Californiastan, full stop. I could have told him that this sort of thing would happen.
There are reasons why people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves. This is but one of countless others.
Strat
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
NIMBY doesn't know state boundaries. This is a wealthy neighborhood concerned about elevated traffic due to the tunnel. This happens everywhere in the US anytime you attempt any construction project near wealthy people.
You'll get this worse in other states east of California where property owners also own the mineral rights. Somewhere like Texas you'd get every single property owner anywhere close to project suing to be paid claiming an impact to their mineral rights. California like many of the states west of Colorado have state laws that separate out mineral and surface rights giving the property owner no challenge to tunnel type projects via mineral rights. Instead these wealthy property owners are using a state environmental law to claim no analysis of impacts like traffic to attack the project.
Honestly the property owners are right, if Musk does want to build this massive private tunnel network he needs to spend a little money and do a real environmental analysis on what the impacts will be. Such a system would likely dramatically change traffic patterns and could cause aquifers to be disrupted along with a bunch of other things that should be analyzed before building it.
Environmental documents aren't a bad thing, they are simply a process that requires planning and a look at the effects the project will have before you build it. This is a good thing, these documents and the process they entail can often make projects run smoother and win public support and once the document is approved many of the avenues for a lawsuit get closed off, which is one of the purposes of the document.
GPS would be banned (Score:2)
By your definition, GPS would never be built and be banned
because it would disrupt so many businesses.
Smart phones affect traffic patterns too.
What time sport is on affects it too
That doesn't really make much sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they're more worried about sink holes, damage to the ground water and pipes and maybe even a gas explosion or two. Musk was pretty obviously trying to break down his project into smaller projects to get around a proper impact study. That is more than a bit suspicious.
As for why these things only come up in wealthy neighborhoods, it's because poor people don't have time and money to fight it when a big company wants to do something shitty in their neighborhood. It's why about half of poor rural communities don't have drinkable water right now. A rich neighborhood has stay at home moms who can spend 8 hours at city council meetings and hire lawyers to file paper work they otherwise would have got wrong and missed deadlines for. It's one of the many, many advantages of being rich.
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gorgeous strawman you've erected there, and you tore it down beautifully.
Where did the post you responded to say anything about CA failing? It said that people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves which is absolutely true and factual.
Perhaps the fumes from all the human shit on the streets has affected your reading comprehension.
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Source: https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/... [ca.gov]
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Still 5th [businessinsider.com]. Not taking your fact-free word for it either.
subtract google/apple/facebook (Score:2)
what do you get? 15th?
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> Or, put it another way, no given xray (or cigarette) is likely to give you cancer. But getting 100 xrays a day (or smoking 5 packs a day) is likely to cause you to get cancer. That's why it's illegal to split a project into smaller pieces.
At the same time it's kinda ridiculous here. Yes, you may have grand plans for what you'd eventually like to do-- tunnels everywhere. But you should still be able to build logical, standalone pieces and not somehow try to get through EIR/permitting for everything yo
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
It's probably not an issue with wildlife, but an issue with digging under people's property. There have to be checks done to make sure that digging won't cause subsidence of buildings on the surface, or affect things like wells. There can also be issues with drainage and underground waterways that get diverted by the tunnel, which can have knock on effects.
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably not an issue with wildlife, but an issue with digging under people's property.
*shakes fist*
Not Under My Back Yard!
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Around here there are properties that had to be written off because tunnels or more often mines dug under them caused problems. Water companies occasionally have to pay out because of burst underground pipes.
For this particular project I'd like to know what happens if there is an accident and a fire in the tunnel. Lithium batteries, gasoline, confined but ventilated space... Say the concrete melts, what then? What kind of fire suppression do they have?
I'm sure they have figured all this stuff out, but we ha
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm surprise Rei isn't here blaming it on short cellars.
TY, IHAW.
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If you read the first sentence of the summary, it says the tunnel in question was planned to run under the 405 freeway. There are no houses on the freeway.
It was likely either a cynical attempt to slow the project down and get bribes for stepping aside, or some uneducated people imagining that their houses will be shaking constantly from nearby tunneling. The EIR wouldn't turn up anything, but it'd still require time
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It was likely either a cynical attempt to slow the project down and get bribes for stepping aside, or some uneducated people
Uneducated, like the large company with lots of money who "forgot" to file the right paperwork? The law specifically says that companies aren't allowed to hide the impact by splitting it up into lots of tiny chunks.
Musk just tried to do EXACTLY that.
If there isn't impact then that would have come up in the full report.
Why didn't they file it? The law is entirely clear in this regard an
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If you keep reading the summary you can see that their concern is not so much the bit under the 405, but the fact that if they get the go-ahead for that bit it will help their application for the rest of it to get pushed through hastily.
That law preventing companies from splitting large projects up into small sections is there for a reason.
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Subsidence is probably a non-issue in this case, he's deep enough it's not going to have an effect at surface level unless the entire tunnel collapses and even then it'd probably bridge a soil arch before it reached the surface.
There are real issues with aquifer disruptions, traffic pattern changes and a bunch of other stuff that should be looked at. Environment documents are required because of stuff like this but the process is also setup to help build public support and in the end environmental documents
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It is entirely under a public road. The only concern is people in Brentwood (ironically where Musk lives when he isn't sleeping on a factory floor somewhere) are concerned that dump truck might be going up and down streets somewhere.
Musk was willing to cancel because he has another idea for a proof-of-concept tunnel (Dodgers), and the Sepulveda tunnel likely only made sense if he could get it moving quickly. He needs a second tunnel to dig to try out his next generation TBM. He might just have to experime
the rest of the world digs, CA sleeps (Score:2)
https://tunnelbuilder.com/Arch... [tunnelbuilder.com]
Singapore builds, you cant stop them.
CA could learn from them
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole.
Well, no. "No environmental impact" really just means "an acceptably low degree of environmental impact".
One cow grazing in a ten-acre field is sustainable, in terms of plant life; but that doesn't mean you can put ten thousand cows on the field without destroying the biosystem.
You can drill one hole in a rafter and it'll still support the roof just fine - that doesn't mean you can drill a thousand holes in that rafter.
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Yeah, but the point is that the second hole has to be evaluated after the first one is done, and the thousandth hole after the 999th one. At some point, the person evaluating it will say, "You know what, we really can't safely add the nth hole."
Even if you divide it into parts, as long as you evaluate the parts as you do them, either you'll reach a tipping point where the environmental impact becomes meaningful enough to trigger a review or you won't. If don't, then the whole project shouldn't have trigge
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats exactly why the law is in place - how stupid would it be to do 2/3 (or pick any signicitant amount) of a project and then STOP and not be allowed to complete it? If the project is paid for by the government it would be a complete waste of money, and if it's private like this one, and the company sues the state, that will happen? Having a law that says you need to start with the end in mind is a good idea.
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Except that this tunnel had a useful purpose even if none of the rest of the work ever got done; its purpose was to prove that the concept could work.
I mean, say you're building a hotel. It makes no sense to say, "Your design has extra doors intended to let you later add two additional wings, so we can't let you build the first wing without an environmental review that includes the second and third wing that you might or might not ever even build, or might completely change between now and when you build
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That would be absurd, because that's not how hotels get built. You plan the entire thing out. And yes, you would have to get the whole plans signed
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"The facility was expanded with hotel tower additions in 1972, 1975, 1980, 1986, and 1996."
It's possible the 72 and 75 expansions were in the original plans, but you can almost guarantee the 80, 86, and 96 additions weren't
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I used to work at this hotel as a kid, it had a new wing added to it while i worked there, 4 other wings added over 100 years or so
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Yes but you could make two tunnel entrances which have no impact because neither of them goes anywhere.
It's only when you build the middle bit between them...
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
No one said the individual parts have no environmental impact. They said "no significant environment impact".
If the bar for "significant" is "10" and your project is deemed to be "20", you're not allowed to complete it in 4 parts, each with "5", to avoid mitigation of the impact.
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole.
That's not necessarily true. It's the same reason tic-tacs can represent their product as "sugar free": "Tic Tac® mints do contain sugar as listed in the ingredient statement. However, since the amount of sugar per serving (1 mint) is less than 0.5 grams, FDA labeling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving."
If a given project is only allowed to cause so much of an environmental impact, but the project as a whole will exceed that limit, you're not allowed to split it up into smaller projects in such a way that each sub-project will be under that limit.
Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
So yeah, an environmental impact report is most appropriate in this case.
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"If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole."
One hunter kills all the deer, and you have no herd next year, or ever.
One hunter kills one deer, and you have no lasting impact. the herd will continue just fine.
Gather up enough hunters, and let them each kill one deer, instead of having no lasting effect by summing up all those 'no effects' you end up with the catastrophic effect where you have no herd next year (or ever).
"This is basic logic."
Even in basic logic this i
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You remind me of a developer I talked to who wanted to blast a harbor in one of the Hawaiian Islands and couldn't figure out why the locals were opposing him. Exactly that same attitude: why can't I have my harbor? Oh yeah, the island will get trashed, so what.
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So if I want to build a 100 mile road thru a nature preserve, and I apply for 528000 waivers to build one foot sections of road, they should all be approved, because each one foot section can't possibly have an impact, right?
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But they *are* separate projects! It's pure coincidence that if you look at them all together from a specific angle at the right time of day it (umm, I mean *they*) might, to the untrained eye, superficially resemble a single large one.
And you can't prove otherwise, ner ner ner!
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Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Damaging aquifers? Contaminating water tables? Subsidence? Sinkholes? Triggering earthquakes? ...Yeah, no need to check for any of that, right?
The rich fuckers have an impact as a whole (Score:2)
But individually they dont.
Their whole gated community as a whole is a no go zone, and too nice and perfect, makes rest of CA look like shit.
Tear it down.
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I think it's more about a possible infestation of streetgangus criminalis being unintentionally transferred into their neighborhood.
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An EIS is generally wider than the natural environment impacts. It also covers social, & economic impacts.
eg. this is the EIS objectives for a major tunnel near me.
The objectives of the EIS are:
! to identify potential environmental, social and economic impacts and to ensure that adverse impacts are avoided or mitigated where possible; and
! to identify potential community benefits, including environmental, social and economic benefits.
Where unavoidable, the likely impacts (direct, indirect and cumulativ
Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:2)
Every tonnel has at least two holes. Maybe they were concerned about these two.
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For example, a single dam may not considerably hinder the ability of certain fish fish to swim from the sea to a lake where they mate. They might still be able to take a detour. But multiple dam building projects could suddenly seriously hinder that ability, as every river leading to the lake now has a dam in it.
Impact on traffic patterns and ground wat (Score:2)
If you dig a tunnel, you have some excavated rocks to dump or transport somewhere. That may have some impact. New transportation links can affect traffic patterns in weird ways - even increasing motor traffic in some unrelated places.
And - a major point - making a hole in the ground can have major effects on ground water. It's possible Musk have some super-sure way to avoid that, but the normal way to assure this is with an environmental impact study.
Or you tunneling methods may end up not just depleting, b
Your basic logic is ental impact of a tunnel? WTF? (Score:2)
Small projects do not have no impact, they have minimal impact. Multiple minimal impacts can be severe. For example, if you put one teaspoon salt into the water for your noodles, it has minor impact. However, the whole package of salt will make the noodles quite inedible.
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What if it doesn't fall but you put the table in the wood chipper?
So do the EIR (Score:4, Insightful)
And if it truly doesn't have an impact, dig then. Like everyone else with a project, there are rules for a reason.
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EIS (Environmental Impact Statement), EA (Environmental Assesment) and CatX (Categorical Exclusion) reports do not open up lawsuits. They actually close of litigation quite effectively because the litigants can only challenge the report as incomplete after an environmental document is completed. One of the reasons to do an environmental document is for this very reason, it takes standing away because the impacts have already been evaluated.
In fact once the environmental document is approved the only way to
Those pesky laws. (Score:2)
Always disrupting the disruptor's disruptions.
Job done (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does anyone do anything in California? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't imagine why Musk does California the favor of doing anything in California, or any other company for that matter.
He should just let LA slide into the Fallout like destiny it seeks, a complete wasteland of fire and traffic where you can only move via blimp or scooter.
A land where someone blocks an obviously useful thing like a tunnel to protect the spotted long-tufted earthworm or some other imaginary underground dweller, is a land not worth saving.
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This. California wants to run the whole damn country, but they have the worst case of NIMBY I've ever seen.
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Because the only other option is probably New York City, which is already full of tunnels.
Creating an underground public transport system is not financially viable when there is ample room above ground.
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Creating an underground public transport system is not financially viable when there is ample room above ground.
This !... wait. Where is the ample room above ground again ?
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Because the only other option is probably New York City, which is already full of tunnels.
New York City's union rules make California's environmental regulations look like amateur hour when it comes to holding up the works.
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NYC may be full of tunnels but they could probably use a few more with reliable cars.
I know quite a lot about the NYC tunnels as I spent a half hour stopped in one once so I got to see it in great detail.
Because it's a wealthy and prosperous state (Score:2, Informative)
Now, you might counter that with "We've been digging like this for ages and that never happens". But here's the crux: We've been digging like that for ages under one of two conditions:
a. Relatively littl
HA HA HA No. (Score:5, Insightful)
and strong regulations help keep it that way.
That is such bullshit. How do regulations prop up the vast tech industry there?
In a world where people constantly prattle on about privilege, what California has that has kept is so prosperous is pretty much the privilege of good weather + ocean. It has kept a lot of tech people there, and film people, and creative people of all kinds in California because they like living there.
Regulations have not helped at all. The state parks in other states for example are WAY BETTER managed than CA state parks. There are lots of other places that are nicer environmentally than California, so it's not like the absurd California environmental regulations have done anything except jack up housing prices since you cannot build a home anywhere useful now. Which has driven people to have 2-3 hour commutes, how does that help the environment exactly? Or perhaps you meant they prosper because they force cable makers to say every single thing you touch causes cancer.
If Apple/Google/Facebook alone left California tomorrow, how prosperous would California be? If a lot of other companies followed them, how long before the entire state collapsed under crushing debt (pension liability alone) with no-one able to pay for it?
I never said the regulations prop up anything (Score:2)
Regulations can have a variety of purposes. For example, there are regulations about using your house as a hotel. This can seem like a give away to the hotel industry at first glance. Until you find out that investors used to buy up properties and use them as short term rentals in popular areas, preventing regular folk from buying houses in cities where they worked and resulting in soul crushingly long commutes and a general decline in quality of life all ar
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Yeah, it's terrible how that liberal judge canceled the tunnel to save the earthworm!
Oh, wait, that only happened in your hyper-partisan imagination. Back in reality, anybody can file lawsuits regardless of merit -- lawsuits are America's national pastime, not just California's -- and impact reports don't mean that nothing is allowed to be done if it has an impact.
Are environmental impact reports a favorite tool of NIMBYs? Yes, all the more so in my deeply conservative but anti-growth part of California. Pe
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"Nobody lives in California anymore. There's too much traffic." --Yogi Berra
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Now its just all about the trash, state laws, wages and taxes.
Re:Why does anyone do anything Folloin California? (Score:2)
Musk tried to avoid the normal way to start the project. Now in a democracy you do not need to accept authoritarian behavior. Musk must follow the rules like anyone else, he is not above the law. He still can build his thing after due process.
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Your city sucks. People who do cool things don't like it.
Actually you are wrong as Colorado is where a ton of people from California move to when they get tired of bullshit.
Also the weather here is very nearly as good, we just don't have oceans.
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Also the weather here is very nearly as good, we just don't have oceans.
Um. Depends on your definition of "Nearly". A lot of Californians would not find themselves in agreement.
Yes, tunnels have Environmental Impacts. (Score:5, Informative)
More correctly, it's not that they have an impact that is the question. It's WHAT their impact is going to be and how the infrastructure company is going to mitigate that impact. You have to prove that you can build this thing safely BEFORE you start digging.
It's called ethics. I know this is a new concept for most programmers reading this on /., but it's a thing civil guys have been dealing with for decades. It's not a new problem for us.
See here for an example:
http://www.hudsontunnelproject... [hudsontunnelproject.com]
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You get this, why can't everyone? It's so simple. It's LITERALLY standard operating procedure, and TBC was skirting it on a sweet deal, and now it's back to SOP. BFD, amirite? But let's get our Libertarian feathers ruffled... it's CA!
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Nah, you just start digging. If something happens and all your tunnels turn out to be useless, well the subsidiary files bankruptcy and it's all someone else's problem.
It's called startup culture. Think big, push forward, fail fast. Someone else will clean up your mess, hopefully after the IPO. The VC's are taking all the risk right now and you'll get paid either way.
Re: Yes, tunnels have Environmental Impacts. (Score:3)
The waist is part of it. But you also have to consider traffic implications at the entrance and exits, groundwater impacts, impacts to the structures you will be driving underneath as well as future development impacts.
This is a big project. There is a lot to plan for. The point of the study is to demonstrate you have done the proper planning.
No, actually I don't believe you can just eye ball a multi billion dollar project and say there will be no impact. Prove it.
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If the waist is part of it, then try a larger belt perhaps?
Or maybe suspenders, if you want to take the pressure off the waist entirely....
Your example doesn't support your point, because.. (Score:2)
You linked to the complete DEIS document, which is a 158 MB zip file.
I'm not ashamed to say: too long, didn't read.
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I don't blame you.
The point is that a tunnel has a lot of potential environmental impacts that have to be studied and mitigated.
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Re: Yes, tunnels have Environmental Impacts. (Score:2)
Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. That's the point of the environmental study.
Stupid.
Rich asshole screw things up as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
The subway in L.A. was held up for decades because the rich Beverly Hills residents didn't want to be disturbed by the building of it. So the intelligent route couldn't be used, the one the old L.A. Red Line had, so the L.A. subway skirts Beverly Hills. Now Elton want to build his tunnel and the bozos in the rich areas of the Westside get it stopped. Plutarchy in action just like the whole Trump administration is all about.
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Beverly Hills is STILL fighting [bhcourier.com] the purple line subway.
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Right, because the people in the Los Angeles Weststide are somehow Republicans? Did you notice even Orange County went Democrat this election?
And so... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is an outrageous statement: The real purpose of these laws is to force people who want to get things done to make political donations. Whether it actually achieves any reasonable goal is beside the point.
In this it is no different from a corrupt country where you are expected to pay 10% of the cost of a new building to the building approver, or an immediate fee to the officer who pulled you over, or a few hundred to the DMV person so you don't need to mysteriously wait 5 years for a license.
I reiterate: "valid" regulations, even if granted as good, end up being misused this way.
Working as designed -- getting in the way of people who get things done. It has taken longer to clear regulatory hurdles to dredge a bay 5 feet deeper to handle superpanamax ships than it took to dig the original Panama canal.
Re:And so... (Score:5, Informative)
You don't know what you are talking about.
NEPA was constructed to close off litigation as much as it was constructed to force rich folks that want to build things to look at the consequences of building it before building it. It's there to force people to look at the problems the construction will cause, to develop mitigation plans and to basically do some fucking planning before going out there and building something and then abandoning it (leaving it to the tax payer to clean up) because they didn't consider the impacts.
Smoke (Score:2)
I believe this is a bunch of smoke to hide the fact, Elon's vision of some new tunnel transportation is nothing new at all. It's a fricking subway, dork.
The environmental impacts of tunnels (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to sidestep the low-effort jokes about "how can a tunnel affect the environment" to point out that they do, in fact, affect the environment.
The tailings, or spoil, that is removed from the tunnel needs proper disposal. This material can be anything from rock to mud to coal and even soil contaminated with chemicals. Some of the rock releases acid when exposed to water, like the pyrite exposed by I-99 construction in PA. The Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland had to have expensive temporary work just to prevent spoil from destroying the local environment.
All tunnels require drainage. For example, the Washington DC Metrorail system pumps out millions of gallons of water every day, most of which requires treatment before being released into the environment. Speaking of Metrorail, tailings were illegally dumped into local waterways that damaged them permanently.
While the air in the Boring Co tunnels aren't intended to be breathable by passengers, serious consideration must be made for combustible gases and it must be documented.
Finally, the affect on the overburden of the tunnel must be considered when digging. Disturbing it can release methane gas, cause contamination of groundwater by sediment, cause water migration, and cause subsidence on the surface.
So, laugh all you want about tunnels and the environment, but tunnels are NOT invisible.
Don't build in the People's Republic! (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project...
If this is how the law actually reads, that is California's way of assuring BANANA (Build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anyone). Segmenting a potential big project into individually testable smaller sections is a perfectly natural way of trying out something new. Small wonder that it can't even install a TGV that can be ordered right out of the Alstom catalog.
Come to Arizona, where experimentation is encouraged, and bore a tunnel here. The automated car companies are testing on the streets above you.
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We've become extremely adverse to risk and death in our society. Progress costs human lives, whether they end suddenly or as a result of years of toil at a job. Google employs 88,100 full time employees. Assuming a 40 hou
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Back in reality, it was a test tunnel. They decided the Dodger Stadium one can serve the same purpose with more utility. It changes nothing about their plans.
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All the way down, actually.
Not if you don't own the mineral rights. And for quite awhile developers of residential properties have been holding on to mineral rights. And in most states, sellers aren’t legally required to disclose to home buyers whether they are severing the mineral rights to a property, you have to go down to city hall and check separate filings to find out.
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In California, certain trees need to have a Prop. 65 warning sticker:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018... [acsh.org]