Spurned by Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office and Elon Musk’s The Boring Co., an interim panel of state lawmakers on Tuesday nonetheless grilled state officials on safety, environmental and security concerns raised around the Vegas Loop project.

“Does one person get sick? Do 100 people have to get sick? Does someone have to die? Where does it start for you?” Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D-Las Vegas) asked officials during an interim Growth and Infrastructure Committee meeting as to when the violations against The Boring Co. would trigger a criminal investigation.

The Elon Musk-founded Boring Co., which is building a privately owned transportation tunnel system under Las Vegas called the Vegas Loop, has been accused of myriad environmental and safety violations, including nearly 800 environmental regulation violations uncovered by ProPublica. Last year, Fortune reported that firefighters were exposed to “toxic muck” that peeled off their skin, resulting in two firefighters being sent to the hospital. 

The Loop currently services eight stations but is planning to expand to 104 stations with about 68 miles of tunnels. 

Officials from the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, the state Occupational Safety Hazard and Administration (OSHA) and the Division of Industrial Relations were questioned about a variety of violations, including water contamination and occupational safety.

The officials faced the brunt of the committee’s questions as representatives from the business and the governor’s office were absent. The governor’s office sent a letter last week declining to attend, and The Boring Co. sent an email Sunday night at around 8:40 p.m. bowing out of the meeting as well, according to committee chair Assm. Howard Watts (D-Las Vegas). 

“How can we get to a place where we don’t see more complaints, more issues being brought up again and again and again?” said Watts, who wrote on Facebook that he will be “bringing forward a bill to ensure they and other bad actors are held accountable by our regulators.”

Other questions arose from the committee surrounding allegations of tampering with documentation surrounding The Boring Co. 

Last year, Fortune reported that someone had deleted a case file diary log documenting a May meeting between Lombardo, The Boring Co.’s President Steve Davis and then-Nevada OSHA Chief Administrative Officer William Gardner, who quietly resigned in July.

“Removing, destroying, altering or concealing any public record in a public office is a Category C felony in Nevada,” Nguyen asked during the meeting. “Did you file any kind of police report?” 

Kristopher Sanchez, director of the Department of Business and Industry, said in response there was an internal investigation, but no one was found accountable for modifying or deleting the file. 

“No, there was no filing,” Sanchez said, adding that there was no internal memo or report on the methodology of the investigation into the missing document.

The governor’s office did not respond to questions about whether Lombardo was continuing to meet with Davis regarding The Boring Co. and if those meetings were being documented. The Boring Co. also did not respond to requests for comment.

In an emailed statement to The Nevada Independent, Department of Business and Industry spokeswoman Teri Williams said the issue had already been addressed. 

“[Division of Industrial Relations] administration and [Department of Business and Industry] leadership had no knowledge of a second case file document or potential alterations to the document until the matter was highlighted by the reporter,” Williams said. “A forensic analysis of the document was conducted but was inconclusive in determining who modified the document and when.”

Lawmakers also asked how roughly $400,000 in occupational safety violations and fines assessed against the company — separate from a $500,000 illegal dumping fine charged by the Clark County Water Reclamation District — was dismissed due to a “legal error.” Last year, the state denied dismissing violations because of political pressure.

Sally Ortiz, an attorney for the Department of Industrial Relations, said there were “disturbing anomalies, mistakes” in the citation she reviewed, which is why she rescinded the penalties. Ortiz said she reviews willful citations, which means that an employer intentionally disregards or acts with indifference toward OSHA rules, and reviewed the citations on a conference call in late May after having been out of the office. 

“I made it clear that there should be no ambiguity,” Ortiz said about prosecuting a willful violation, which she said requires a higher burden of evidence. On that call, Ortiz said it was clear that the citations did not match the proper standard for a willful violation. “I was able to tell immediately that we did not have enough there to meet our burden.” 

In an interview with The Indy after the meeting, Nguyen said she found this explanation unsatisfying. She pointed out that Ortiz had just come back to work the day before the call and dismissed the citations during an hourlong conference call for what she called “superficial” reasons — she added that the citations had come after a six-month-long investigation and gone through at least three levels of security. 

“It did not dispel any concerns about a cover-up,” Nguyen said. “They haven’t provided any serious answers to blatant special treatment.” 

Olivia Tanager, the director for the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter that covers Nevada and part of California, said she was happy to see The Boring Co. violations discussed publicly. However, she also noted that local governments, such as Clark County, were complicit in allowing The Boring Co. to operate without what she called a needed amount of regulation.

“There’s this whole missing piece of local government’s role in how the Boring tunnels were permitted and authorized in Southern Nevada,” Tanager said. “Folks at the county level should also be calling for accountability and doing an analysis into what went wrong at the local level.” 

Clark County did not respond to a request for a comment in time for publication.

Environmental fines 

State officials also faced questions over the “mystery green pond” that appeared near a Vegas Loop construction site late last year, which prompted health concerns given that a sizable percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s water supply comes from groundwater. In a post on X, the company said it was a “temporary manmade pond used to alleviate/balance loads during construction of subsurface concrete structures” and claimed there were “zero health risks.”

Jennifer Carr, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection administrator, told lawmakers she backed her staff’s decision that the pond didn’t warrant testing or investigation by the state. But she acknowledged that The Boring Co. has struggled with violations. Carr said environmental violations turning into criminal charges were rare, though it has happened, such as when a mobile home owner was briefly imprisoned for continuing to dump sewage into the Truckee River. 

“Generally we work in the civil realm,” Carr said, on what actions would trigger criminal charges against Boring for endangering the environment. “It’s not something our agency has a history of pursuing.” 

“We are in a situation where we do have a settlement agreement that the company is still struggling to comply with,” Carr said. Boring and NDEP entered the agreement in 2020 after Boring was fined for dumping groundwater into stormwater drains. 

“We are also challenged by just the nature of the project but my staff has stepped up admirably to make sure that we are looking at what’s important along the way,” she added. The Loop project in Las Vegas is the most developed attempt by Boring to implement its transportation model in the country. 

Lawmakers remained unconvinced.

“We don’t know what it was because there was no testing done,” Watts said. “We basically took this pond and filled it in with dirt, and we don’t know whether the chemical profile of that was altered in a way that increases the contamination of the groundwater aquifer.”

Reporter Amy Alonzo contributed to this report.