LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nevada state lawmakers put the Vegas Loop project under intense scrutiny during a Tuesday morning meeting, questioning state agencies about the company's compliance record.
No representation from The Boring Company attended the joint interim meeting to answer questions about their operations in the valley.
Watch: Geneva Zoltek tracks the latest on Vegas Loop questions, controversies
"I'm incredibly disappointed that a company valued at $7 billion that has a team of government affairs and lobbyists were unable to make the time today for us to ask those questions to make sure that our communities are protected," Sen. Rochelle Nguyen stated.
The Boring Company — owned by Elon Musk — plans to construct 104 stations in Clark County connected by underground tunnels that would transport thousands of passengers an hour.
"Is it fair to say the Boring Company struggles with compliance?" Assemblyman Howard Watts asked the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) during the hearing.
"Jennifer Carr, for the record, thank you for the question…uhm, yes," responded NDEP's Administrator.
Watts described the company's behavior as "serial bad behavior," citing repeated health and safety violations with the Vegas Loop project and a lack of accountability from the company.
"State regulators have accused The Boring Company of violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times in the last two years," Watts said.
NDEP was questioned as to why they didn't take samples of the green water that appeared at a construction site near a heavily trafficked area.
"I'm struggling to understand why, again, on a site with a notorious violator of environmental regulations, that we didn't at least take a test of that," Asm Watts said.
Nevada OSHA was also present, and defended their choice to drop more than $400,000 worth of fines for worker safety violations last year.
"They just didn't put it into the violation worksheets correctly," OSHA's legal council explained.
Lawmakers also questioned missing documentation, including a case file detailing the meeting where the decision to drop fines was made.
"I'd like to know if the governor's office is satisfied with the fact that when a forensic analysis was requested to understand who erased their minimal, if any actual involvement in the OSHA case log, IT staff simply responded that no previous version of the file could be found," Asm. Howard Watts said.
OSHA was later asked about why that piece of information went missing — and if a police report was filed.
"Removing, altering, destroying, or concealing any record, a public record deposit in a public office is actually a category C felony, so did you make that criminal complaint?" asked Sen. Nguyen.
The answer was no from Dr. Kristopher Sanchez, Director of the Department of Business and Industry.
"I was waiting for the investigation to come back to determine whether or not we could identify an individual that we may file against. Obviously, we did not find any specific individual, um, and so no, there was no file," Sanchez responded.
Nguyen continued her probe, asking if there were other missing case files; "Did you see any of these other forensic breaches or other missing documents or altered documents in other any other areas or just with respect to this one high-profile case?"
"For the record, I'm not aware of any others," Sanchez said.
Las Vegas resident Janet Carter attended the meeting and expressed concern to Channel 13 about The Boring Company's pattern of behavior.
"I just feel like they're willfully ignoring the health and safety of the people in Las Vegas," Carter said.
"There does seem to be a pattern of ignoring, you know, the citations or trying to spread them out as long as possible," she added.
Both lawmakers and regulators indicated this investigation will continue as they work to address ongoing compliance issues with the Vegas Loop project.
As we previously reported, the Governor's Office declined to attend.
