Austin.Elon Musk’s companies are opening facilities across the country that promise skilled jobs and economic growth, but some residents of the largely rural area near Austin are watching with alarm as farmland is turned into industrial development, The Wall Street Journal noted. .
The newspaper noted that Musk’s tunneling firm, The Boring Company, and space transportation company, SpaceX, are constructing huge buildings and tunneling on more than 200 acres of unincorporated land along the Colorado River.
The billionaire’s ambitions there also include a corporate town, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In a heated public meeting Tuesday night, the first since the Musk companies arrived here in early 2021, dozens of Bastrop County residents objected to the companies’ plan to build their own sewage plant and then spray the treated water in the fields or discharge it into the river.
Some pointed to the environmental violations they have already accumulated as reason for further evaluation.
Harold Connett, who runs Green Gate Farms, an organic farm near Boring and SpaceX properties, told the meeting that those developments have helped transform a “beautiful agritourism recreation center into an industrial site. And he never intended to be that”.
Musk’s Bastrop County facility is expected to grow so large that he is planning a 110-housing subdivision for employees. Boring Co. executives have discussed incorporating it as a city.
Musk and others have described it as a kind of Texas utopia, and last year he sought advice from Kanye West and others as he developed his vision, the Journal previously reported.
SpaceX, Boring and electric car maker Tesla Inc. have moved quickly to develop new industrial outposts in Nevada, California and elsewhere.
In nearby Travis County, it took Tesla less than two years to build a 10 million-square-foot factory it calls Giga Texas, which opened last April.
In the process, the companies are transforming rural landscapes and leaving some residents concerned about how little they know about Musk’s long-term plans.
No company employee answered the residents’ questions, instead delegating that task to an environmental consultant they hired.
Rajiv Patel, environmental consultant for the companies, said the sewage schemes are safe and will not harm the water. Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said their analysis showed minimal impact.
The public meeting drew more than 200 people.
Most of the attendees called for more assurances from state environmental officials that Musk’s developments are not harmful to the area.
Other speakers applauded the potential for economic development and said they trust businesses to be good neighbors.
A local real estate agent pointed out that rising home prices are one way that residents are already benefiting.
Bastrop County, a stronghold of ranching and agriculture, has been affected by Austin’s growth. The area relies heavily on well water and the Colorado River, which has made some residents uneasy about rampant construction and wastewater management.
According to some county residents and Bastrop City Mayor Connie Schroeder, Musk businesses have an easy way to deal with wastewater and reduce their potential environmental impact: connect to the existing municipal wastewater system.
Patel said they plan to “eventually have a line to the city,” but said the companies don’t want to hold back their expansion for the roughly two years it would take to make the connection.
Tuesday’s meeting marked the end of the public comment period and the commission will decide in the coming months whether to approve the permit. Because Musk is building on unincorporated land, the county and the city of the same name have limited oversight powers.
