"Residents of a small Texas town view the controversial billionaire's Boring Company with suspicion."

"BASTROP, Texas ― Farmer Steve Hipe is concerned about what will happen to his landscape tree nursery if Elon Musk’s infrastructure company gets its way.

Musk’s Boring Company plans to discharge up to 142,000 gallons of wastewater into the Colorado River and across an on-site spray field each day, and dozens of the controversial billionaire’s new neighbors raised concerns at a packed public comment hearing Tuesday night.

“Am I going to be able to use pond water and not kill my trees?” Hipe asked the Boring Company’s environmental consultant. “We’re not a big company like y’all. We’re a family-owned farm.”

Another resident feared Bastrop would go the way of Austin, where you can’t toss a ball into the river for your dog without fear of fatally poisoning it. Others worried that groundwater contamination from the new site would threaten their drinking water, or that discharge would expose the area’s vegetable farms or downriver rice fields to new contaminants."

Roque Planas reports for HuffPost March 22, 2023. [2]