The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines.
Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.
This account of the Austin plant’s environmental problems, which haven’t been reported previously, comes from emails between Texas regulators and the company obtained by The Wall Street Journal in response to public-records requests, as well as interviews with former employees and other documents, including a memo sent by a whistleblower to the Environmental Protection Agency.
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This year, California regulators said Tesla violated air-pollution permits at its Fremont factory 112 times over the past five years and alleged it repeatedly failed to fix equipment designed to reduce emissions, releasing thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals in excess of permissible limits into the surrounding communities. “Even after extensive discussion,” Tesla’s efforts “have not been enough to stem the violations,” the abatement order from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District read. Tesla denied the allegations in the state proceeding. Since the order was filed, the regulator has issued 75 additional notices of violations to Tesla, according to a spokesperson.
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One environmental-compliance staffer in the Austin plant claimed that “Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls,” according to a 2024 memo from the employee to the EPA that was reviewed by the Journal.
The staffer sent the detailed memo alleging environmental violations at Tesla to the EPA. The memo, including hundreds of pages of state regulatory documents, as well as photos and videos, was reviewed by the Journal. The EPA’s criminal-enforcement division and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality earlier this month opened a preliminary inquiry related to the former Tesla staffer’s allegations, according to people familiar with the matter.
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