The Boring Company Consistently Evades Oversight

It’s been more than a year since Elon Musk’s The Boring Company announced its plans to construct a parallel pair of 9.5-mile underground tunnels stretching from the Nashville International Airport to the downtown core. Meanwhile, a slew of questions surrounding the project’s safety, environmental impact and more remain — all while the company disregards pleas for transparency. 

With the current tunnel route set to run underneath state-owned roads, The Boring Company effectively evaded almost any need for permits or approvals from Nashville’s Metro government. This includes the Metro Council, which passed a nonbinding resolution in March opposing the Music City Loop. 

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This leaves most regulatory control over the massive transportation system up to officials with the state of Tennessee. However, it’s not entirely clear what — if anything — the state is doing in terms of oversight. In an additional effort to cement state control over the project, the Tennessee General Assembly’s Republican supermajority approved legislation this year creating the “Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Act.”  

The law established the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority — made up of members appointed by the governor and speakers of the House and Senate — which is responsible for resolving disputes, hearing appeals and “exercising the powers necessary to facilitate the construction, operation, and maintenance of a transit project.”

While Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally have made their appointments, which include various former and current state leaders and business officials, House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s section of the state website listing the board members remains blank. A spokesperson with Sexton’s office tells the Scene that the speaker has not yet made his appointments.

Among the current board members is former state Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro). When recently questioned by the Tennessee Lookout about whether he thinks concrete barriers will prevent flooding in the tunnel, Ketron said, “They say that they will, but I don’t think I want to be one of the first ones riding through it.”

For many Nashvillians, these safety and environmental concerns have been at the forefront of the tunnel discussion since the project was announced in 2025. The Boring Company has called the tunnel “amazingly safe”  and released its own assessment last year claiming there were no environmental concerns. This comes in contrast to a recent report from the Southern Environmental Law Center, which found construction on the Music City Loop could lead to sinkholes and groundwater contamination. 

Trey Bussey, senior attorney at SELC, tells the Scene the company’s initial assessment did not address some of the key challenges and risks related to the project, such as results of geotechnical boring sampling. 

“The Boring Company has not disclosed its plans for dealing with these risks,” says Bussey. “We don’t know what they would do if the tunneling machine gets stuck under Mill Creek. We don’t know what they will do if they run into a lot of contaminated soil or groundwater. How are they going to treat that groundwater? What if it starts to flow in all new directions? I don’t think The Boring Company has disclosed a lot of information that’s essential for the public to analyze the risks of this project, particularly to public resources.” 

Bussey says he thinks the lack of independent review and oversight related to the project is troubling and not typical for projects of this scale. 

“The Woodland Avenue bike lane has been held up in [National Environmental Policy Act] review and litigation over years,” he says. “Much smaller projects receive a whole lot more scrutiny than this one did.” 

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District 6 Metro Councilmember Clay Capp echoes Bussey’s concerns that the tunnel’s construction is not proceeding like a typical transportation project. 

“It’s quite simply a backdoor deal between the richest man in the world and the state government,” Capp says.

Meanwhile, the Scene has attempted to contact The Boring Company more than a dozen times since the project was announced last year. Neither the company nor any of its officials have responded to any of the Scene’s requests for comment. 

At a February meeting, company leaders made a sole public appearance to speak with members of the Metro Council. There, The Boring Company Vice President Davis Buss said the company prefers using blog posts — published every two months — and “personal and small group meetings” as methods of communication rather than interviews with media or formal appearances. 

However, these bimonthly blog posts are not subject to any sort of checks. In The Boring Company’s most recent post, the organization claims to have hosted “numerous site tours for residents, business owners, students, community leaders, elected officials, and regulatory agencies.” The company did not respond to the Scene’s request in August for a site tour. In addition, the blog claims The Boring Company has “engaged with more than 275 community, educational, nonprofit and professional organizations and participated in over 160 volunteer events across Middle Tennessee,” though it provides no details on what those organizations are. 

The post also claims the company has responded to more than 220 inquiries submitted to nashville@boringcompany.com. None of those responses have been to the Scene. 

The Boring Company’s dodging of reporters’ questions and government oversight is not new. The company’s tunnel project in Las Vegas has been the subject of similar transparency barriers, worker safety concerns and criticisms related to efficiency.