The Vegas Loop is a series of underground tunnels to transport people around Las Vegas via Teslas.

It's a project under Elon Musk's Boring Company and claims to have already transported more than 3 million passengers.

But as construction continues, concerns about oversight and safety have surfaced.

April Corbin Girnus of the Nevada Current has been covering these developments and joins us now.

April, welcome back to Nevada Week.

-Thanks for having me.

-Let's start with safety.

And among the reported violations, what are some of the more high-profile incidents that stand out to you?

(April Corbin Girnus) I think one of the most high profile ones that's happened there happened about a year ago, and it was two Clark County Fire Department firefighters received chemical burns while doing a training exercise down there.

And in addition to them, there were also other employees and workers that were down there that also reported having chemical burns, some of them quite severe and sort of maybe permanently scarring them.

-Okay.

So when workers are injured, or when someone is injured, OSHA will get involved, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

And in this instance, it would be Nevada's OSHA.

What has happened with OSHA recently in Nevada that has drawn national headlines in relation to this case?

-So it's actually related to the firefighter incident, where, after that happened, state investigators with OSHA went into the Vegas Loop to look for-- to investigate and look at what was happening.

And they gave, they gave a citation and assessed about $400,000 worth of fines, saying that The Boring Company had had a willful violation, which is the highest level of-- It's the highest level of severity in terms of what they did wrong.

And then what happened after that is The Boring Company's CEO called someone in the governor's office, and then the governor's office facilitated at least two meetings.

And then shortly thereafter, like within 24 hours, OSHA Nevada pulled back and took away the violations and said, We're not going to do those anymore.

So they rescinded that.

And that has been widely debated and the sense of some controversy for that.

And that's where federal OSHA became involved.

They started to look into it, and then they recently released their findings that said that the State, Nevada State OSHA, was justified in rescinding and sort of pulling back those, that the legal justification for that willful violation status had not been met.

So they sort of cleared them on that front.

-Wow.

Okay.

So to recap, then, federal OSHA gets involved once they realized that Nevada OSHA had rescinded citations following meetings that had been set up between The Boring Company and the governor's office of Nevada and Nevada OSHA.

Okay.

But then says, You know what, they had every right to rescind those violations because of what?

-Oh, because the willful violation stand for, like-- There's a legal standard that they follow, that they have to meet certain requirements.

And it's something lawyers and stuff get very involved in.

And the OSHA, Nevada's attorney, did tell lawmakers that as soon as they looked at the file that sort of had the thing, that they recognized it immediately and said, This is not up to standard.

And so the federal OSHA kind of justified that.

And it's very technical in nature and stuff.

It's something that I think a lot of-- -Technicalities, I imagine, and exact language and what fits into that.

-And that matters a lot when it comes to situations like this.

-Okay.

So then the Nevada lawmakers who met following news of federal OSHA getting involved, will this decision from federal OSHA ease any of their concerns?

-You know, I don't think so.

I mean, even the attorney for the Nevada OSHA told the lawmakers that, Hey, I based my justification for rescinding this fine based off of what was in the paperwork that was filed.

But that doesn't encompass the entirety of the investigation.

There may be things that didn't get filed.

It could have been a paperwork issue rather than a actual violation.

She kind of left the door open to say, like, you know, this is a sort of technical issue that was addressed, that we addressed.

But that doesn't mean that the larger issues aren't still there.

And though this is focused on that one incident involving the firefighters, there are other injuries and other concerns with that related to workplace safety.

There was a crushing incident involving sort of a new, like an intern, I believe, who was sort of new to the industry.

Obviously, very dangerous situation there when you're dealing with huge construction equipment.

That's the boring tunnels and things.

But also with environmental protection and stuff.

So we're talking about a history that has hundreds of citations for environmental, and that's not hyperbole.

That's, I think, ProPublica had reported over a year ago that it was up nearly 800 citations related to the environmental concerns.

So it's an ongoing issue.

-What about the ability of The Boring Company to get a meeting with someone in the governor's office within a matter of days?

Is that typical for companies who have OSHA violations against them?

Are they able to have that access?

-You know, that's one of the questions that Assembly Member Howard Watts, who really led the charge in questioning some of the state administrators about this, he wanted to ask the governor that.

The governor's office declined to go to that legislative hearings, so they did not answer those questions.

But that was one of his questions was what-- or, Do you extend this to everybody who has a potential OSHA violation, or is this reserved for that?

And there's been a lot of reporting about how The Boring Company CEO, the person that he called in the governor's office was not the governor himself, but it was a director at the time who had previously worked for Tesla, which is, of course, also connected to Elon Musk and those sort of companies.

So there is some questions about, you know, favoritism there for certain companies.

-So the governor did not show up.

Did he say why?

And has he responded to allegations from Democrats that he's giving favors to big companies like Elon Musk's.

-He hasn't addressed that issue.

He did address the reporting about the meeting and the sort of suggestion that he may have had a role in that.

His chief of staff wrote a letter to the lawmakers declining the invite to their meeting and said that, We've already explained this, that all we did was facilitate a meeting between a company and administrators, and that's it.

That's nothing.

We've already explained this, this is fine, and that they sort of alleged no wrongdoing in terms of they say they've had no pressure on terms of telling OSHA and what to do, and all that they were was just a facilitator.

-Okay.

So the governor did not show up to that meeting.

Did anyone from The Boring Company?

-The Boring Company also did not show up to the meeting, much to the frustration and anger of the lawmakers that were there.

They also sent a sort of prepared statement to that where they offered-- They offered lawmakers tours of The Boring Companies, which offended Assembly Member Watts.

And he told me after the meeting that they need to not offer us tours; they need to offer us answers to these questions.

So they are frustrated with their lack of transparency about this whole thing.

-Okay.

And then Senator Fabian Donate said, quote, To what extent are we sacrificing our workers and our communities at the expense of our taxpayers to subsidize or support a company without essential oversight?

That was at that meeting, and it made me think, what is he talking about with taxpayer money?

There's no taxpayer money involved in this project.

-Yeah.

There is to-- It's not to the same level of something like Allegiant Stadium or the baseball stadium that's currently underway, but there is a relationship there.

The current tunnels that exist, about four miles of them, are all under the Convention Center, which, of course, operated by the Las Vegas Visitor Convention and Visitors Authority.

And they do have a financial and sort of relationship partnership with The Boring Company.

And they've also, aside from having stations at the Convention Center, they have also been huge cheerleaders of this.

I mean, you have directors of the LVCVA saying that this is a transformative project that's going to change the entire valley, and this is the future of Las Vegas.

So they're very big champions of that, which I think is what Donate is criticizing there.

It's not just a financial relationship; it is also just how much, how in bed do we want to be with this company when they have hundreds of outstanding violations and things like that going on?

-And the LVCVA was at this interim legislative meeting to defend, is that an accurate word, defend The Boring Company?

-Basically, they did.

You know, they, the director that appeared there said that, Hey, we have talked to Boring about this.

LVCVA said, We are going to take a more proactive approach to all of this and that though we don't have any legal responsibility for that--they were very clear on that front, you know, This is a Boring Company's construction--but we are going to, because we care so much, are going to be involved in sort of doing our own oversight and working with that.

So they, they've said-- They've tried to calm down the concerns and say that, Hey, Boring is on board.

They know they need to improve upon their safety.

We also want that, and we're all on the same page.

-Lastly, Elon Musk owns The Boring Company and has said what about environmental violations in the past?

-Yeah.

There's a quote that floated around.

It's on YouTube.

It's a-- It's a-- It's out there.

He, Elon Musk, has said that he has been very critical of environmental protection process.

So I think the quote goes something like, We always have to ask for permission to do everything.

And that system is faulty, and I don't think it should work like that.

I think it should, we should be able to do what we want.

And if we mess something up, then we'll pay a fine, we'll fix it, but don't let me ask for permission first, which I think for lawmakers is very troubling, because they don't want these violations and these safety concerns to be just the cost of doing business in Nevada.

They want upfront transparency.

They want to follow the law and then reduce any sort of incidents.

-April Corbin Girnus of Nevada Current, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.

-We move now to health news.