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This article is published in collaboration with the Houston Chronicle and the Texas Newsroom as part of an initiative to report on how power is exercised in Texas.
Billionaire Elon Musk has been having trouble with a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the Texas Newsroom, raising questions about the flood tunneling project he is pitching to deal with the misery of Houston’s chronic flooding. However, experts said his response, which he did not explain to the newsroom, was not supported by facts or data.
Last month, the newsroom reported that the boring company, Musk’s tunnel company, was lobbying elected officials for several months to allow tunnels to be built under Houston to alleviate flood mitigation. Bowling proposes to dig two 12-foot wide tunnels under the Buffalo Bayou, the main waterway running through Central Houston, carrying rainwater from its neighbourhood and towards the Gulf of Mexico during the major storm. However, experts say large tunnels close to 30-40 feet in diameter can carry much more water and can be more effective.
Musk and bowling representatives did not respond to interview requests or questions sent by the newsroom about whether the newsroom sent last month about whether a small tunnel could handle the scale of the flood scale is likely to be encountered in the future.
Instead, Musk waited hours after the story was published to post a response to X, a social media company that it owns since 2022.
“The boring company tunnels work and cost less than 10% of the alternative,” his August 28th post read. “If we want more flow, we can build additional tunnels and, in addition, we can route water from many parts of the city, not just one.”
The post was written in response to an X’s post from Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican, to sell on his Bowling Flood Tunnel Plan, helping to arrange personal meetings with government officials across Harris County and state. Hunt also did not respond to questions from the newsroom prior to the release of the original story, but after the story was released he was heavier on X.
“Lifetime Houston and Texas House members spoke to the smartest man on the planet about solving the generational flood problem in our city that no one else has fixed,” Hunt wrote.
Musk’s post provided no data or engineering explanations to support his claims. So the newsroom looked into his statements, compared them to flood research and interviewed engineering experts. Some pointed to important technical and logistical challenges in boring planning.
According to newsroom exams, one of the mask’s claims is likely to be wrong, while the others are still not yet reliable to verify.
Again, when the newsroom pressed masks and boring representatives to explain the tech billionaire’s claims, they didn’t respond. We didn’t even hunt.
Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park is visible from the roof of Allen, a nearby apartment complex in 2023. The Bayou is the main waterway running through central Houston. Credit: Kirkside/Houston Chronicle
Do bowling tunnels cost less than 10% of the alternative?
The mask proposal has a price tag that is lower than the estimated costs of large systems that flood control districts have studied over the years. But that’s because the two are surprisingly different suggestions.
Hunt’s team said the Bowling Buffalo Bayou project would cost $760 million, according to internal communications obtained by the newsroom through a request for public records.
Meanwhile, the county’s flood control district was proposed in 2022 in a tunnel 30-40 feet in diameter for that segment of the system at a price of around $4.6 billion.
The number of counties is preliminary as the project is still in the research phase. However, based on available figures, as Musk’s post suggested, Boring’s proposal costs more than 10% as it approaches a sixth of the county’s estimate. Therefore, the mask appears to exaggerate how cheap his system will be.
Flood management experts also argued that the price reduction was somewhat proportional to the decline in capacity of the narrow tunnels of boredom. Two 12-foot tunnels offer less than a fifth of the volume a single 40-foot tunnel offers.
This means that they divert less water from areas that are more vulnerable than one large tunnel.
Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and flood policy expert in Houston, said the mask company deserves a fair hearing, but the cheaper it doesn’t automatically improve.
“If it’s a small tunnel, I would expect it to be cheaper,” Blackburn said. “You have to see how much flood mitigation you get for the dollars you spend.”
Emily Woodell, a spokesman for the Harris County Flood Management District, said the agency needs more information before considering any of Musk’s claims.
“We don’t want to speculate because we have to do a lot of research before we can move forward with anything,” she said. “We’ll turn people to the website for reports and data we’ve compiled so far, until we have a project or another investigation.”
Can additional tunnels be built for more water flow?
The mask’s post said that more tunnels could be added if more floods were needed to be moved. The engineer said it wasn’t that simple.
Larry Dunbar, a veteran water resources engineer who advised Houston-area government agencies on drainage issues, said that by size alone, it would take about 11 boring tunnels to carry the same amount of water as one large tunnel. They are lined up side by side, with enough rooms to stabilize the ground, and the entire system can range in the hundreds of feet. That requires ensuring rights on more land and building more access points for maintenance, he said.
And with each new phase of construction, there could be another round of review and mobilization costs, Dunbar said boredom has reduced the speed and affordability it advertised as an important benefit of the proposal.
“The problems start to get more and more complicated,” Dunbar said. “It’s not that we can’t do that, but just to throw it out there – “Oh, if we need more, we just do more” – well, there’s more. ”
Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey, who has an engineering background, agreed. More tunnels also mean keeping more equipment, which reduces long-term costs, Ramsey said.
He added that all system elements, such as pumps, drains and drains, can be properly designed as the county needs to decide on a full plan first.
“It wouldn’t be easy to just add a tunnel later,” Ramsey said.
John Blunt, a former Harris County engineer who retired over 30 years later, similarly rejected the Mask proposal that boredom could build more tunnels if it lacks initial plans.
While working on other infrastructure projects, Blount said he first met many contractors who could build tunnels large enough to properly handle the work.
“You start small and don’t realize it later,” he said. “This whole concept of entering 20% of what you need to make sure it’s sufficient or not is not zero.”
The Buffalo Bayou, running through the heart of Houston, will be flooded after Hurricane Beryl landed on July 8, 2024.
Can a bowling tunnel move water from other parts of the city? Does the tunnel work?
Musk claimed that bowling tunnels could be used not only in the Buffalo Bayou but also in various parts of the city.
Some local officials agreed that mask tunnels could actually work better because of the small basin that doesn’t have as much water as the Buffalo Bayou.
Ramsey said he is helping to explore small tunnels for areas such as hunting and Halls Bios. The county commissioner called for a closer look at the narrow tunnel at a committee court meeting in April after Hunt cast him on a bowling proposal in February.
“It’s another tool in the toolbox that helps reduce flooding, and certainly with what’s happening in the hill country,” Ramsey said.
Woodell told the newsroom in August, along with the flood management district, that it initially focused on large-caliber tunnels as engineering research identified them as the most effective option for the county-wide system.
However, she said smaller tunnels could be a viable solution in certain areas. He added that the idea was not the focus of research, so more research would be needed before such projects move forward.
Colleen Gilbert, executive director of the Greens Bayou Union, is a nonprofit organization that works to protect a neighborhood near Greens Bayou in northeastern Houston. They would welcome the massive storm tunnel once proposed by Harris County, she said, but even smaller tunnels would be better than nothing.
“You’ll be excited to see all the possibilities,” Gilbert said. “If Rep. Hunt and Boring Co. are watching this, we’re happy to hear it.”
However, the experts and officials interviewed by the newsrooms still face problems with Musk’s drastic statement that “a boring company tunnel works” because they don’t take into account the complexity of the project, or because success depends heavily on the type of system the county ultimately wants.
It spread among local officials in the county in a two-page memo sent to Hunt’s team in February.
“We are confident in our ability to successfully execute this project,” writes Jim Fitzgerald, global business development director at Bowling.
However, Dunbar said the only way to evaluate masks’ claims is to focus on the purpose of the stormwater tunnel.
Dunbar said that if the goal is to build the largest possible project at the lowest price, the bowling proposal could fit the bill. However, if the goal is to protect lives and property from another Hurricane Harvey level flood event, he believes that small projects simply don’t measure.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company is not monitoring tunnels under Las Vegas
“You have to have some underlying reason for why you built this tunnel, what you’re trying to achieve,” Dunbar said. “And I haven’t heard Elon gave that answer.”
Retired Lock Owens of Harris County Environmental Affairs, representing agencies, including the Flood Control District, said he saw local officials repeatedly lit greenery on large projects led by poorly thought out and costly, legal battles.
He pointed out the issue of flood control along the White Oak Bayou in northwest Houston, for example. In a long legal battle that began in 1999, around 400 homeowners in the area denounced the county for approving upstream development without proper flood control.
The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 2016 in the county’s favor, but Owens said even the failed lawsuit was expensive and there was a kind of challenge that could have exposed the county to a substantial damages award.
Owens said that musk’s quick movements and the spirit of worrying about the outcomes that follow only increases risk.
“It works well in the private sector, but not in the public sector,” he said. “We don’t see Mr. Musk’s personal wealth. We see the life and lifelong investments of the people who live here.”
Yilun Cheng is an investigative reporter for the Houston Chronicle. I’ll reach her [email protected].
Lauren McGoy of the Texas Newsroom contributed the report.
