FLOODSElon Musk Pushed Back on Our Reporting on His Houston Tunnels Plan. Experts Say His Comments Are Misleading.
Elon Musk is taking issue with a recent investition by the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom that raised questions about a flood tunnel project he’s pitching to address Houston’s chronic flooding woes. But experts said his response, which he did not explain to the newsrooms, isn’t supported by facts or data.
ProPublica co-published this article with the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.
Billionaire Elon Musk is taking issue with a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom that raised questions about a flood tunnel project he’s pitching to address Houston’s chronic flooding woes. But experts said his response, which he did not explain to the newsrooms, isn’t supported by facts or data.
Last month, the newsrooms reported that Musk’s tunneling company, The Boring Co., has been lobbying elected officials for months to allow it to build tunnels under Houston for flood mitigation. Boring has proposed digging two 12-foot-wide tunnels beneath Buffalo Bayou — the main waterway running through central Houston — to carry stormwater out of neighborhoods and toward the Gulf of Mexico during major storms. Experts say, however, that larger tunnels, closer to 30 to 40 feet in diameter, could carry far more water and be more effective.
Musk and representatives with Boring did not respond to interview requests or answer questions the newsrooms sent in advance of last month’s story about whether Boring’s smaller tunnels would be able to handle the scale of floodwater Houston is likely to encounter in the future.
Instead, Musk waited until hours after the story published to post a response on X, the social media company he’s owned since 2022.
“Boring Company tunnels will work and cost <10% of alternatives,” his Aug. 28 post read. “If more flow is needed, additional tunnels can be built and furthermore they can be route water from many parts of the city, not just one.”
The post was written in response to a post on X from U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican who helped arrange private meetings with government officials in Harris County and across the state to sell them on Boring’s flood tunnel plan. Hunt also did not respond to questions from the newsrooms ahead of publication of the original story, but he weighed in on X after the story was published.
“A lifelong Houstonian and Texas Congressman spoke to the smartest man on planet earth about solving a generational flooding issue in our city that no one else will fix,” Hunt wrote.
Musk’s post offered no data or engineering explanation to back up his assertions. So the newsrooms examined his statements, comparing them against flood studies, and interviewed engineering experts, some of whom pointed out key technical and logistical
