Twenty-five counties in California have sued Tesla, saying that the car company has regularly messed up with hazardous waste at facilities across the state. It seems that settlement talks that had been going on for months fell through.
Tesla is being sued in San Joaquin County Superior Court for mislabeling and getting rid of things like “lead acid batteries and other batteries,” paints, brake fluid, aerosols, antifreeze, acetone, diesel fuel, and more at its factories and service centers across the state. Tesla is also said to have thrown away the trash in the wrong way, both on-site and at sites that can’t handle hazardous waste.
The DAs in each county are asking for both civil fines and an injunction to make Tesla properly handle the waste at the facilities going forward. Reuters was the first to report on the suit. They say Tesla could be fined up to $70,000 per violation per day.
In a 2022 statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla first said that it was being looked into by district attorneys from all over California over how it handled waste. The business said it “had taken a number of corrective actions, such as training, audits, and improvements to its site waste management programs.”
The company said in October 2023 that it was in deal talks with those district attorney offices. According to the lawsuit, those talks stopped without a deal being made. The investigation was led by the San Francisco and San Joaquin District Attorney’s offices. When asked what happened to the settlement talks, they did not answer right away.
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Tesla’s work in California has been looked at in the past to see how it affects the environment. In 2019, the company paid the Environmental Protection Agency a settlement for a number of violations at its plant in Fremont, California. One of the violations was not labeling hazardous waste. A $31,000 fine and a $55,000 layout were given to cover the cost of first responders’ emergency tools. It was also fined $275,000 by the Clean Air Act in 2022 for breaking the law at the same plant.
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