Tesla ordered to pay $1.5 million after dumpster-diving DA snoops find hazardous waste – By Ethan Baron (Mercury News) / Feb 2, 2024
Auditors to snoop in trash, too
Tesla was ordered Thursday to pay $1.5 million in fines after undercover investigators found it was illegally dumping hazardous waste into trash containers at its Fremont electric car factory and auto service centers around the state.
District Attorneys for eight Bay Area counties, along with 17 other California DAs, sued Tesla on Tuesday, alleging it was breaking health and safety laws by disposing of oils, cleaners, lead-acid batteries, solvents and electronic waste in trash containers at its service centers, and by treating potentially toxic welding splatter, paint mixing cups and contaminated debris similarly at the Fremont plant.
On Thursday, as part of a settlement between the company and the DAs’ offices, a Stanislaus County Superior Court judge ordered Tesla to pay $1.3 million in penalties and $200,000 to reimburse investigation costs — a tiny fraction of the company’s $97 billion in revenue last year.
How did investigators from the DAs’ offices — first in San Francisco, then in Alameda and six other counties — find the hazardous waste? By snooping through Tesla’s garbage bins, according to a news release from the Monterey County DA’s office.
