Tesla To Pay $1.5 Million Settlement To 25 California Counties Over Mishandling Of Hazardous Waste

Electric automaker Tesla agreed to pay a $1.5 million to 25 California counties during the weekend at the San Joaquin County Superior Court in Stockton,  coming to a settlement agreement over a suit that was only filed a few days before over improperly labeling hazardous waste and sending the materials to dumps that couldn’t accept hazardous material.

According to The People of California v. Tesla, which was filed by the counties of Los Angeles, Butte, Contra Costa, Fresno, Alameda, Marin, Monterey, Orange, Placer, San Joaquin, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Tulare, and Ventura and 21 others from across the state, Tesla had not been properly labeling what kind of waste was being sent to landfills. Some waste had come from facilities that dealt with hazardous waste and were mislabeled. Tesla had also allegedly sent some of this material to landfills that were not equipped to handle such materials.

“Tesla had intentionally disposed of, and intentionally caused the disposal of hazardous waste at points that were not authorized nor appropriately equipped to handle that material,” said the suit.

While Tesla’s many service centers were called out by the suit, the counties said that the main culprit behind the hazardous materials was Tesla’s Fremont plant. The suit also noted many of the hazardous materials involved, including batteries and paint.

With the lawsuit threatening to run into the millions, Tesla decided to instead settle, sending in a settlement offer only 48 hours after the suit was first announced. San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Jayne Lee approved the settlement on Thursday, with the total cost coming to $1.5 million. When broken down, Tesla is to pay $1.3 million in civil penalties, $200,000 to the counties for the cost of the investigation, and complying with an injunction over the next 5 years to make sure that no more of the incidents happen in the future.

“While electric vehicles may benefit the environment, the manufacturing and servicing of these vehicles still generates many harmful waste streams,” said San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins in a statement. “Today’s settlement against Tesla, Inc. serves to provide a cleaner environment for citizens throughout the state by preventing the contamination of our precious natural resources when hazardous waste is mismanaged and unlawfully disposed. We are proud to work with our district attorney partners to enforce California’s environmental laws to ensure these hazardous wastes are handled properly.”

As of Saturday, Tesla has yet to release a statement on the settlement. However, experts noted that the settlement is the latest twist in the company’s complicated relationship with the state. While Tesla has had other lawsuits in the state, have had recent firings, and moved the company’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin in late 2021, Tesla has also placed their new engineering headquarters in California, and even has new factories sprouting up in the state.

“This ultimately isn’t a lot for Tesla,” said San Francisco-based tech lawyer David Singth to the Globe. “It was a very pragmatic move to save money and to not drag it into being a huge negative press sort of deal. Basically they agreed that they’ll pay for their mistake, agree to some overseeing to make sure it doesn’t happen, and generally move on. What this does do is give certain Californian lawmakers another point against Tesla whenever they try and rally against them. You can also bet that the UAW will also try and spin this and say ‘Well if this were a union shop, this wouldn’t have happened.’ The story here is not so much the settlement, but what all the after effects of this will be. And those will come on down the line for years.”