Because the tunnel route runs beneath state-owned roads, The Boring Company has largely sidestepped Nashville's Metro government permitting process. That includes the Metro Council, which passed a nonbinding resolution in March opposing the project. Regulatory authority instead rests with the state of Tennessee, but it remains unclear what, if anything, state officials are doing to exercise it.

This year, the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly approved the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Act, creating the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority. The body, composed of appointees from Gov. Bill Lee, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, is charged with resolving disputes, hearing appeals, and "exercising the powers necessary to facilitate the construction, operation, and maintenance of a transit project."

Yet the authority is not fully constituted. A state website listing board members shows a blank section for Sexton's appointments. A spokesperson for the speaker's office confirmed that Sexton has not yet made them.

Among the members already seated is former state Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro). When recently asked by the Tennessee Lookout whether he believed concrete barriers would prevent flooding in the tunnel, Ketron was candid: "They say that they will, but I don't think I want to be one of the first ones riding through it."

Safety and environmental concerns have shadowed the project since it was announced in 2025. The Boring Company has characterized the tunnel as "amazingly safe" and released its own assessment last year claiming no environmental concerns. But a recent report from the Southern Environmental Law Center found that construction could lead to sinkholes and groundwater contamination.

Trey Bussey, senior attorney at SELC, said the company's initial assessment failed to address key challenges, including results from geotechnical boring sampling.

"The Boring Company has not disclosed its plans for dealing with these risks," Bussey said. "We don't know what they would do if the tunneling machine gets stuck under Mill Creek. We don't know what they will do if they run into a lot of contaminated soil or groundwater. How are they going to treat that groundwater? What if it starts to flow in all new directions? I don't think The Boring Company has disclosed a lot of information that's essential for the public to analyze the risks of this project, particularly to public resources."

Bussey added that the lack of independent review is troubling and atypical. "The Woodland Avenue bike lane has been held up in [National Environmental Policy Act] review and litigation over years," he said. "Much smaller projects receive a whole lot more scrutiny than this one did."

District 6 Metro Councilmember Clay Capp echoed those concerns. "It's quite simply a backdoor deal between the richest man in the world and the state government," Capp said.

The Boring Company has repeatedly declined to engage with reporters. The company has not responded to more than a dozen requests for comment since the project was announced. At a February meeting, company leaders made their sole public appearance before the Metro Council. There, Vice President Davis Buss said the company prefers using blog posts — published every two months — and "personal and small group meetings" as methods of communication rather than interviews with media or formal appearances.

Those blog posts are not subject to any external checks. In its most recent post, The Boring Company claimed to have hosted "numerous site tours for residents, business owners, students, community leaders, elected officials, and regulatory agencies." The company did not respond to a request for a site tour in August. The post also claims the company has "engaged with more than 275 community, educational, nonprofit and professional organizations and participated in over 160 volunteer events across Middle Tennessee," without providing details on which organizations. It further claims to have responded to more than 220 inquiries submitted to nashville@boringcompany.com — none of which, according to the Scene, have been responses to its reporters.

The pattern is not new. The Boring Company's tunnel project in Las Vegas has faced similar transparency barriers, worker safety concerns, and criticisms related to efficiency, according to reporting by ProPublica and SFGATE.

For Nashvillians, the stakes are concrete: a massive transportation system is being built beneath their city, and the public has little independent information about how it will be constructed, what risks it poses to groundwater and infrastructure, or who will be accountable if something goes wrong. With state oversight still incomplete and the company's preferred mode of communication being unverified blog posts, those questions remain unanswered.