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by Yilun Cheng, Houston Chronicle ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This article is co-published 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 challenges with the Boring plan. One of Musk’s claims is likely false, and the others are not yet possible to verify with certainty, according to the newsrooms’ examination. Again, when the newsrooms pressed Musk and Boring representatives to explain the tech billionaire’s claims, they did not respond. Nor did Hunt. Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park is visible from the roof of The Allen, a nearby condominium, in 2023. The bayou is the main waterway running through central Houston. (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle) Would Boring’s tunnels cost less than 10% of alternatives? Musk’s proposal carries a lower price tag than the estimated cost of the larger system the flood control district has spent years and millions of dollars studying. But that’s partly because the two are strikingly different proposals. Hunt’s team has said Boring’s Buffalo Bayou project would cost $760 million, according to internal communications obtained by the newsrooms through public records requests. The county’s flood control district, on the other hand, proposed in 2022 tunnels of 30 to 40 feet in diameter for that segment of the system at a price of about $4.6 billion. Since the project is still in the research phase, the county numbers are preliminary. But based on the figures available, Boring’s proposal would cost closer to one-sixth of the county’s estimate — not less than 10%, as Musk’s post suggested. So Musk seems to be exaggerating how much cheaper his system would be. Flood control experts also maintained that the reduced price is somewhat proportional to the reduced capacity of Boring’s narrower tunnels. Two 12-foot tunnels would provide less than one-fifth of the volume that a single 40-foot tunnel offers. That means they would divert less water from vulnerable areas than one large tunnel. Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental lawyer and flood policy expert, said while Musk’s company deserves a fair hearing, cheaper does not automatically mean better. “If it’s a smaller tunnel, then I would expect it to cost less,” Blackburn said. “You’ve got to look at how much flood mitigation you get for the dollars you spend.” Emily Woodell, a spokesperson for the Harris County Flood Control District, said the agency needs more information before it can weigh in on any of Musk’s claims. “We’d have to do a lot of study before anything could even potentially move forward, so I wouldn’t want to speculate,” she said. “Until we have a project or another study, we’d point people to our website for the reports and data we’ve compiled to date.” Can additional tunnels be built for more water flow? Musk’s post said if more floodwater needs to be moved, more tunnels can be added. Engineers said it is not that simple. Larry Dunbar, a veteran water resources engineer who has advised Houston-area governmental agencies on drainage issues, said based on size alone, it would take about 11 of Boring’s tunnels to carry the same amount of water as one large tunnel. Lined up side by side, with enough room between them to keep the ground stable, the full system could span hundreds of feet. That would require securing rights to more land and building more access points for maintenance, he said. And each new phase of construction might bring another round of reviews and mobilization costs, Dunbar said, undercutting the speed and affordability that Boring has touted as key advantages of its proposal. “The issues start

by Willoughby Mariano, WBUR, with additional reporting by Todd Wallack, WBUR This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WBUR. Sign up for Dispatches to get ProPublica’s stories in your inbox every week. To keep up with the latest Boston news, sign up for WBUR’s morning newsletter. Seventeen years had passed by the time Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to say they had identified the man who allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005. The suspect was now a father of two, a possible serial rapist and likely beyond the reach of the law, investigators told her. Police had taken so long to identify him that they missed the state’s deadline to prosecute her case. In Massachusetts, the law says prosecutors have only 15 years to file charges after an alleged rape. Past that statute of limitations, it’s nearly impossible to bring charges. Still, prosecutors thought they might be able to move this particular case forward on a technicality. Louise was afraid. She had spent years reliving the terror of that night and battling drug use that spun out of control after the attack. At times she failed out of rehab programs or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission and agreed to identify Louise only by her middle name.) By 2022, she was 42, sober, living in her own apartment and raising two school-age sons. She could not slip back into her old ways. But, as the daughter of a Marine veteran, Louise believed she needed to fight: She felt her community would not be safe until her rapist was in prison. “You’ve got to stand for something,” Louise said. Past the 15-year deadline in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony or even confession can give a rape victim a chance at facing an attacker in court. This statute of limitations places Massachusetts behind almost every other state in the country. A review of criminal codes by WBUR and ProPublica found that as many as 47 states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For example, Vermont and Maryland are among a number of states that have no deadline to file charges for rape. Other states like Montana and Texas extend their deadlines when there’s DNA evidence. In many states, Louise’s case could be decided in court on the strength of its evidence. But here, evidence would not matter. The case would be almost impossible to win. Lost Chances (Isabel Seliger for ProPublica) Law enforcement and rape crisis workers across Massachusetts said in interviews that they routinely encounter cases where no charges were filed before the state’s strict deadline. How often rape suspects avoid prosecution as a result is unclear. Massachusetts is unusual in that state victim privacy laws bar police from releasing incident reports of rape to the public. Unless a suspect is charged in court, it’s often difficult to find any official records about a rape. And even when someone is charged, police can still withhold information about what they did — or did not do — to identify and capture a suspected rapist. This makes it all but impossible for anyone outside law enforcement to scrutinize rapes that are past the deadline to prosecute. In order to understand the extent of cases lost to the statute of limitations, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers. Rape crisis center leaders say survivors of sexual assaults that happened many years ago regularly ask whether the criminal legal system can help them. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office, one of the most populous jurisdictions in the state, is based in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime sex crimes prosecutor there said his office reviews several cases each year that it cannot pursue because of the statute of limitations. About two years ago, the Bristol County district attorney’s office identified 21 rapes that it could have prosecuted were it not for the statute of limitations. They came to light when the agency used a federal grant to analyze DNA evidence in rape cases that had not been fully tested when it was first collected. Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn is one of the state’s few prosecutors who has spoken in favor of allowing charges after the deadline in cases with DNA evidence. “This is to rectify a wrong, if you will, or a process that didn’t work,” Quinn told WBUR. “These are serious charges. Women are being raped.” Details of Louise’s case only became public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the unusual step of filing charges even though they had missed the state’s charging deadline. This led to the release of some records about the rape that would otherwise have been shielded by the state’s privacy laws. Those records show that years before the deadline passed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered many of the clues they would later use to identify a suspect, but did not solve the case. Louise: His Name Is Ivan (Isabel Seliger for ProPublica) When she was 25, Louise’s life was starting to fall apart. She worked as a waitress and switchboard operator, and she was experimenting with drugs. In the overnight hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a man she had been friends with demanded payment for drugs he had given her, according to a court record, then coerced her into having sex with a stranger at a hotel to pay off the debt. After 2 a.m., the friend dropped her off in downtown Boston. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or rainn.org. It was raining hard, the trains had stopped running and she wanted a ride to a friend’s house. That’s when she thought she saw a friendly face. The man who drove up to her in a Lexus SUV introduced himself as Ivan and said he knew her from UMass Boston, where