Elon Musk asserted last week that before any US federal employee can retire, their paper records have to be processed more than 200 feet underground in an old limestone mine located in rural Pennsylvania, which he said often takes months. “And then the speed—the limiting factor is the speed—at which the mine-shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government,” Musk said, standing next to a seated President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. “And the elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire—doesn’t that sound crazy?”
While Musk’s comment about elevator dependency is overstated—the mine has many entrances and exits, as well as a road leading in and out that golf carts and other vehicles can drive on—his general point about inefficiencies within the federal retirement process is true. The Office of Personnel Management, which functions as the human resources department of the US government, tells retirees to expect a three- to five-month wait to process their applications. And retirement paperwork for federal employees does route through a storage facility in a repurposed limestone mine in rural Boyers, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.
When the system at Boyers was first established decades ago, putting retiree archives and processing files under one roof that was both remote and secure made a lot of sense. But over time, a systematic lack of resources, combined with repeated failed attempts to automate and digitize, created the “sinkhole of bureaucracy” that is the federal retirement hub today.
Six years ago, the Government Accountability Office reported that the OPM’s retirement system was still plagued by a “continuing reliance on paper-based applications and manual processing.” The agency’s average retirement file processing time was about 60 days in 2019, which is only a modest decrease from 1981, when it took 98 days, but the agency processed almost twice as many applications.
But David Carmicheal, who recently retired as state archivist of Pennsylvania and has corresponded with staff at the Boyers facility, tells WIRED it’s a mistake to only view OPM’s process as “woefully outdated.”
“Much of the work that goes on at Boyers, as I understand it, is digital, so the idea of people trundling piles of paper through dark mine shafts is absurd,” Carmicheal says. “In fact, these facilities are meant to protect you and me by protecting the records that safeguard our legal rights, our public benefits.”
When reached for comment, the Government Accountability Office referred WIRED to its most recent publications. The Office of Personnel Management did not respond to a request for comment.
Going Underground
The Civil Service Commission, the predecessor of the OPM, started mailing retirement files to Boyers in 1960 with the intent to archive them “forever.” The CSC was one of many agencies that took advantage of repurposed mines and caves during the Cold War, seeking enhanced protection for sensitive materials in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.
The Boyers mine was operational from 1902 to roughly 1959 under the helm of US Steel. When high operating costs and dwindling demand for limestone caused the business to decline in the 1950s, US Steel employee Larry Yont saw an opportunity to repurpose the site as a storage facility and, with the help of civil engineer and mine superintendent Russell Mitchell, went on to found National Underground Storage. It was later bought by the company Iron Mountain in 1998, which owns and leases the Boyers mine to this day.
Along with the Civil Service Commission, other federal agencies, including the National Archives, the Office of Civil Defense (the precursor to the Federal Emergency Management Agency), and the Social Security Administration began storing records in the Boyers facility around the same time. J. G. Franz, then office manager of the Boyers mine, told a newspaper reporter in 1966 that federal agencies have “backup equipment for everything” stored in a special area of Boyers to protect the records in the event of nuclear fallout.
Franz told a local newspaper that workers “hope we will never have to worry about a nuclear explosion,” but that if one happened, the mine would be safely sealed off, according to newspaper archives reviewed by WIRED. “The mine is equipped with a 30-day supply of food and supplies for all of the employees.”
At the time, the staff at Boyers were reportedly able to process about 600 pounds of records each day bussed to the facility straight from Washington, DC. They relied on the recently constructed interstate highway system for timely deliveries. In fact, the federal government built an exit off Pennsylvania’s Interstate 80 specifically for “quick access to the mine in case of an emergency,” according to an article in the Pittsburgh Press.
There are other practical benefits that make old mines a good place to store records. For one, their typically rural and secluded settings create a layer of natural security from other types of threats. Repurposed mines provide “excellent fire protection,” and immunity from events like “flood, theft, civil disorder, aircraft crashes, tornadoes, lightning,” noted a 1999 Iron Mountain presentation for the National Archives.
Carmichael tells WIRED that access to the underground facilities he’s visited tend to be tightly controlled, often through heavily guarded entrances. These facilities also frequently have maze-like designs that would likely discourage or confuse thieves if they somehow got inside.
Several current managers of repurposed limestone mines told WIRED that their caves are naturally between 55 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, optimal temperature for most storage situations. John Smith, director of industrial real estate for the company that manages the limestone storage facility Carefree Industrial Park near Kansas City, Missouri, said that this means utility costs are “dramatically lower” compared to above-ground facilities. His main expenses are associated with ventilation, since caves tend to be very humid.
It All Goes Wrong
Shortly before the Civil Service Commission arrived at Boyers, the US federal retirement apparatus was a mess. A 1951 government report found that “an adequate record system” wasn’t even in place yet and urged Congress to “insist” one be created. At first, it seemed like the team at Boyers was able to turn things around. The News-Herald reported in 1966 that with just 55 employees, the system at the mine was operating “with the same efficiency and effectiveness as it used to in Washington, DC.”
However, as the number of retirees continued to climb, things fell into disarray. By the early 1980s, the Office of Personnel Management was being audited to find the root causes of excessive delays in processing retirement claims. In 1981, the Government Accountability Office recommended that OPM “develop a long-term plan for automating the retirement claims process.”
OPM tried to launch an automated system in 1987, only to shut it down in 1996 when it failed an independent review. It began planning a new system, but gave up in 2001 and decided to contract the work out. The contracts weren’t awarded until 2006. The system they eventually built, RetireEZ, was finally launched in 2008, but it too was promptly shut down due to “quality issues.”
Little progress was made until 2013, when OPM launched a new “strategic vision” for a totally “paperless system.” Around that time, the agency was able to partially digitize the retirement process, allowing retirees to receive 80 percent of their pension quickly. But to get the full value, physical files still had to go through Boyers, according to a 2014 feature story in The Washington Post.
By 2019, the Government Accountability Office reported that OPM didn’t have enough money to finish digitizing. The agency was then piloting what it called the Electronic Retirement Record system, which was supposed to replace hard copies altogether. As part of the improvements, OPM was also trying to fix “inconsistent data between electronic and paper records,” according to the Government Accountability Office. Boyers workers would sometimes have to track down the physical copies of records by navigating through what had become essentially a small city of shelves and files, or type up other files that weren’t digitized.
Despite all of these efforts, the OPM still hasn’t finished digitizing the retirement process. It’s been a decade since the agency updated its internal guide for processing retirement applications. The Government Accountability Office attributed the slow pace of progress to “the continuing reliance on paper-based applications and manual processing,” lack of staffing, and OPM frequently receiving incomplete submissions.
Musk and DOGE have defunded and started to hollow out a slew of government agencies. While the centibillionaire has identified Boyers as a prime example of government inefficiency, he hasn’t described a clear vision for fixing the retirement system.
Despite their shortcomings, Carmicheal tells WIRED that it’s important to remember why government bureaucracies and record-keeping systems were set up in the first place. “I’m just thankful that we have had a long history in this country of governments that care about protecting their citizens,” Carmichael says, “and that includes safeguarding the records that document our rights and the responsibility of governments toward us.”
