Ok, so sounds like Tesla got the necessary legal provisions.
> What it did not do, explicitly, was grant Tesla the right to use public or private property for wastewater conveyance.
I'm confused, does Tesla have the right to dump water or not? I would assume that this is exactly what a permit is for?
> The drainage district that manages the ditch the pipe was discharging into was never notified that the permit existed
This should be on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; they issued the permit, so it should be on them to notify the affected area.
> Tesla also argues that the Eurofins sampling methodology was inappropriate, because the lab placed its sampling equipment in the ditch downstream of the outfall pipe rather than at the outfall itself. The permit requires monitoring at the outfall point, and the company has pointed out that ditch samples can pick up contaminants from sources that have nothing to do with Tesla’s wastewater.
As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.
If you have a permit to dump wastewater into a river, you are not allowed to dump your wastewater wherever in that river's basin on the assumption that it will eventually flow into the river. You are supposed to use a pipeline for wastewater transfer.
They need to get it to a body of water, not a ditch. Dumping into the drainage ditch or running a pipe in the drainage ditch requires a separate permit.
The water quality is also questionable. Tesla and the drainage company are at odds on the testing method.
At least that’s my understanding of the situation
> As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.
That's some top notch weasel wording right there. If sampling from the ditch reveals contaminants that are not natural to the area but are the same contaminants that are measured from the output of the pipe, then a natural question could be "are the contaminants leaking from upstream and leaching into the ground run off into the ditch?" which would still be a Tesla problem.
My guess is this is a question of overlapping jurisdictions. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is presumably responsible for water quality, and so gets a say on what kinds of discharge in the state are safe. The drainage district has to manage the actual ditches and water on the ground, so they get a say (or at least notice) of new users of their infrastructure.
Just like how the DOT gets to create rules about locomotives but Railways still get to decide who can run trains on their tracks.
Fun fact, in 2005, as of Texas Railroad Commission no longer has anything to do with railroads and moved that oversight to the DoT. The TRC now is only involved with oil&gas. It is one of my favorite dumb things about Texas. Why not just rename the group and eliminate the TRC altogether, oh right, politics.
What I'd like to know is what "treated" means here and whether the pollutants measured in the water are in compliance of that definition.
After all, the problem that there is an important fishing area downstream does not go away, whether there is a permit or not. So in my understanding, the whole reason why the permit could be issued in the first place was the assurance that the water was treated enough to not be a danger to downstream consumers. But pitch black fluid with questionable analysis results doesn't exactly seem like that.
> As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.
Technically yes, but I think it's somewhat unlikely that there just happens to be a chromium/arsenic/lithium/strontium deposit somewhere along the length of the ditch that would re-pollute Tesla's pristine wastewater and make the readings look bad.
Or at least, the question whether there are any potential other sources for the substances should be easy to answer, by looking at a map or sending someone to check the ditch for any other unexpected pipes.
> Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around.
> Strontium at 1.17 mg/L. Mazloum’s technical report on the findings noted that long-term exposure can affect bone density and kidney function in humans and wildlife.
Some of the elements of note that were detected. These are all well above background levels. The point about not measuring at the outfall is valid, but probably not relevant. Unless we think there are other lithium and hex sources nearby.
The real crime is that a permit was issued at all and that it was not so comprehensive. But that's the beauty of Texas - their citizens love this kind of thing.
What other sources would have similar pollutants to a Lithium factory? It seems pretty specific and if there was some other obvious source why wouldn't Tesla point that out?
In my opinion there isn't enough information to blame anyone for the slightly-above-drinking-water levels of hexavalent chromium. The drainage ditch goes along a highway and a rail line, so pollution could come from all kinds of places.
But I agree, measuring at the end of the ditch was the wrong thing to do if they take issue with that specific factory (though it was the right thing to do to prove a harmful pollution exists in general)
So another measurement directly at the pipe would be in order.
One is an amount of arsenic that is a quarter of what's allowed in drinking water. So technically, someone dumping drinking water in the ditch could contaminate this measurement.
The other is hexavalent chromium, which is 4% higher than allowed. According to wikipedia that is "indeed one of the more widely used heavy metals in various sectors and industries (metallurgy, chemicals, textiles, etc.) with particular involvement in the metal coating sector" and used in the production of all kinds of dyes, paints, plastics, etc. It can also be formed by welding stainless steel, and is found in drinking water ... that doesn't sound very specific to me.
I don't know where that ditch is, but on google maps the Tesla lithum plant is right next to a place storing drilling equipment outdoors. Runoff from any kind of industry nearby could end up in that ditch. After all, collecting runoff is what ditches are there for
Sure. What ditches aren't for, and vary greatly wrt, is discharging all inputs out to sea or or a large body of water for "sufficient" dilution.
Ditches can be sealed (concrete lined, with a membrane underneath) or, say, just dirt.
Dirt ditches with a long run filter .. heavier particles drop out, weeds and other organics grab onto various compounds, etc. Those things that filter out and layer into a ditch and can then concentrate over time (subject to terms and conditions).
A reasonable question, that should be asked of any industrial area, is whether dirt ditches, leaky pipes, the whole deal, are accumulating toxins over a decade or more ... and what the impact and remediation plan is for that.
Worst case, ditch line concentrates leach down into a water table close enough to an extraction pump that goes to water food or be drunk by people. (Or later in time earthworks for housing kick up a dust layer that just happens to be mostly "20 years of bad ju-ju")
Not insurmountable, something to be wary of, these things have happened.
The permit is a license to pollute, but go on:
>> ...and the company has pointed out that ditch samples can pick up contaminants from sources that have nothing to do with Tesla’s wastewater.
Downstream, others are picking up contaminants from a source that has nothing to do with them.
> As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.
OK, lovely, glad that's settled.
NEXT!
* Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around.
* Arsenic at 0.0025 mg/L. That is below the federal drinking water standard of 0.01 mg/L, but present.
The hexavalent chromium is also just barely above the California drinking water standard [1]
[1] https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/drinking_water/certlic/drinki...
That is well below the noise floor. Like the similarly toxic selenium, arsenic is an essential micronutrient in animal biology. It is possible to be deficient in arsenic, though rare in practice. Natural background levels are far higher in many locales with no adverse effects.
I often see trace quantities of arsenic trotted out by the popular media for scaremongering purposes. Examples like the above are an immediate red flag.
Also, just in general debate terms, the one who makes a claim is the one who has the burden of substantiating it.
For example, we can hardly "dilute" CFCs or CO2 any more than we did, by putting them into a whopping 5.15×10^18 kg of the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Yet both still cause bad things, because there's no (sufficient) process to break them down or move them to a safe state.
"The solution to pollution is dilution, except when accumulation is a violation upon creation"?
It said the permit is for up to a certain amount of water per day. If you're at the volume limit there's no way to dilute by just adding more water.
The ECU turns on the secondary air system and enriches the fuel mixture so the exhaust temperature goes up, heating the catalytic converter rapidly. Catalytic converters must be hot to work, so getting them hot quickly is important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_air_injection
EDIT: OP drove an older truck. In earlier days, the extra air injection into the exhaust was to provide some air for the secondary exhaust gasses to fully burn. It had to be done early in the exhaust where the exhaust gases are hot.
I'm sure that people of a certain bent will eat your comment up but that's just not true.
Air pumps were for catalyst efficiency. The old ones needed extra oxygen molecules floating around for the big stuff (hydrocarbons) to oxidize with until the catalyst was up to operating temp and working at peak-ish efficiency.
Emissions have been measured by mass rather than concentration since 1972. So like yeah it "could've been done" but standards before that were light enough that they could just screw with other things that add $0 to the BOM to clean it up enough to pass.
My experience comes from driving and working on a 1988 GMC 6000 truck with an anemic 350 small block with a Muncie SM465 behind it. There was no catalytic converter, only a muffler. It featured not one, but two air pumps, each feeding a set of pipes that led to metal tubes which entered the exhaust manifold opposite each exhaust port. Another odd thing about that truck was it had a choke lever, something I thought was long gone by 1988, and was a pain to start in the winter.
Perhaps other vehicles had a cat but this truck certainly did not.
Catalytic converters were required on most vehicles starting in 1975 in the US and the requirement was expanded to cover all vehicles in the early 80s.
Your truck was modified by someone.
Well, FWIW the air pumps still can -help- with unburnt fuel...
It's not as good as a Cat for emissions but it's better than nothing, so they actually started being used before Cats; they just are used different now.
Sounds like someone swapped a 70s-80s engine from a lighter application in.
I don't think that truck would've had manual choke from the factory. Lots of stuff could've happened over the years.
The amount of air your engine breathes is monumental compared to what the smog pump moves. The math of dilution just doesn't work. What does work is pissing a light stream of oxygen (remember, not much of that coming out of the engine, especially on warm up while it runs rich) to help the catalyst burn those hydrocarbons off of itself a wee bit faster.
I'm not sure if an 80s gas MDT would've had cats from the factory.
Along the same lines then as other emissions equipment that reduced fuel economy but achieved the ppm criteria in the exhaust. Yes, let's address pollution by burning more fuel.
Arsenic and hexavalent chromium are both naturally occurring substances in low quantities. You can pull uncontaminated water out of the ground in remote locations and detect low levels of arsenic and hexavalent chromium.
That hexavalent chromium number would be just barely about California's strict limit for drinking water, but it's 1/10th of the EPA's limit.
Test wells for the region in question have had arsenic levels several times that being discussed here for years. In fact, the water district started failing Federal arsenic standards last summer[0] and has received three formal violation notices.
They were nearly in violation a year before the lithium plant even opened. At least in terms of arsenic, the levels coming out of the plant are significantly lower than background.
[0] https://www.kristv.com/running-dry/ncwcid-3-gets-third-arsen...
more about PG&E contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_groundwater_contaminat...
Strontium at 1.17 mg/L
That seems like a misprint? Strontium is a fission byproduct. And that seems like a high amount if that's milligrams per liter.
I think it is used in small quantities for industrial applications like welding, which seems a more likely source here.
The entire article doesn't show particularly concerning findings and the protests read more like nimbyism than environmental concern. Industrial processes have some non-zero level of impact and complaining when someone runs one that's not very polluting at all is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or it's just an attempt to outsource all the pollution to china, which is fine for many things (I'd rather they were polluted than us) but not critical minerals.
While natural strontium (which is mostly the isotope strontium-88) is stable, the synthetic strontium-90 is radioactive and is one of the most dangerous components of nuclear fallout, as strontium is absorbed by the body in a similar manner to calcium. Natural stable strontium is not hazardous to health at low levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium
I guess I didn't realize that strontium had a stable naturally-occuring isotope.
I include bismuth as stable even though technically it is radioactive with an extraordinarily long half life.
Nuclear fission reactions tend to result in the daughter nuclei being considerably smaller than the mother nucleus--like a 70/30 or 60/40 split, which means that the fission products of uranium are firmly in the range of elements that have stable isotopes. (Although due to larger elements being richer in neutrons, most fission products have too many neutrons, hence undergo radioactive decay themselves).
what's more, i'm not finding a reason that tesla would need hexavalent chromium in battery production, which leads me to speculate that this is waste from one of their other car factories where they presumably have a hexavalent chrome line (it's a cheaper and more robust process than trivalent chrome) and they are mixing/discharging on purpose at the limit at this plant.
The US regulatory standards are terrible. https://www.loudounwater.org/information-hexavalent-chromium...
The actual limits are orders of magnitude lower. Educate yourself.
> just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L.
> just barely above the California drinking water standard
I ... just can't even say anything to this.
How about when it enters the food chain and starts to accumulate? Will the elements say that "we're under legal limits, and accumulate slowly, so we will act nice and don't poison the organism we're in?"
Love that way of thinking.
I also agree that emissions should be tighter, but the location question is more interesting, because we can also choose where emissions happen.
For example, we might choose them to happen near cities/factories so the products are close to where they're used. We've mostly stopped doing that since the industrial revolution for pretty good reasons though. We could place them in the pristine landscapes not otherwise used by humans, like national parks. That's unpopular for hopefully obvious reasons. We could place them in sparsely inhabited deserts abroad, as Europeans did [0], before we collectively decided colonialism was a bad thing.
And lastly, we could place them in figurative deserts away from conservation land and people like monoculture farmland, but then we get to your question.
So, what's left? What are you suggesting as a better alternative?
That's the definition of law. As long as it is legal it won't be charged.
Is there an alternative?
> Love that way of thinking.
I mean.. yeah, kinda'? We live in a society made up of laws, that's kind of the premise. So if we don't think something is fine, we can make it illegal (and we often do).
It's a pretty good way of thinking methinks, what's your alternative?
I don't care to argue semantics, just pointing out your reply was as hollow as your criticism to the person saying legal doesn't mean safe. It's a pretty reasonable thing to draw attention to methinks...
It might be news to you, but the laws don't dictate what's fine, and what isn't.
Aside from things like slavery being legal and homosexuality being illegal in the past, I'll note that it's perfectly legal for you to drink bleach, but it wouldn't really be fine for you to do that.
(I hope we can agree that advising people to do something "fine" isn't rude, but telling someone to go drink bleach would be) .
> So if we don't think something is fine, we can make it illegal (and we often do).
So, to boot, "it's fine as long as it's legal" doesn't apply to those things, youthinks.
Also, "we" is a peculiar pronoun that needs a lot of expansion, considering that the "we" negatively affected by "not fine" things isn't the same "we" that benefits from them, and it's the latter "we" that has direct influence on legislation.
Some interesting terms to read up on include "negative externality" and "corruption" (assuming youreads).
>It's a pretty good way of thinking methinks, what's your alternative?
If we turn to historical examples, the French Revolution certainly provides an example for alternative ways to resolve disparities between what's legal and what's fine.
There are plenty of others, but that question wasn't asked in good faith, methinks, and so doesn't deserve a more in-depth answer.
We live in a much, much cleaner world than we did 50 years ago. Legislation and environmental rules have worked. There are some areas where it could obviously be better, but also some areas where regulation is too strict (blocking housing, renewables, transit) and the system is evolving to address those.
I think the loss of local media has made it harder for misdeeds to come to light, but I don't want to throw up my hands and cede everything to commercial interests et al.
> We live in a much, much cleaner world than we did 50 years ago. Legislation and environmental rules have worked.
I think prevention of pollution is one area where very tight regulation is absolutely needed, and this seems to be an argument for that.
Of course regulation can be weaponized and used as a tool to serve entrenched interests as well - but this is then more a problem with the overall political system. Also, I think a proof that this is the case is necessary instead of assuming it by default.
I guess as a contrived example your breath releases 40k PPM Co2. Have you tried aiming for no pollution?
The reality is we make things which involve pollutants, which we create laws to govern the safe disposal of. Engineers optimise for these constraints the same way you do. You wouldn’t have one k8s pod per request to ‘strive to keep the response times as low as possible’.
Are you actually suggesting that we rely on the good will of a for profit corp? When has that ever worked?
or unsustainably: e.g.: PFAS. For bonus points you can do internal research and hide the reports detailing the effects accurately.
These are pretty much the only two concerning contaminants. Everything else in the report is just fear-mongering, like the BS about manganese.
There is lead in dirt!
I find it kinda worrying that so much of the legal weight of this case doesn't seem to be about the untreated wastewater discharge at all but only about the detail that they used a county-owned ditch to do so.
So if Tesla had dug their own ditch or built the pipe all the way to Petronila Creek, the discharge would have been no problem?
(Well, that's not completely true as the additional pollutants aren't covered by the permit either - but without the ditch issue, probably no one would have commissioned an analysis of the water?)
What an awful character. I am thankful I don't have to deceive or tell half-truths for a paycheck. The dispute is that they are discharging things not listed in the permit, and their response is that they don't exceed the limits of the things that are listed in the permit.
I also fault the government employee who submits a sample for testing from a lithium plant and doesn't check a box "test for lithium".
I read the whole article and I don’t really understand what is being criticized, if not manufacturing itself. Do people think it’s possible to make a massive battery factory with zero industrial waste water output? Or do they think factories should only be in poor countries where they won’t have to think about them? If batteries stopped existing most people would be very unhappy, why be unwilling to pay the full cost of those substantial benefits?
If the Texas regulators are asleep at the wheel then be mad at them. Businesses are guided by laws, but there’s no allegation any laws were broken. I’m no Tesla partisan but this just feels like mindless ragebait.
you can get mad at tesla for dumping wastewater with stuff they dont have a permit for, and you can be mad at the regulators failing to regulate.
Industrial waste is called such for a reason.
Which is why you shouldn't dump it in a river used for fishing? (Or any river for that matter)
well, except for the hexavalent chromium and arsenic findings. but yeah, more testing is needed, and the article is premature.
However dirty you think the sausage factory is it's worse.
Americans should carefully watch what happens to these workers and their county in the coming months. Beyond that, they should ask who is still keeping an eye on polluters in 2026.
Are permits issued loudly usually?
not sure if that is the standard in texas or not.
> Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around. Arsenic at 0.0025 mg/L. That is below the federal drinking water standard of 0.01 mg/L, but present. Strontium at 1.17 mg/L. Mazloum’s technical report on the findings noted that long-term exposure can affect bone density and kidney function in humans and wildlife. Lithium and vanadium at concentrations Lazarte’s letter described as abnormally high relative to rainwater or normal groundwater. Elevated levels of manganese, iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and potassium consistent with industrial discharge. Manganese, a battery process tracer, can have neurological effects at chronic doses. Excess phosphorus can cause algae blooms that strip oxygen from waterways. Ammonia in the form of nitrogen at 1.68 mg/L, amplifying the algae bloom risk.
None of these are violating the permit.
Ultimately, I view this as a values question: Is it permissible to manufacture in the US or not?
Also the fact that this pipe was not included in the permit is a problem:
> What it did not do, explicitly, was grant Tesla the right to use public or private property for wastewater conveyance. The drainage district that manages the ditch the pipe was discharging into was never notified that the permit existed. Its workers found out the way drainage district workers in any small Texas county find out about things: by walking the ditch and seeing something new.
The article then proceeds to explain how they did all kinds of non-standard tests and still found nothing above the federal drinking water standard nor in violation of the permit. Yes Tesla is still evil and responsible because supposedly some nearby town is having a drought and people are "running out of water."
Shit like this and we wonder why the US is dependent on China for all rare earths.
"None of those facts are in dipsute. [However,] what [the facts] mean is [under dispute]."
>Notably, no party has alleged that Tesla is in violation of any law. TCEQ [(Texas Commission on Environmental Quality)] has not found one. Tesla is operating under a permit the state agency issued. The dispute, instead, is about what the permit was supposed to cover, and what got left out of it.
And also
> What [the permit] did not do, explicitly, was grant Tesla the right to use public or private property for wastewater conveyance. The drainage district that manages the ditch the pipe was discharging into was never notified that the permit existed. Its workers found out the way drainage district workers in any small Texas county find out about things: by walking the ditch and seeing something new.
i made no comment on whether the laws, as written, are appropriate or not.
231000 gallons is 1000 cubic meters, ie a 10 metre cube.
Perhaps the number of olympic size swimming pools of a standardized depth may be more useful. Perhaps the number of 3m deep Olympic sized swimming pools or gas/oil storage tanks.
> Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around.
> Arsenic at 0.0025 mg/L. That is below the federal drinking water standard of 0.01 mg/L, but present.
> Strontium at 1.17 mg/L. Mazloum’s technical report on the findings noted that long-term exposure can affect bone density and kidney function in humans and wildlife.
> Lithium and vanadium at concentrations Lazarte’s letter described as abnormally high relative to rainwater or normal groundwater.
> Elevated levels of manganese, iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and potassium consistent with industrial discharge. Manganese, a battery process tracer, can have neurological effects at chronic doses. Excess phosphorus can cause algae blooms that strip oxygen from waterways.
> Ammonia in the form of nitrogen at 1.68 mg/L, amplifying the algae bloom risk.
Strip away the sensationalism, and it just doesn't seem like much? None of these levels seem to be high enough to impair health. The 1.68ppm of ammonia would likely contribute to algae growth, but not majorly, especially if properly diluted. Home aquariums regularly run between 0 and 0.25ppm of NH3 without major issues, so as long as this is diluted 6x it shouldn't impact things.
I hate elon as much as the next guy, and they should have disposed of the water properly, but it doesn't seem to be anything like them running their unpermitted power plants in Memphis.
> in streams it averages about 1 μg/L, and in groundwaters it is generally 100 μg/L
Seems like it's no more polluted than normal water. Somewhere in between groundwater and streams.
I dug up the actual results instead of an article about and article about an article talking about the lab results, they're here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28055380-j2673-1-uds...
That earlier link is to the method they used for detection.
I honor your refusal to presume guilt and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Surprised pikachu.
PS: 99% of these keyboard warriors couldnt create 0.1% of what Musk and his companies have done for EVs,space, manufacturing, internet access .AI etc
The US is probably going to need to make another pass at how we're going to do that without creating polluted wastelands and super fund sites.
This could be bad or it could not, but I simply can't take anything seriously that uses ambiguous terms so linked to woo.
:facepalm:
If you're fear-mongering, then at least take care to fear-monger correctly. From the numbers they report, it seems like Tesla is doing a good job with wastewater treatment.
Edit: clarification for people who are not chemists, it should be the other way around: "Nitrogen in the form of ammonia".
That doesn't matter under a communist dictatorship, but in more civilized countries people don't want it in their backyard.
privatize the profits
socialize the costs
He does this with EVERY business, the tunnel stuff, the space launches, everything
How do you think he is almost the first TRILLIONAIRE which should not even be a thing
If you spent a dollar PER SECOND it would take 12 days to reach a MILLION
Dollar per second takes 32 YEARS to reach a BILLION
Dollar per second takes 32 THOUSAND YEARS to reach a TRILLION
We win political points for globalism, we win political points for lower cost goods, then we win political points by virtue signaling about the environment! So convenient.
Not saying that it was intentional, but we should not point fingers.
This is what all those pennies earned them: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
> was happy the chinese were doing [pollution far from me] for a penny
He’s talking about outsourcing/pollution economics, not rhat Chinese people are inferior .. not every inelegant sentence needs to be turned into a civil rights case .. [insert clown emoji here]
Exxon Valdez anyone?
Or how about clean air... who needs that?
The alternative is burning and refining fossil fuels.
Louisiana has a large section of land referred to as "cancer alley". It's called that due to the released toxins from oil refining (most likely benzene).
The lithium extracted today will end up circulating in the supply chain for decades. Unlike the fossil fuels refined today which are burned tomorrow, fully releasing all their toxins.
Now, it could be cleaner. There's really no reason they couldn't distill the waste water and then reuse it.
The best world would be significantly lessening the need for cars but electric is a clear win over gas.