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Foxconn Will Take 7M Gallons of Water per Day from Lake Michigan to Make LCDs
- julienfr112 8y agoDoes anyone know why so much water is used to manufacture LCDs ? And why can't it be in close circuit, like using an aero refrigerant tower like the ones of nuclear plants ?
- shagie 8y agoWashing and polishing the glass prior to attaching the polarization plate. Washing the product to remove toxic compounds from the surfaces is where there is a bit of concern. https://phys.org/news/2014-12-toxic-effects-chemicals-tft-lcd-aquatic.html https://phys.org/news/2014-12-toxic-effects-chemicals-tft-lc...
- djsumdog 8y agoWhich is why that water has to be evaporated, so the toxic solids can be put in a landfill?
- analog31 8y agoCosts more, plain and simple. The state offered a generous subsidy and agreed to relax a variety of environmental regulations in order to attract Foxconn. Meeting those regulations would simply have been a financial tradeoff for the business. The water has to be particulate-free for glass polishing. A particle the size of the wavelength of light leaves a visible scratch. I've worked with an optical polishing shop, and a lot of water is consumed just washing everything from one stage to the next. From what I've read, LCD production is a dirty industry.
- sschueller 8y ago4.2M Gallons will be treated and returned to the lake basin.
- isostatic 8y agoThe rest gets evaporated
- DougN7 8y agoWhich of course means it will return as rain somewhere. I guess I don’t see what all the controversy is about.
- eesmith 8y agoIt's a perceived lack of adherence to the Great Lakes Compact, which specifies how to manage the Great Lakes Basin's water supply. Regulation of water withdrawal appears to be important as otherwise I don't see why the states would have gone through the effort of putting the regulations into place.
- maxerickson 8y agoMaintaining control over withdrawal is important. I'm not sure the people complaining care about characterizing the actual impact though, there's a branch of conservation that reflexively opposes almost everything. One of the Slashdot comments points out that billions of gallons can evaporate from the lake naturally in a day. Moving some of that to land near the lake seems like a low risk to me.
- eesmith 8y ago"there's a branch of conservation that reflexively opposes almost everything." Sure. There's also a branch of business which says to screw the long-term environment health and environment consequences for short-term gains. That these exist doesn't mean that either viewpoint has relevancy for what's going on here.
- kelnos 8y agoSure. 5M gallons is a rounding error to Lake Michigan (total is a bit over 10^15 gallons). The 800k gallons that end up evaporated and aren't returned is a rounding error to a rounding error.
- ryanworl 8y agoFor reference, Lake Michigan has 1.3e15 gallons of water.
- danesparza 8y agoFor the scientific notationally challenged, that's 1,300,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. Incredibly, 7M gallons of water a day is a rounding error for lake Michigan. I don't mean to minimize the impact this factory might have -- I just mean to emphasize the incredible amount of water Lake Michigan has.
- froindt 8y agoI find gallons to be an unintuitive unit of measure, so I like to convert to cubic feet because it gives a better visual sense of the volume. 7M gallons is 935,800 ft^3. This would fill a football field 19.5 feet high. If you made that into a cube, it would be 97.8 ft per edge. If you convert to a flow rate, that's 10.83 ft^3/second.
- Y_Y 8y agoI find gallon and cubic feet to be on the same level hogsheads and cubic cubits in terms of applicability and usage. There's no trouble visualising a volume unit like a litre, particularly if you're used to working with such quantities. It is tough visualising unit that have no traction outside of one metrically-solopsist region though. Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian, Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different grounds in some cases. Not a great unit.
- majewsky 8y agoIs there some standard system of bullshit units that are notoriously underdefined and only used in shitty science/engineering documentaries? Here in Germany, commonly used bullshit units include "soccer field" for area or "VW Golf" for mass.
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- tomrod 8y agoCool. I bet it will be quite the feat of mid-scale engineering. So, less than 3 Olympic sized pools at 2.5 MM gallons.
- djsumdog 8y agoOriginal article: https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-day-f-1825624659 https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-...
- rascul 8y agoHere is the article linked to by Slashdot: https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-day-f-1825624659 https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-... The article by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: https://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4513 https://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4513 According to the DNR article, the non consumed water will be returned: > As part of the diversion approval, the city of Racine must ensure that the diverted water is returned to Lake Michigan minus consumptive use such as evaporation. The water returned to Lake Michigan will be treated at the Racine Wastewater Treatment Plant to meet all applicable state and federal water quality discharge standards. Any industrial customers, such as Foxconn, will work with the City of Racine to meet pretreatment requirements for wastewater. It's not immediately clear how much of that water will be returned, but at least it won't be consuming 7M gallons daily. I'm not sure what impacts this might have, and neither article really goes into it.
- nikanj 8y agoPermanently removing water in those quantities is basically impossible. The energy costs from electrolysis or evaporation would be staggering.
- rascul 8y agoConsuming is what I meant. I have edited the post to make that correction.
- xienze 8y ago> It's not immediately clear how much of that water will be returned, but at least it won't be consuming 7M gallons daily. Even if they did, Lake Michigan is estimated to contain one quadrillion gallons of water. Foxconn will have long ceased to exist by the time anyone even notices the water is missing.
- rascul 8y agoHow long would it take to notice, say, an inch decrease? Or whatever other small unit if it's not measurable to an inch.
- alex_young 8y agoBetter source that doesn't break the back button: https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-day-f-1825624659 https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-...
- HenryBemis 8y agoI (almost) always try to make positive/helpful comments in this forum. But reading (again) about these "complaints" the below comes to mind: ...<title of Lake Michigan article>, while at the same time, somewhere else on this planet (perhaps China?) many factories do the exact same thing, and since it hasn't caused noise, very few think about it. And at the same time people in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, rest-of-Asia (countries that don't host such factories), go on in their day looking at their smartphone screens, reading news about Lake Michigan.
- icebraining 8y agoBut who is complaining?
- tw04 8y agoAnd why on earth should someone in - The Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, rest-of-Asia care if China wastes their OWN water? China can do whatever they want with their own natural resources. As long as they aren't actively harming other nations, it's their prerogative. So yes.. of COURSE people in the US are going to care when a Chinese company comes to the US and starts wasting our natural, shared resources while at the same time not caring at all when China wastes their own shared natural resources. I'm not sure why that would seem odd or confuse you in the least. In other news: Lots of people are pissed that the current US president is removing protections on national monuments. Same people don't bat an eye when Xi Jinping refuses to create national monuments in China. The sky is blue. Water is wet.
- sqidyyy 8y agoEven if we assume the treated water wont return to the lake basin. Would still need 508,806 years to drain. Are there any other dangerous side-effects or why is this a thing? Enlighten me please.
- eesmith 8y agoWhat is the effect of one bee sting? A minor pain and a bit of swelling. What is the effect of 10,000 bee stings? What's at issue is the perceived violation of the Great Lakes Compact. That is, the Foxconn side says they went through the proper procedures while those opposed argue that it uses a false front to make it seem like a legitimate use of lake water. If this is judged to be legitimate then what will likely happen is about 10-20 years of companies using this method to get access to lake water, while a new compact is eventually put into place to disallow it.
- dashundchen 8y agoI would say the real story here is the absolute giveaway this deal is to Foxconn. The subsidy given to a giant corporation is now past $4 billion, to a company with revenue in the range of $140 billion. Specific exemptions are being cut to allow the company to not produce an environmental impact statement for any emissions or pollutants discharged. It's clear Scott Walker and co want to set a precedent for future deals. This sort of corporate coziness between a mega corporation and a state not only is unfair to other businesses not getting the tax deal, but unfair to the citizens who had these regulations enacted. Additionally the Great Lakes have a legacy of industrial pollution we're only starting to recover from. It's hard to understate how dead these lakes were and still are in many places. Tributary rivers once regularly caught on fire from pollutants sitting on the surface. Hundreds of thousands of acres surrounding the lakes are contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs, radioactive waste - uninhabitable without extreme treatment. These lakes are 1/5th of the world's fresh water. This stemmed not just from the era of no pollution regulation, but even during the EPA era, there was an unwillingness for the government to enforce regulations on the big polluters and employers. Of course when the factories close and the full extent of pollution comes to public light, the companies who made the profit often have merged or evaporated beyond responsibility, leaving taxpayers on the hook with poisoned land and water. Do you think the politicians making this deal will have any incentive to follow up and take action if Foxconn does start exceeding their already relaxed permitted emissions? http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/broader-relaxation-of-environmental-rules-seen-coming-from-foxconn/article_2192c025-2984-5713-9463-7b4092e1dd09.html http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/bro...
- josefresco 8y agoThis is a great example of why the US doesn't want manufacturing "back" even if they/we could have it. Both because this example isn't that big of a deal (but yet, has created controversy), and because if this was a big deal Americans simply would not tolerate the pollution, in exchange for the manufacturing jobs.
- wil421 8y agoAs other posters pointed out this is less than 3 Olympic sized swimming pools. They will also return less than 2 Olympic sized pools back to the lake.
- josefresco 8y agoExactly, and there's "outrage". Imagine if it was 100 Olympic size swimming pools... The American public can't handle the biproducts of modern manufacturing.
- shifter 8y agoThere are multiple "American publics". The outrage machine will not like it, you are correct, but take a drive through Nevada or West Virginia and you'll see folks used to such side effects.
- josefresco 8y agoTrue, I shouldn't make the assumption that "the public" is one thing, or another in absolute terms. However, I wouldn't call it an "outrage machine" just because people are concerned about pollution/misuse of natural resources.
- shifter 8y agoClarification: the outrage machine does exist as a phenomenon in American politics. It's real. I agree that stewardship of the environment is very important.
- toblender 8y agoWill they put it back? I mean I can't imagine them holding 7 million gallons of water per day for very long before they run out of storage space. My guess is that they will process stuff with the water, then filter and send the water back into the lake.
- madshiva 8y ago7M gallons mean 26,5 M Litres in non retard units. There's too much water wasted. No matter what big is the michigan lake. PS: Thanks for the downvote.
- _blaise_ 8y agoLake levels are near record high currently, and causing massive amounts of erosion all along the coastline. It's actually quite interesting to watch houses, dunes, roads and other structures fall into the lake as nature does what it does. [0] Removing a few million gallons a day isn't going to hurt the the lake that much. [0] http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/continued-erosion-causes-observation-deck-at-portage-lakefront-and-riverwalk/article_0acf75f7-ba22-5632-ac25-76a7222900de.html http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/continued-erosion-...
- jcrubino 8y agoThe joke going around is: Is that a climate catastrophe or taxable waterfront property?
- originalsimba 8y agoThat's unsustainable.
- tropo 8y agoThis is .000018 inches off of the lake each day. Per year, it is .0066 inches. That is about 1/6 of a millimeter. At that rate, the lake contains 508198 years worth of water. Thinking in terms of human evolution here... that is a decent chunk of time. This supposed problem is all FUD, based on big scary numbers. Somebody has a motive to spread this. For example, a country that wants the industry might encourage opposition in the USA.