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Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day
- malfist 5mo agoThis is the report from testing the water: > 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.
- delichon 5mo ago> I hate elon as much as the next guy I honor your refusal to presume guilt and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
- malfist 5mo agoIt's mostly just excessive amounts of snark, gets exhausting, wouldn't recommend.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 5mo agoIf I am reading this correctly, the Erin Brockovich hexavalent chromium was detected in Hinkley at levels of 1.2 to 20 ppb (ug/L). Contrasted here with 10.4 ppb (ug/L). Sounds notable to me if they are regularly flooding the zone with this.
- malfist 5mo agoLooking at this: https://www.standardmethods.org/doi/10.2105/SMWW.2882.053 https://www.standardmethods.org/doi/10.2105/SMWW.2882.053: > 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-level-2-report-final-report/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28055380-j2673-1-uds... That earlier link is to the method they used for detection.
- downrightmike 5mo agoAnd if it is just sitting there, it is concentrating
- LightBug1 5mo ago[flagged]
- tredre3 5mo agoYou sound like you're the one in a cult, jumping on the bash wagon without reading what's going on. This is an entire nothing burger. Levels are within limits and they have a permit, it was just not communicated between departments. It's a failure of the Texan democracy, not a failure of Musk.
- porphyra 5mo agoObviously, discharging "dark and murky" polluted water is bad. But some of the figures from the lab report don't seem that terrible: * 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/drinkingwater/Chromium6.html https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/drinking_water/certlic/drinki...
- Waterluvian 5mo agoIf I wanted to fall under that reporting limit, can I just dilute my wastewater a bit more?
- cwal37 5mo agoThe classic pre-EPA slogan comes to mind: "the solution to pollution is dilution".
- munk-a 5mo agoThe dosage makes the poison - but if it sticks around in the body dilution may slightly alleviate effects but at the cost of more widespread buildup. This is out of my field so I'm not certain if that's a concern here.
- Terr_ 5mo agoIn some cases it still is, but we need to emphasize the exceptions, which can be rather serious. 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.
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- youngtaff 5mo agoAnd how long before this gets flagged off HN?
- ck2 5mo ago[flagged]
- dayyan 5mo ago[flagged]
- LightBug1 5mo ago[flagged]
- callamdelaney 5mo ago[flagged]
- superxpro12 5mo agoIm sure the Gulf of Mexico reeeeeeally loved the deep water horizon oil spill. And we cleaned all that up right? We didnt just... dump "dispersants" on it to make it heavier than water so it sank to the bottom, right? Exxon Valdez anyone? Or how about clean air... who needs that?
- nutjob2 5mo agoYes, much better than ICE cars, by any measure.
- cogman10 5mo agoIt really is, particularly because of what it ends up replacing. 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.
- munk-a 5mo agoI'm glad you're so forward thinking. It is a genuinely better alternative to ICE engines for numerous reasons. The best world would be significantly lessening the need for cars but electric is a clear win over gas.
- john_strinlai 5mo agoapparently, despite my thoughts going into this: >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.
- tencentshill 5mo agoAs we all know, laws as written are perfect and just, especially in Texas, especially in relation to the environment. They should stop looking into it at all, really.
- john_strinlai 5mo agothat is a weird extrapolation from my comment. did you mean to reply to someone else? i made no comment on whether the laws, as written, are appropriate or not.
- culi 5mo ago> Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic appears in Tesla’s TCEQ discharge permit as an allowable pollutant. Neither was tested for during TCEQ’s February investigation. 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.
- rdtsc 5mo ago> Quality, the state environmental regulator known as TCEQ, had quietly issued Tesla a wastewater discharge permit on January 15, 2025. Are permits issued loudly usually?
- charles_f 5mo agoYou've put in my head the picture of a jester announcing "hear! Hear! In which thereby the king allowth the forgerer so known as Tesla Mechanical Horses to discharge..."
- john_strinlai 5mo agoi think they just meant "quietly" as in not notifying the Nueces County drainage department that a permit was granted in their area.
- rdtsc 5mo agoThat must be it. I can see if they are normally published or announced publicly somewhere, then it makes sense but if it's not done for other permits then it's sounds like they are implying nefariousness.
- john_strinlai 5mo agomy knowledge is from long ago, but, it would be expected for the state to communicate to the counties/cities about infrastructure permits such as this one. the counties/cities need to ensure their infrastructure planning accounts for everything in the area, regardless of the original permitting authority. not sure if that is the standard in texas or not.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoIt was probably unceremoniously posted on a website somewhere. Letter of the law satisfied.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tencentshill 5mo agoThe article just... ends? "None of those facts are in dispute. What they mean is."
- kridsdale1 5mo agoThe sniper got em just in time.
- john_strinlai 5mo agoit ends. its just ambiguous writing. "None of those facts are in dipsute. [However,] what [the facts] mean is [under dispute]."
- tencentshill 5mo agoAh, I misread it.
- sva_ 5mo agoMaximum tokens reached
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- aeternum 5mo agoA state investigator visited on February 12, sampled the water flowing from Tesla’s outfall pipe, ran the standard panel of conventional pollutants: dissolved solids, chlorides, sulfates, oil and grease, temperature, dissolved oxygen. Everything in that panel came back inside the bounds of Tesla’s permit. TCEQ approved its investigation report on March 20, finding no permit violation. 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.
- cyberax 5mo ago> Ammonia in the form of nitrogen at 1.68 mg/L, amplifying the algae bloom risk. :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".
- ex1fm3ta 5mo ago[flagged]
- tredre3 5mo agoIsn't China great? First we make them produce all our stuff, then we bash them for polluting slightly more than us westerners, who produces nothing. 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.
- otherme123 5mo agoIt is even better: we grew cheaply by polluting freely, even doing absurd things like adding lead to gasoline knowing that lead is toxic. When we got rich, we leveraged that wealth to reduce some pollution, sending the worse industries to the developing countries. Not saying that it was intentional, but we should not point fingers.
- throwaway87410 5mo agoObviously China should reap all the advantages of producing everything while bearing none of the responsibility, how could poor China be ever accountable for anything. Clearly the United States government should get involved to take care of the pollution caused by the Chinese industry, all out American taxpayer's pockets preferably.
- MisterTea 5mo ago> That's why I was happy the chinese were doing it for a penny. This is what all those pennies earned them: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
- SoftTalker 5mo agoI was thinking about exactly that story when I read about this. It's all fine until it happens in your own backyard.
- Aloisius 5mo agoMy eyes glaze over any time an article uses the term "heavy metals" unironically. This could be bad or it could not, but I simply can't take anything seriously that uses ambiguous terms so linked to woo.
- culi 5mo agoThe term is used by the EPA and has legal definitions and weight. But I'm glad you somehow found a way to put yourself above it all
- nutjob2 5mo agoThere is a reason China does so well refining metals like lithium and rare earths: it's difficult, resource intensive and polluting. They have about a 80% global share in lithium processing. That doesn't matter under a communist dictatorship, but in more civilized countries people don't want it in their backyard.
- ninalanyon 5mo agoThere is very little that is communist left in China.
- Sabinus 5mo agoDo you want to be reliant on a communist dictatorship for multiple critical inputs to your economy?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- perrohunter 5mo agowhat a coincidence, all they want to do is report negatively on anything that Tesla touches, I've grown skeptical on all these sort of reports, most likely other refineries have similar or worse track records, but that doesn't fit the narrative right?
- gyanchawdhary 5mo ago[flagged]
- burnerRhodov3 5mo agoyou hit the nail on the head. People have gotten so uptight about literally everything nowadays that we can't even build in this country anymore. It's literally an EV company...
- TheJoeMan 5mo ago[flagged]
- unglaublich 5mo ago(Local) Governments are compliant / bought out to bend to the will of whatever company is providing them with some bucks.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoKinda like when municipalities adopt rules they don't really agree with or think serves their interest because the state says they need to to quality for grant bucks? (and of course the feds to the same to the states) However dirty you think the sausage factory is it's worse.
- BoredPositron 5mo agoThe problem is a new generation of managers who aren't just rewarded for being awful; they're actually proud of it.
- semiquaver 5mo agoHow is that a half truth? If you read the article it’s clear that this discharge is fully permitted and legal. All the substances they portray so shockingly were found at barely detectable levels. 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?
- giarc 5mo agoNot OP but, half truth is here "remains in complete compliance with all requirements of its state-issued wastewater discharge permit" and yet... "Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic appears in Tesla’s TCEQ discharge permit as an allowable pollutant." Both which were found in the waste water. The original test did not test for those, so I guess what the guy was saying was true at a time?
- platevoltage 5mo agoBeing able to afford a US President has its perks.
- pavel_lishin 5mo agoAnyone else remembering Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac"?
- jeffbee 5mo agoFirst thing I thought of, except in this story the outfall seems to have been discovered through the ordinary diligence of government, rather than by a plucky eco-buccaneer.
- xg15 5mo ago> What [the wastewater discharge 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. 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?)
- nine_k 5mo agoCan a big and rich company be fined for some minor technicality? Maybe! If the cost of the attempt is lower than the amount of the possible fine, why not try and find out? This may sound cynical, but this also one of the driving forces that often keep big companies from breaking rules.
- politician 5mo agoI wonder how many gallons of polluted wastewater are discharged per day by overseas refineries. Does anyone know where Tesla stacks up in the global list of lithium refiners?
- Traster 5mo agoTo be honest I'm more worried about the data centres spaceX is powering through gas turbines just sitting in a parking lot.
- downrightmike 5mo agoboth
- something765478 5mo ago> The permit, a Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System authorization known as TPDES, allowed up to 231,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day to be discharged into an unnamed ditch that flows into Petronila Creek and from there into Baffin Bay, a longtime South Texas saltwater fishing destination. 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.
- Braxton1980 5mo agoWould Eurofins be able to set up monitoring on Tesla's property? 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?
- wongarsu 5mo agoThey list 6 pollutants, but only two of them seem relevant to the legality of this. 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
- whimsicalism 5mo agoI'm no lover of Elon Musk but this article reads like a hit piece and I literally laughed when I read the findings: > 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?
- culi 5mo ago> Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic appears in Tesla’s TCEQ discharge permit as an allowable pollutant 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.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoA journalist claiming that some government was never notified of something by some other government does not pass the whiff test. We have no idea what the internal process is for communication between them.
- expedition32 5mo ago
- outside1234 5mo agoTexas is going to be the superfund cleanup state in 20 years that Silicon Valley was in the 1980s from all of the sinning in the 1960s.
- beloch 5mo agoDOGE explicitly made gutting the EPA a top priority, which is probably why drainage workers are making these discoveries and not inspectors. Pretty much any company linked to Musk should be under increased scrutiny now. The trouble is, anyone who performs that scrutiny is likely to face intimidation and "lawfare". 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.
- dzhiurgis 5mo ago[flagged]
- foxglacier 5mo agoGod this is classic journalistic lying with true facts. I read all the way up to the start of Tesla's response and couldn't tell what they had supposedly done wrong. If there's an accusation in there, it's buried in worthless innuendo and bluster. Luis Reyes doesn't seem to understand the problems involved in comparing the value of a continuous quantity to zero - or more likely, he's trying to mislead his readers. Of course any industrial waste will contain some contaminants in higher concentrations than rainwater!! That doesn't mean there's anything wrong.
- clear-octopus 5mo ago[dead]
- AtlasBarfed 5mo agoAlthough I hate Tesla, think the greater issue is that since we're probably going to have to move a lot of material sourcing and industrial plant capacity back to the United States in the coming decades... 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.
- whattodonow 5mo agoNow I think US knows what it meant like building things in the nation, they should consume product and their waste both, enough that east world had all this since last 140 years.
- vfclists 5mo agoTrying to boost numbers by using units people can't picture or comprehend is not very useful. 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.
- mulmen 5mo agoThere's a lot of missing information here. I'm no fan of Tesla and I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing something inappropriate but there's a lot of unanswered questions here. Why wasn't the sample taken at the outfall? That seems like such an obvious thing to do that there must be a reason it wasn't done. Is the outflow accessible? What other facilities exist in the area? This is described as a ditch, not a creek or river, which implies to me that it is artificial. Is this an industrial area with other contamination? > 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. I'm not sure I am parsing this correctly. To the best of my understanding this means it is just above the noise floor? What was the exposure in the Erin Brockovitch case?
- rich_sasha 5mo agoA broader issue is that I understand processing of ores of lithium and rare earth minerals is generating a lot of toxic waste, and that's one of the principal reasons it is not done in the rich Western countries. China doesn't seem to mind as much. There are minable ores in the West also, but not exploited for this reason, among others. It's quite the conundrum. What do you do? Is the energy independence worth the pollution? And is the pollution OK if it affects someone poor far away.
- casey2 5mo agoIn terms of arsnic and sodium hexacloride the water they are dumping is 4x as clean and 10x as clean as required drinking water. If it's black it's probably iron. The problem is the ammonia concentration due to chemical reactions caused by temperature increase after leaving the facility.