Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

malfist

This 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.

porphyra

Obviously, 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/drinki...

youngtaff

And how long before this gets flagged off HN?

john_strinlai

apparently, 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.

rdtsc

> 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?

tencentshill

The article just... ends? "None of those facts are in dispute. What they mean is."

aeternum

A 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

> 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

Lithium production produce lots of toxic material. That's why I was happy the chinese were doing it for a penny. Of course driving carbon neutral but releasing tons of poison in the nature is a questionnable equation.

Aloisius

My 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.

nutjob2

There 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.

perrohunter

what 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?

platevoltage

Being able to afford a US President has its perks.

pavel_lishin

Anyone else remembering Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac"?

xg15

> 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?)

politician

I 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

To be honest I'm more worried about the data centres spaceX is powering through gas turbines just sitting in a parking lot.

something765478

> 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.

whimsicalism

I'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?

outside1234

Texas 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.