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.
If the discharge permit is a good thing or a bad thing for the environment is another topic. But right now this seems to be the only legal issue in the room, right?
At least one that implicates Tesla. The people that permitted them to discharge and didn’t include relevant pollutant values in said discharge are
having a bad dayenjoying their private yacht.Plug pipe.
Wait nearby for repair crew & arrest them.
Repeat.
I think that the crew shouldn’t be held accountable and are victims themselves. So they should be treated with kindness. But in light of this case of course that is more likely to happen than seeing any real consequences for people in charge.
Don’t even wait for the drainage district to do it. What’s Tesla going to do, sue you for blocking their illegal dumping?
Deregulated Red Run Oblast problems. “Ain’t shit gonna happen to the dirty neo-Nazi.”
Don’t hold the multi trillionaire accountable tho
Let’s charge them a comically small fine, that’ll teach them not to do it again!
$5
This is what motherfickers do when there’s no consequences for breaking the law
If our government isn’t up to holding criminals responsible, then it needs to be replaced root to stem.
Is there a reputable source for that or is autonocion some sort of reputable news outlet?
Texas Tribune is pretty reputable:
I couldn’t find any analysis of autonotion, but they link to a local TV station’s site KRIS TV which does have a decent reputation
Click the link. In the first paragraph it links to a kristv (msnbc?) article. Has photo and video in that article as well. Too many people here comment without reading…
I clicked it and the site didn’t seem reputable. And I don’t know msnbc.
Dude u live under a rock then. MSNBC is one of the big 3 up there with CNN and fox in terms of size and recognition. I worry what news outlets you DO know, probably just the Tesla newsletter from the sounds of it. Not to mention is easier than ever to Google the title and get 6 other sources. Your either a shill or incredibly ignorant and incompetent, although I suppose likely both.
I am not an American. I don’t watch American television.
Me neither. And I knew it when I was 14 years of age. Which was a long time ago. If You know fox then you (should) know MSNBC.
So… because you don’t know MSNBC you’ve decided it’s a conspiracy theory?
We are so doomed I give up
No?
Found the Musk shill.
1 I don’t know 2 it is not
All msm controlled by corporations. They stop tahkiing when they told
Guess this is a conspiratory theory then or in support of one.
Google the headline. USAtoday, Texas Tribune, and Insideclimatenews are a couple on the first page. It seems wild to just shrug off something as conspiracy without even checking unless ones own bias is the culprit.
Why bother with expensive waste disposing process when you can just dump it somewhere.
We towed it outside the environment
It’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment… all there is out there is sea, birds, fish, and 20,000 tons of crude oil.
Externalities make the capitalism go round
Why no photo?
Seems like a photo of a pipe dislodging black sludge next to a photo of a tesla factory in a news page would instill a better sense of “evil corporation” to me.Said pipe:
For some reason I was expecting it to be fully submerged underground at least until the ditch
That’s comically evil, except it’s not funny.
I like this take. More shit needs to be not funny.
At a rate of like 2 and a half gallons of that sludge a second.
This article links to another article that has it on video and photographed. You can see the clearly black liquid flowing into the clear water in the drainage ditch. Helps to click the link and read the article!
I did and expected to find an image in the article. See, had I posted this on lemmy, I’d have posted an article closer to the source, with the photos. I assumed others would do the same. I assume too much, sorry.
Yea I’d rather have something closer to the source as well but maybe they don’t wanna give MSNBC the traffic as readily 🤷
I know a fun game with Elon Musk and a funnel
Ah, the good old Swedish Drink.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone accidentally crushed that pipe shut with a trackhoe.
Then it goes completely uncontrolled into the ground and is very hard to remove. What you want to do is to seal the pipe so the back flow happens inside the facility (assuming they didn’t completely butcher the pipe installation, which… you know… isn’t safe to assume)
They probably have backflow preventers
Then just build a second pipe directing it right back into their lobby.
That, I can get behind
pipe shut with a trackhoe
I ran crosscountry in high school.
I’d love to be hating on a company dumping wastewater as much as the next person but looking at the lab report results and the latest available public drinking water report (2024) for Robstown, where the factory is located. Assuming they use that water as the factory source water. These articles are blowing the water quality findings out of porportion. Arsenic was found at a higher level in the drinking water, than what the discharge water measured, for instances. Plus hexavalent chormium was 4 tenthousands higher then the limit, I wish the lab included there equipment accuracy. And that’s the 5mins I’m willing to spend on this research.
OK,
I’m guessing that someone as bright and enlightened as you has heard about the Tolerance Paradox
Or, you could be acting in bad faith
This guy red 30% of article only, dont listen to him
Idgaf if the battery plant’s illegal discharge pipe is outputting pure potable springwater, it is an illegal discharge pipe.
Thanks a lot for sharing/linking this information! Adding more context to the article is very good. I would have assumed that the article would link to such reports. I definetly need to read through this.
Your reports are interesting…but unless I missed it (I did skim fairly quickly), I’d be curious to see what the data looked like before the plant went up.
That would be an interesting comparision. I know what you mean, but just for the sake of clarity when people read this, those arent my reports. Just the public data I could locate.
Yeah, so what’s the black stuff and why is the grass dying then? I guess they just need to expand what they’re testing for.
Or conduct an inspection of the plant itself and find out what they’re using, and where that pipe goes.
Nothing in the lab report. Everything in the lab report is far to low to be ‘black stuff’. So I don’t know and those who do are not talking.
So far I have to go with this is nothing but haters trying to yell without concern for facts. If we get more details I may change my mind but for now this is nothing and anyone saying otherwise should be embarrassed for their lack of concern for facts.
It’s still an illegal discharge. There are multiple things listed that are not good for the local environment. Even phosphorus and ammonia can be damaging by stimulating algae blooms.
It’s not though. TCEQ authorized a discharge water permit and has investigated the water discharge. Now, if people are being dishonest, that’s another story, that will likley be somthing we find out some years in the future. Your not wrong about algae blooms. Though, the lab didnt sample the water straight from the discharge source but further down the ditch. And thats all farmland around there. Farms use ammonia nitrate, as fertilizer.
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.
Good point.
What it did not do, explicitly, was grant Tesla the right to use public or private property for wastewater conveyance.
Oh wow the state of Texas authorized it? Well in that case I’m sure it’s fine! They’re renowned for their environmental safety and concern.
I should be more clear. I’m not saying there is no need to investigate further. Just that some of the reported findings seem overblown in the article’s I’ve read, in my opinion. There needs to be more information to answer your question. “Why is the grass dying?” Who knows, toxic chemical, or just water logged grass. Black looking water coming from a black pipe? Maybe it’s treated water and safe, maybe it’s not. Needs more information. I’m kind blown away that the lab didnt collect water at the discharge point.
Absolutely nobody gives a fuck.
Crime scene, blood everywhere, factory owner should be charged for every pollutant found in a 10km radius on the assumption it came through that pipe at some point and we’ll walk it backwards from there.
Well that’s definitely an opinion.
A lot of people get off on hating musk, they only really want an excuse at this point. Like the very upvoted comment ‘I don’t care if it’s outputting pure spring water’.
Nobody would care about this at all if it was any other company. ‘Company erodes county owned ditch without proper permit with water that would meet drinking water standards if you dilute it by half’. But people enjoy getting mad at musk so it gets clicks and upvotes. And of course this and every other comment that isn’t saying musk should be hanged for this will be downvoted because nuance is dead.
He’s a literal Nazi. There are less appropriate people to hate.
exactly the type of missing the point that I was talking about
And of course nuance is dead and if you’re not jerking off in the circlejerk you must support musk and everything he has ever done.
I just wish the musk circlejerk stayed in /c/enough_musk_spam. I’m not obsessed with him so I don’t care about his texas drainage permits any more than anyone else’s county drainage permits.
Have you not seen the Fifth Element? It’s the same black ooze that drips off Guiliani.
Pure refined evil.
Hahaha. Such a good movie.
In a college environmental class, I chose as a project to measure the groundwater contamination upstream and downstream of a poultry processing facility. To my amazement and disappointment, the water downstream was way cleaner.
Who is going to drink the forbidden juice? At least it will cure your depression.
RFK Jr’s new miracle elixir…
Probably Joe Rogan.
Hopefully it’s fatal
Forever
“Well, technically, if you are dead, you are not depressed”
— (probably) Walter Freeman, neurologist, inventor of the lobotomy
Plug that pipe with Elon’s bloated corpse
No don’t kill him first.
Sure he’s not dead? He’s already been a bloated decomposing body for years.
Seriously. The dudes thorax looks like he’s had extra organs installed ‘just in case’.
He needs two livers to process all the research chems he probably stacks every day.
So, which entry-level employee with no ability to be responsible for this will be fired, and how big will the fine they won’t have to pay be?
Aabout tree fiddy
Companies don’t make structural mistakes. They are famously individualistic and unorganized and all illegal acts are by lone wolves and bad apples. All good work is done by CEO or the board. The rest of the individuals are parasites
/s in case someone needs
Per the article:
The sample was collected on April 7. Eurofins issued its results on April 10. According to the lab report, the 24-hour composite found:
• 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
That’s a suspiciously low level of arsenic. Where is the arsenic from their wells or municipal water ending up or are they clandestinely pumping river water?
My thought as well. The local drinking water report showed almost 3 times that amount. I could be wrong though.
Signed -No wisdom Internet person.
Let’s hope they didn’t just make the data up. Or falsify it at the request of Musk. https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2018/03/14/Pennsylvania-DEP-sanctions-Eurofins-QC-for-water-testing-violations/
3.6 Roentgen, not great, not terrible.
And I’m guessing water treatment doesn’t fix these, does it?
It can. But you’d need a facility built to do it.
If you don’t anticipate Strontium in your wastewater, you’re not going to build a system to leech it out or neutralize it.
Isn’t that the important part of the story? Effing Texas regulators didn’t detect Strontium (or other pollutants the factory didn’t mention) so didn’t test for it?
We’re so used to the idea that companies will do the least they are mandated to, but isn’t that why we have regulators? If I get a new water heater I’m required to have an inspector sign off and his job is to flag anything that is off. Why can’t a multibillion dollar industrial facility be held to the same standard?
Effing Texas regulators didn’t detect Strontium (or other pollutants the factory didn’t mention) so didn’t test for it?
I mean, they did. That’s how we know about it. But what can they actually do about it? Prince Abbott will just cover this up and fire anyone who won’t shut up about it.
It was an independent lab that tested it because the ditch owners thought something was wrong. Tesla claims they also measured it incorrectly, but you can’t really dispute the color coming out, so something is in it.
Even if they did measure it incorrectly though, it’s going to be hard to dispute the lithium fingerprint they found, it would only be the other chemicals that become questionable. Seems like such a simple answer is to re-test it and re-test it immediately, and put them under extended re-testing scrutiny if the re-test comes back clean (maybe they changed something to fake the new test)
It was an independent lab that tested it
It was a public drainage district - specifically, Nueces County Drainage District No. 2 - that requested the lab be performed. These are municipal offices within the structure of the County that stumbled on a pipe authorized by the state and misused by Tesla’s facilities.
This is effectively a dispute between the county and the state, wherein the state has authorized dumping it should not have the legal authority to provide.
Given the state of Texas’ infrastructure, probably fair to assume this doesn’t exist.
Houston has one of the better waste water treatment plants in the country.
Robstown, though? Idk. Doubt it
If a discharge pipe is traced back to a company - and it is discharging unsafe levels or typically unexpected chemicals - then it should be on that company to get their waste water into a manageable condition.
Just because a municipal/council/whatever has above average water processing, doesn’t mean companies get a free pass to abuse it
