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

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

#131

Post by malfist »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #118
malfist wrote: post #2

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. > Str…

If 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.

Looking at this: 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...

That earlier link is to the method they used for detection.

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

#132

Post by cucumber3732842 »

MisterTea wrote: post #123
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is how car manufacturers worked around the old tail pipe emission laws. They added air pumps plumbed to the exhaust manifold(s) to increase the exhaust mass diluting the stream enough to pass emissions tests. Problem solved! 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…

> 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. 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 featu…

350ish (or less) + 4spd trucks kinda fell out of favor over the course of the 70s for bigger engines and 5spds (usually with a 2spd rear end but I digress). I'm sure you could still get one, but who would when you could get something better on the lot for the same money.

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.

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

#133

Post by wongarsu »

tremon wrote: post #115
something765478 wrote: post #91

> 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 t…

> 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? 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.

But according to the article the permit is for dumping wastewater into a ditch. And Tesla appears to deliver the wastewater to that ditch by pipe. And it doesn't appear like the pipe is the topic of contention here, but where it ends and what comes out of it. All things that seem to be properly permitted, from what the article is telling us

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

#134

Post by semiquaver »

tremon wrote: post #115
something765478 wrote: post #91

> 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 t…

> 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? 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.

But the permit is to discharge into a ditch. And that is also the ditch that they are discharging into.

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

#135

Post by f33d5173 »

hansmayer wrote: post #50
porphyra wrote: post #4

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 0.002…

[flagged]

Are we doing "i just cant even" posting in 2026? Wastewater is not expected to be safe as drinking water, so it meeting the standards for drinking water shows how safe it is. If you have a reasonable argument to the contrary then please post it.

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

#137

Post by Terr_ »

Zigurd wrote: post #61
cwal37 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic pre-EPA slogan comes to mind: "the solution to pollution is dilution".

Accumulation makes the... what rhymes here?

I like where you're going with this.

"The solution to pollution is dilution, except when accumulation is a violation upon creation"?

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

#138

Post by bluGill »

MisterTea wrote: post #123
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is how car manufacturers worked around the old tail pipe emission laws. They added air pumps plumbed to the exhaust manifold(s) to increase the exhaust mass diluting the stream enough to pass emissions tests. Problem solved! 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…

> 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. 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 featu…

In 1988 the factory put a cat in the exhaust. It also would have had fuel injection and a computer, and thus no choke. In short this truck was very much not stock (or possibly you are not in the US?) and so it is interesting but not helpful for the discussion.

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

#139

Post by alistairSH »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #132
MisterTea wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 featu…

350ish (or less) + 4spd trucks kinda fell out of favor over the course of the 70s for bigger engines and 5spds (usually with a 2spd rear end but I digress). I'm sure you could still get one, but who would when you could get something better on the lot for the same money. 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. Lot…

The 6000 was a commercial truck. It appears to have had a carburetor for most if not all of the 1980s.

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

#140

Post by wongarsu »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #112
something765478 wrote: post #91

> 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 t…

Would 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?

They 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

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