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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

#201

Post by tpmoney »

dylan604 wrote: post #162
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…

>> 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 s…

My reading is that Tesla's contention is those contaminants are not coming from their pipe, hence the objection to the measurement being taken from somewhere other than the output of their pipe. And while the contaminants may well be coming from Tesla's pipe, given the apparent lack of coordination between the various governmental agencies involved, it seems reasonable to me to say that they need to sample from the pipe output in order to actually say what Tesla is or isn't putting into the ditch, since apparently they might be able to just walk a few hundred feet further up the ditch and find other discharge pipes they don't know about yet.

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

#202

Post by jandrewrogers »

nradov wrote: post #188
jandrewrogers wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arsenic at 0.0025 mg/L That is well below the noise floor. Like the similarly toxic selenium, arsenic is an essential micronutrient in animal biology. It is possible to be deficient in arsenic, though rare in practice. Natural background levels are far higher in many locales with no adverse effects. I often see trace quantities of arsenic trotted out by the popular media for scaremongering purposes. Examples like t…

Could you expand on what makes arsenic an essential micronutrient? What are the clinical signs and symptoms of severe arsenic deficiency? I've never heard of this before.

IIRC, severe deficiency of arsenic leads to a type of wasting. The precise role is uncertain. Based on animal models the rough estimates for human requirements are similar to selenium.

Humans get enough arsenic from water and other background sources that deficiency is virtually unknown. My understanding is that there was historical anecdotal evidence for rare arsenic deficiency from animal husbandry that caused it to be investigated.

These days they systematically test for the trace micronutrient status of e.g. heavy metals by inducing extreme deficiency using mammal models. Most of the time nothing happens but it is difficult to eliminate the possibility of contamination creating a null signal.

Probably the most surprising element for which they have suggestive evidence of biological necessity is lead.

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

#203

Post by CamperBob2 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #78
MisterTea wrote: post #57

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!

Is that what a "smog pump" is (was)? LOL. I had heard the term but never knew what it was. Along the same lines then as other emissions equipment that reduced fuel economy but achieved the ppm criteria in the exhaust. Yes, let's address pollution by burning more fuel.

Yes, and it has absolutely nothing to do with increasing air volume. The idea is to lower hydrocarbon emissions by burning them off in the exhaust manifold.

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

#204

Post by apical_dendrite »

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…

This Inside Climate News article is a little clearer.

> TCEQ began its investigation after workers for Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, which presides over the ditch area, found an unfamiliar pipe stretched across the district’s easement, expelling black liquid into the ditch

> The permit didn’t allow Tesla to use private or public property to transport the wastewater. Under the permit, it was Tesla’s responsibility to acquire whatever property rights were required to use the discharge route, the TCEQ permit states.

So one issue is that while they may have had a permit to dump wastewater, they didn't have a right to build a pipe on land controlled by the drainage district. Tesla, not TCEQ, needed to notify the drainage district because Tesla was the one building on land controlled by that district.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19032026/tesla-lithium-re...

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

#205

Post by cucumber3732842 »

defrost wrote: post #187
wongarsu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> collecting runoff is what ditches are there for Sure. What ditches aren't for, and vary greatly wrt, is discharging all inputs out to sea or or a large body of water for "sufficient" dilution. Ditches can be sealed (concrete lined, with a membrane underneath) or, say, just dirt. Dirt ditches with a long run filter .. heavier particles drop out, weeds and other organics grab onto various compounds, etc. Those things…

>Worst case, ditch line concentrates leach down into a water table close enough to an extraction pump that goes to water food or be drunk by people. (Or later in time earthworks for housing kick up a dust layer that just happens to be mostly "20 years of bad ju-ju")

Pretty much all water discharge rules are built around filtering stuff out. I thought we wanted it in the dirt so it would't be in the water?

The part that drives me up the wall is the two faced capricious nature of all this.

I have a grass parking lot and everyone screeches about tire rubber concentrating in the dirt.

I pave the lot and everyone screeches about the rubber in the runoff

I pay an engineering firm to say that my grass strip on the side of the paved parking lot is an engineered feature that per their calculation will catch yada yada yada blah blah blah and I get my permit.

Seems to me like you can't put anything anywhere. You just go in circles until you've the right rings for the right amount and then they say "this is fine".

Whether the ditch is dirt and grass (nature's filter) or lined with something, hexavalent chromium is just the big boy big dollar version of the same stupid parking lot problem.

Say they filter the chromium out. So then it winds up concentrated in something. Where does it go then? Seems like the only way to permanently deal with waste is to sell it into another jurisdiction where the buyer has kissed the right rings to let it be used as some input to some other process where it then goes from waste to something else.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

wil421 wrote: post #141
wongarsu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They have a permit to dump water but not put it in the ditch where the pipe runs. They need to get it to a body of water, not a ditch. Dumping into the drainage ditch or running a pipe in the drainage ditch requires a separate permit. The water quality is also questionable. Tesla and the drainage company are at odds on the testing method. At least that’s my understanding of the situation

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by nradov »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #202
nradov wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on what makes arsenic an essential micronutrient? What are the clinical signs and symptoms of severe arsenic deficiency? I've never heard of this before.

IIRC, severe deficiency of arsenic leads to a type of wasting. The precise role is uncertain. Based on animal models the rough estimates for human requirements are similar to selenium. Humans get enough arsenic from water and other background sources that deficiency is virtually unknown. My understanding is that there was historical anecdotal evidence for rare arsenic deficiency from animal husbandry that caused it t…

Could you give us some specific citations for evidence of biological necessity for arsenic and lead? I searched on PubMed but couldn't find anything.

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

#208

Post by didibus »

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…

Personally, I find all these "do they have the necessary approvals or not" discussions are besides the point that matters. For business, those are red tape, wasted time, and unnecessary bureaucracy. For residents and citizens, what permits were approved or not don't matter, but if we tolerate the pollution cost that results, no matter if it was legally approved or not.

I'd rather an article that argues about if this pollution cost that is being externalized to Texans to pay, justified and a net win for them, and if it is, than what's holding up the permits, and if not, then why is this permitted at all, even if partially.

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

#209

Post by bloaf »

SecretDreams wrote: post #186
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…

> Lithium and vanadium at concentrations Lazarte’s letter described as abnormally high relative to rainwater or normal groundwater. > 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. > Strontium at 1.17…

A counterpoint is this

The lab tested for chromium in two ways: one test (ICP) measures all chromium of any kind, and the other measures hexavalent chromium specifically. The ICP test returned a concentration that was an order of magnitude smaller than the hexavalent test. That is to say, the tests contradict each other (because the whole is smaller than the part), and are both at the bottom of range for the tests performed.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28055380-j2673-1-uds...

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

#210

Post by mulmen »

There'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?

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