[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.

[didibus]

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.

[ethagknight]

The permits are supposed to provide a review of the proposed discharge, usually requires a public notice and review period, and ensures compliance. I assume this Texas permit is typical to that end.

While permits CAN be “just red tape”, permits SHOULD be, and frequently are, the conclusion of an appropriate review process that industry standards are being implemented.

[nerdyadventurer]

Does any of these laws matter to rich, given amount of lobbying going on in US?

[tremon]

> 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.

[wongarsu]

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

[wil421]

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

[solderlocks]

Doesn't the article state that "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..."?

[wil421]

They don’t own the drainage ditch. They can still dump the water into the local watershed/river whatever body of water per the permit you stated.

[semiquaver]

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

[InvertedRhodium]

“A ditch” and “this ditch specifically” are two entirely separate concepts.

[tpmoney]

I feel like this is the reporter choosing ambiguous words. Was this a permit to discharge into “an unnamed ditch” whose location and ownership and end destination are unspecified in the permit and so it is unclear whether this ditch is the appropriate ditch? Or is it “an unnamed ditch” located near by the property, and is very clearly this ditch, the ditch just has no name? The wording in the article could be read either way.

Edit:

Found the permit in the news article linked from the original article. It seems like the wording comes directly from from the permit (https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/14/fb/2a0cdfa24e8791af37...). That reads to me though that this is then the second case (this specific ditch, which is unnamed) and not “an unnamed ditch, of which this is the wrong one”

[semiquaver]

Yeah. And we are dealing with the latter.

[rawgabbit]

Texas is notoriously lax. State regulators are quick to dismiss any concerns when there is money to be made.

https://news.utexas.edu/2014/03/27/air-pollution-and-hydraul...

https://publichealthwatch.org/2024/12/12/houston-air-polluti...

[apical_dendrite]

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...

[advisedwang]

> Tesla have the right to dump water or not? I would assume that this is exactly what a permit is for?

My guess is this is a question of overlapping jurisdictions. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is presumably responsible for water quality, and so gets a say on what kinds of discharge in the state are safe. The drainage district has to manage the actual ditches and water on the ground, so they get a say (or at least notice) of new users of their infrastructure.

Just like how the DOT gets to create rules about locomotives but Railways still get to decide who can run trains on their tracks.

[dylan604]

> Just like how the DOT gets to create rules about locomotives but Railways still get to decide who can run trains on their tracks.

Fun fact, in 2005, as of Texas Railroad Commission no longer has anything to do with railroads and moved that oversight to the DoT. The TRC now is only involved with oil&gas. It is one of my favorite dumb things about Texas. Why not just rename the group and eliminate the TRC altogether, oh right, politics.

[xg15]

> allowed up to 231,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day

What I'd like to know is what "treated" means here and whether the pollutants measured in the water are in compliance of that definition.

After all, the problem that there is an important fishing area downstream does not go away, whether there is a permit or not. So in my understanding, the whole reason why the permit could be issued in the first place was the assurance that the water was treated enough to not be a danger to downstream consumers. But pitch black fluid with questionable analysis results doesn't exactly seem like that.

> As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.

Technically yes, but I think it's somewhat unlikely that there just happens to be a chromium/arsenic/lithium/strontium deposit somewhere along the length of the ditch that would re-pollute Tesla's pristine wastewater and make the readings look bad.

Or at least, the question whether there are any potential other sources for the substances should be easy to answer, by looking at a map or sending someone to check the ditch for any other unexpected pipes.

[1234letshaveatw]

ggreer did the work for us https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199824

[dylan604]

>> 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.

That's some top notch weasel wording right there. If sampling from the ditch reveals contaminants that are not natural to the area but are the same contaminants that are measured from the output of the pipe, then a natural question could be "are the contaminants leaking from upstream and leaching into the ground run off into the ditch?" which would still be a Tesla problem.

[tpmoney]

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.

[dylan604]

Sure, but that's also the same thing someone would say that knows they are leeching contaminants from other parts of their property but are not coming out this output pipe.

[tpmoney]

It's also the same thing someone would say that knows they're running a satanic cult sacrificing whales in the sub-basements of the property but knows the evidence of that isn't coming out of this output pipe. And at least so far, the government has not alleged that the contamination is coming from some other here-to-fore undiscovered but connected to the tesla factory location, nor that they are running a satanic whale sacrificing cult in their sub-basements. So speculating about that seems a bit pre-mature.

Perhaps more crucially though, it's also the same thing someone would say who is actually innocent of leeching contaminants. Whether they are or not, nothing in this article is providing any useful evidence.

[DANmode]

Wait, are they sacrificing the whales by putting them in toxic wastewater, in your ridiculous example?

Otherwise, someone’s industrial process is responsible for those samples…

and if the only business in the area that matches the waste is…

[tpmoney]

The point was that “that’s just what someone polluting somewhere else would say” is about as productive of an assertion as any other assertion that they’re involved in some conspiracy. You can’t derive any useful information about whether or not they are actually polluting from the statement.

As far as where those pollutants are coming from, multiple other commenters have noted there is another near by oil and gas processing equipment facility/manufacturer, a highway and multiple farmlands in the same area, all perfectly viable sources of pollution. Especially since as other commenters have pointed out a lot of these values appear to be just slightly above the local background values. And again given the overall lack of communication and the apparent need for manual monitoring, it seems pretty fair to say that you can’t just assume that the measured values are because of this pipe and not any of the other potential sources that are also going to be flowing into this ditch.

[wallst07]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199824

[fhn]

Keyword here is TREATED. Now Telsa will probably argue they added a dash of salt which they contend is "treated" wastewater. Billionaires don't care about you or your health.

[Braxton1980]

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?

[ggreer]

Hexavalent chromium can come from many industrial sources, including welding stainless steel. If you go to Tesla's lithium refinery in google maps[1] and follow the drainage ditch along highway 77 (to the northeast) about a half mile, you'll see a company called Tex-Isle Processing. They supply steel pipes and coating services for oil drilling.[2] It could be that one of their manufacturing processes creates hexavalent chromium.

In my opinion there isn't enough information to blame anyone for the slightly-above-drinking-water levels of hexavalent chromium. The drainage ditch goes along a highway and a rail line, so pollution could come from all kinds of places.

1. https://maps.app.goo.gl/7iNTbiPcs1sZ9CqP8

2. https://www.texisle.com/

[bloaf]

Something else to note:

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 (0.0003 vs 0.0104 mg/L). That is to say, the tests contradict each other (because the whole is smaller than the part).

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

[xg15]

Ok, that's one of the pollutants...

But I agree, measuring at the end of the ditch was the wrong thing to do if they take issue with that specific factory (though it was the right thing to do to prove a harmful pollution exists in general)

So another measurement directly at the pipe would be in order.

[ggreer]

The measured levels of arsenic, strontium, and vanadium are below the limits for drinking water, even in California. And 4% of drinking water sources in California have higher hexavalent chromium content than the water in that ditch.[1] Besides sodium from salt, the only metal that was particularly high was lithium, at 0.0714mg/L or 71 micrograms per liter. A significant fraction of drinking water in the US has higher concentrations than that.[2]

The level of salt shouldn't affect much. Adding up the chloride and sodium content gets you 684mg/L, which is on the low end of brackish water (500-30,000mg/L). The limit for agricultural irrigation is 2,000mg/L, and photos of the pipe show plenty of grass growing around and in the water.

The phosphorous could come from fertilizers, as there's plenty of farm land in the area. That would also explain the higher ammonium levels, as both anhydrous ammonia and ammonium phosphate are common fertilizers.

The article is really about how sensitive our scientific instruments are, not how dangerous the water is. It reminds me of articles like Vice's American Honey Is Radioactive from Decades of Nuclear Bomb Testing[3], where the most radioactive honey they could find was 10 times less radioactive than a banana.

1. https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/drinking_water/certlic/drinki...

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26906838

[wongarsu]

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

[defrost]

> 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 that filter out and layer into a ditch and can then concentrate over time (subject to terms and conditions).

A reasonable question, that should be asked of any industrial area, is whether dirt ditches, leaky pipes, the whole deal, are accumulating toxins over a decade or more ... and what the impact and remediation plan is for that.

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")

Not insurmountable, something to be wary of, these things have happened.

[cucumber3732842]

>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.

[defrost]

Sewerage discharge pipes are ideally built to take post processed human waste residues far enough out to sea to not be trapped in small bays but to disperse and diffuse through a greater volume of water.

The ideal here might be (I haven't dug into site specific details here) to take any industrial runoff far out to a large volume of water so that it can disperse and not be concentrated in a manner that creates a time bomb for human food / water inputs.

If that is the intent, then unsealed ditches crossing watersheds is a bad idea compared to sealed pipes with deep water discharge.

[_wire_]

>> The permit requires monitoring at the outfall point...

The permit is a license to pollute, but go on:

>> ...and the company has pointed out that ditch samples can pick up contaminants from sources that have nothing to do with Tesla’s wastewater.

Downstream, others are picking up contaminants from a source that has nothing to do with them.

> As the article itself says, that is a legitimate argument.

OK, lovely, glad that's settled.

NEXT!

[SecretDreams]

> 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 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.

Some of the elements of note that were detected. These are all well above background levels. The point about not measuring at the outfall is valid, but probably not relevant. Unless we think there are other lithium and hex sources nearby.

The real crime is that a permit was issued at all and that it was not so comprehensive. But that's the beauty of Texas - their citizens love this kind of thing.

[bloaf]

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...

[jandrewrogers]

If an ICP assay says the total chromium is an order of magnitude less then we can safely ignore the specific hexavalent test, which is a more difficult and less precise measure. I didn’t even look at that.

Everything about this says bad science and motivated reasoning intended to fool people unsophisticated about this type of thing.

[SecretDreams]

Fair comment re hex. Elevated levels of some other elements need to be similarly reviewed.

These types of permits should really need to be discussed in town forums, regardless of the outcome here.

[dwattttt]

Per ggreer's comment [0], there are other potential sources nearby.

It's pretty annoying all told. It invalidates the results; it takes them from "this is clear evidence of a breach" into "maybe it's in breach. Or maybe someone else is. Or maybe both are within their respective limits"

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199824

[SecretDreams]

Agreed.

Per the article, sounds like everyone would have benefited from more discussion and transparency either way. I find it surprising that these types of permits are issued without formal review at a town council style setting.

Ultimately, the people living in these areas should have an outsized say on what is piped into their way supplies. Same forum could also be used to show it is safe. Or discuss the safety of the ask.