[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.

[DANmode]

Oil and gas wastewater contains toxic petroleum hydrocarbons and radioactive materials, while lithium wastewater is defined by chemical reagents and strong acids or bases.

There is some overlap (high salinity, boron).

[wallst07]

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