SpaceX accused of dumping mercury into Texas waters for years
popsci.com
popsci.com
CNBC’s story on Starship’s launch operations in South Texas is factually inaccurate. ... We only use potable (drinking) water in the system’s operation. ... We send samples of the soil, air, and water around the pad to an independent, accredited laboratory after every use of the deluge system, which have consistently shown negligible traces of any contaminants. Importantly, while CNBC's story claims there are “very large exceedances of the mercury” as part of the wastewater discharged at the site, all samples to-date have in fact shown either no detectable levels of mercury whatsoever or found in very few cases levels significantly below the limit the EPA maintains for drinking water. ...
If only we still believed in burden of proof.
It's nonsense, for example there is no "I used pure water in the input to the process" exemption; why would there be, the output is what matters. And I believe even unprocessed potable water can be illegal to dump due to the presence of chlorine/fluorine.
You are addressing a different question which is have they already illegally dumped toxins into the water. I don't know but as I said in a different comment, given his history I would take anything he says with a high-degree of skepticism.
https://www.tceq.texas.gov/downloads/permitting/wastewater/t...
But given that he has already illegally released toxins for years (at Fremont paint factory), doesn't really give the impression he cares about complying with regulations, presumably didn't do the work necessary for the permitting process, and has a general disregard for process/safety/etc it would be pretty surprising if there weren't illegal levels of substance discharge.
We're not talking about "he" here. We're talking about SpaceX.
More than 22x the limit.
Natural gas has significant levels of mercury in it apparently, so it’d make sense to see levels like this.
My other question is how is the environmental report so screwed up? It looks like it’s mostly typos
> Teague said he's especially concerned about the concentration of mercury in the wastewater from the SpaceX water deluge system. The levels disclosed in the document represent "very large exceedances of the mercury water quality criteria," Teague said. (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/12/spacex-repeatedly-polluted-w...)
If you'd like, you can read through the 483 page permit application here: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/downloads/permitting/wastewater/t...
I'm not going to read it all though. Until I hear otherwise from someone qualified who isn't paid by SpaceX I'll just trust the guy with the 30+ years of water quality and coastal planning experience when he says the documented levels are too high and that a lot important data is missing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41225678
It's a mystery why.
Elon would not be trying to buff his "Evil Billionaire" rep...right?
https://www.tceq.texas.gov/downloads/permitting/wastewater/t...
Page 177. Also called "Report Page 20 of 71".
RL stands for "Reporting Limit".
> SpaceX said in its response on X that there were "no detectable levels of mercury" found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its permit application that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health.
The article also says important information was missing from the application:
> Teague, who has more than three decades of water quality and coastal planning experience, told CNBC the application was full of holes, missing basic details about water discharge volumes, the temperature of the effluent and outfall locations.
Elon: the billionaire that promised Mars, but delivered mercury.
""environmental organizations published an open letter voicing anger with the tests while highlighting Starbase’s proximity to indigenous sacred lands""
How dare they get close to indigenous lands.
If you think mercury in the water is nothing at all please drink some and report back to us.
Here is a link to a review of the documentary: https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/21/documentary-downwind-...
Americans have long enough suffered at the hands of those who claim to have ancient or inalienable rights to everything including water, air, and land. It is about time Americans get their act together and take back what is rightfully theirs. /s
(I do wonder if there are non-English Christians who also seriously argue “Jesus spoke {my native language here}” - it seems to be a very US evangelical specific thing but I am curious if there are similar non-English groups)
Irrespective of how you personally feel about Musk, consider that this is targeting a company with thousands of employees run by… its CEO Glenn Shotwell, not Musk.
SpaceX is terrifying to the competition: both dinosaurs like ULA, and also newcomers like Blue Origin.
The article states: “In total, the Harlingen region received 14 complaints alleging environmental impacts from the Facility’s deluge system.”
Umm… what!? Fourteen? Fourteen locals were wading through the local mud within spitting distance of the launch towers taking what… water samples? It’s tap water! If it has mercury in it then the real article should be about mercury in the tap water!
“I have a complaint to make! Yes I would like to remain anonymous, but you can call me… umm… Beff Jezos. Yes, I’m personally and financially affected by SpaceX activities and would like to file a complaint.”
The popsci article was definitely written by an anti-Musk hack. I seriously wouldn’t surprised if he took a bribe to write a “hit piece”, because if he didn’t he’s doing dirty work for billionaires for free.
We shouldn’t reach for the stars, unless every local office of everything is fully satisfied that all of the paperwork is filed.
Speaking of which: “Neither regulator answered CNBC’s questions regarding SpaceX’s statement.”
You don’t talk about corruption to the media. It’s shameful what they’re doing, otherwise they’d be happy to clarify the issue to the public.
On this point, if I have pesticide on my boots and rinse them with potable water, that water now has pesticide in it.
Also, that local mud is also known as a wildlife habitat, so yes, we shouldn't be adding mercury to it.
Also, we can't just throw away Earth for the sake of 'reaching for the stars'. Right now SpaceX is a cell tower installation business, nothing more. I'm not concerned what Elon's "stated goals" are.
SpaceX almost certainly uses zero mercury in their rockets, and if they do use tiny amounts, it’ll be a in the electronics and not getting washed into the water in appreciable amounts.
The fuel is natural gas and oxygen. Where’s the mercury coming from!?
Or just SpaceX, an end-user of natural gas, not a refiner of it.
> 2. There is mercury in the water dumped by the facility, detected by the agency that is supposed to be detecting this.
The issue is that you're taking a hitpiece written by someone that appears to hate Musk for political reasons(based on her other blog articles) as truth. Published by CNBC who has hated Tesla and Musk since forever because they mean fewer profits for legacy car companies and big oil.
The source of confusion is a typo in the document which overstated mercury concentration by a factor of thousand, the rest is exaggeration and fiction pushed all over the news cycle and Reddit.
Does falling for misinformation in this day and age enrage you or outrage you? Does it make you wonder what else you're falling for? Or will you just get defensive and keep arguing fiction? This correction won't reach the vast majority of people who saw the headline who will continue to believe falsehoods about SpaceX. So mission accomplished for the "reporter" and CNBC. This is just sad.
Would it blow your mind to learn that similar fake news was employed by reputable news outlets like AP News on the Tesla Swedish union strike story where multiple news outlets claimed(and still do) that all 120 Tesla mechanics "walked off the job" when only about 35 did and the rest refused to participate in the strike?
Whether it's a typo or not is irrelevant.
"Ahead of its second launch, SpaceX reportedly bypassed regulatory permit processes regarding pollutant discharge limits, as well as failed to provide detailed explanations on how it planned to treat its wastewater."
This cowboy-ass attitude of "do now, give documentation later" might fly in other areas, but when we are talking about rockets and water pollution, it gotta be caution first.
If the agency that's tasked with checking these limits tells you to stop until they can verify what you are doing is within regulatory limits, you stop. Which Musk's company failed to do.
"Meanwhile, the same chart lists multiple pollutants at concentrations at or above TCEQ and EPA standards, including total suspended solids, cyanide, copper, and chromium"
That doesn't sound like a typo to me.
> Would it blow your mind to learn that similar fake news was employed by reputable news outlets like AP News on the Tesla Swedish union strike story where multiple news outlets claimed(and still do) that all 120 Tesla mechanics "walked off the job"
Would it blow your mind that during the Twitter layoffs, Elon tried to immediately fire many many engineers in Europe (e.g the Netherlands), who had permanent contracts. That's illegal. This half-brained mofo has believed too much in the praise he gets from right-wing trolls/simps, but laws are laws. If Tesla workers in Sweden want to unionize, they will. And you can't fire people without notice who have a permanent contract in the Netherlands.
I would totally not surprised if the guy is dumping all kind of shit in Texas's water, as he's totally deluded and out of his mind.
Not true, see below.
> “Throughout our ongoing coordination with both TCEQ and the EPA, we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop and we were informed that operations could continue,”
EPA and TCEQ have enough authority to stop SpaceX if they're actually doing something harmful.
> If Tesla workers in Sweden want to unionize, they will
Exactly, the media doesn't need to make up fake news to make Tesla look bad, which they have been, and is sad to see.
It is tap water.
It does seems there are accurate and correct complaints about EPA violations, etc at the Boca chica site, and there are also accusations of mercury (and presumably other materials) being detected.
My reading of the article, and the plain text reading of the spacex statement mean I don’t think there’s sufficient factual basis to go from the known EPA violations to “put mercury in the water”.
The regulatory violations seem objectively true, but those regulations are in place because historically that lack of guards led to terrible dumping. So the regulations mean such stuff is detected early and punished if it does happen. However it’s important to realize that the violations in the actual complaint are not “spacex dumped stuff” they are “spacex did not get the required approvals or let us do the testing”. They’re important issues, and need to be addressed, but the issues are very explicitly not “we have reason to believe that there were issues”.
I think a more practical comparison for us normies would be “you had a competent electrician rewire your house or a plumber do significant work without getting a permit or inspection”. In reality for most cases people aren’t trying to have their house catch fire or fill with .. stuff .. but legally you’re required to get permits and inspections.
Those permits and inspections exist to prevent/deter the kinds of people who do try to do substandard work, but you can’t write a law that says “the only people subject to this law are the ones trying to violate it”, so everyone has to do stuff that for most people isn’t necessary.
Alternatively it’s illegal to drive a car without functioning brakes, so in many countries your have to have your car checked annually. Most people aren’t going to drive an unsafe car, but to protect “most” from some, everyone has to get a WOF(or similar).
So my reading of the article is the EPA complaint currently is just “they didn’t follow the approval and testing parts of the regulatory requirements”, nothing more.
The article then brings in a bunch of other allegations that aren’t in the actual EPA complaint to try and put those accusations on the level as the actual complaint, because yay clicks!
It’s quite possible those other allegations are true (because that’s pretty standard corporate behavior - prior corp behaviour is why the EPA and similar exist), but equally they could be false (there’s no additional pollutants), false (the pollutants are there, but from old dumping), false (the pollutants are there but from a different company), etc
Musk is a shitty person, and corporate behavior when awful chemicals are involved is often garbage, but misrepresenting things merely provides ammunition when groups are actually doing illegal stuff to say “look, this is the same lies and BS they wrote here” so I really wish it would stop.
If people want to shit on space Karen they should focus on the awful shit we know he does, there’s no need to invent stuff.
The second problem is he has a history of actually illegally discharging toxins for years (e.g. Fremont paint factory, not far from a school incidentally).
From ESGHound who initially broke this story years ago: "This is a lie. The EPA cannot, and did not authorize future discharges. Nowhere in the compliance order does EPA authorize future illegal discharges".
space is the realm of government. all this is talk that will get nowhere