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Comment by foobarqux | Hacker News Reader

As I noted in previous threads this is brazen lying: they are not dumping tap water into the ground they are dumping (boiling hot) water that has been processed by blasting it with rocket fuel, which their own third-party analysis contains contaminants that are not present in "tap water".

By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.

This is probably the most basic environmental and health and safety law, namely to prevent businesses from dumping toxins into the water; trying to frame this as government overreach and knick-knack regulations is seriously depraved and it would be banana-republic-esque if he actually succeeds in ignoring or removing these rules.

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Hello. I just want to start by saying I appreciate this post as every other post on this article is: "this is politically motivated because I think it is".

That being said... on the linked page it says:

> Outflow water has been sampled after every use of the system and consistently shows negligible traces of any contaminants, and specifically, that all levels have remained below standards for all state permits that would authorize discharge. TCEQ, the FAA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated the use of the system prior to its initial use, and during tests and launch, and determined it would not cause environmental harm.

Is this all lies?

I wouldn't trust any analysis that SpaceX submits itself given Musk's long history of lying, including right now on this very subject. Others have pointed out problems in the way the water is being sampled (surface water vs ground water) but I'm not an expert. It is certainly possible that no serious contamination has already occurred.

But the way it works is not that you dump stuff out of your factory and then, after getting caught, try to run some tests to show it's okay. It's almost impossible to remove contaminants out of the water after the fact so the way it works is that you go through a process with the government where you show that you are not going to dump contaminants into the ground, then they issue a permit, then you can discharge the water. Otherwise you would have people doing what Musk is doing now, which is to dump the water first and if there is any irreversible contamination say "oops, my bad".

You don't have to trust SpaceX. You have to trust " TCEQ, the FAA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ". Some of those reports are public.

Contrary to what SpaceX has claimed USFWS does not regulate industrial waste water discharge (unsurprisingly). The TCEQ has said they are in violation. FAA has paused launches pending an investigation. Both should have done this many months ago.

In any case with respect to existing contamination the only thing I would trust is an independent third party testing lab testing the water with the data made public. I don't know why you would want anything else.

Their violations are:

1. They misplaced a decimal point when transferring a value from the lab report to the summary

2. They filled in the wrong form. They paid a $2000 fine for this violation.

The lab reports are public.

This is just false. They don't have a permit to discharge water.

The permit number is WQ0016342001.

That is not an industrial waster water permit.

https://www.threads.net/@esg.hound/post/CzvTxp-uZe8

"That is for a domestic wastewater permit (toilet water treatment)"

As I said further up, they filled in the wrong form.

They have a permit that is more restrictive than the permit they need.

Industrial waste water permits are not less restrictive than domestic waste water. They could not have "filled in the wrong form" because they need a domestic waste water permit as well.

A permit for an average daily flow of 200,000 gallons.

Okay, right then, let’s cancel humanity’s ascendancy to the stars.

Someone filled out the wrong form.

Stop the whole thing. Abandon the cosmos. Just stay here.

Some bureaucrats weren’t satisfied.

Or Musk could have just applied for the permit last year like every other launch facility seemingly does without any problem.

They need to apply for a new permit any time there are changes to the craft. So every launch.

Also, these permits can't be applied for ahead of time for new technology that is still being developed.

I regularly face this issue in IT circles, where I'm supposed to have a time machine to compensate for the multi-month forewarning everyone else needs.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but parent's comment that

> By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.

is patently wrong and unfortunately undermines their entire comment.

I believe SpaceX is stretching the truth and trying to sneak by with improper permits, but also people lying about what SpaceX is doing is not helping keep them in check and gives them ammunition.

Of course water in contact with the flamey end of a rocket has chemicals not found in drinking water, that's not really relevant. What's relevant are the actual levels in that water.

This unprofessional release mentions "literal" tap water being used. It appears that this is "literally" not true - is this a lie, or are you just upset with the parent comment's conclusion?

Both sides can be wrong and lying. Does it matter if water is "tap water" or if it meets the regulations for tap water? Lying to call someone out for lying just undermines the point.

Edit: Sigh, on re-reading the SpaceX statement they say the input water is "potable" and then later say, "Again, it uses literal drinking water", they never say "tap water". While an exaggeration, that is the definition of potable. They are not saying the output water is drinking water! Only that "all levels have remained below standards for all state permits that would authorize discharge."

But again, I'm not claiming they aren't lying or stretching the truth, just that we should be contesting them on the facts.

How is this different than launches at Canaveral or elsewhere? Don’t those pads also have water deluge systems and service a variety of liquid fueled rockets?

This was wonderfully hard to find out. ChatGPT tells me that NASA employees a detention pond to treat water after a deluge. Found this french post about the construction of it all: http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_US/shuttle/ksc/S...

Interestingly, ~70% of the water is evaporated during a launch.

SLS's main engine is hydrolox fueled, so it's byproducts should be water and hydrogen. But the SRBs have a lot of nasty ingredients like perchlorates.

You seem to be willfully misinterpretating SpaceX's post. They say that only potable water is used in the deluge process. That's all they are saying. They aren't saying that the post deluge water is potable.

It’s probably still drinkable if you let it cool down and wait for the sediment to settle out.

No-one cares about the water before deluge, that's why. Worst case scenario, a leak there floods some wetlands with "drinking water".

People are only concerned about the post deluge water.

Why does SpaceX repeatedly, and condescendingly, keep saying "Again, this is drinking water!"

So no, I don't think he's willfully misinterpreting SpaceX's post. In fact, I think SpaceX's repeated references to drinking water, at a non-problematic stage of the complaints, is willfully misleading.

Given that Starship and Super Heavy are both methalox fueled, wouldn’t the combustion products in the exhaust be carbon dioxide and water?

Combustion is imperfect and it is occurring over metal which will erode into the mix of air and water. Then there is also whatever chemicals and material are on the ground prior to launch activities that get washed away with the deluge system

> Then there is also whatever chemicals and material are on the ground prior to launch activities that get washed away

Washed away after first being superheated by that water.

I would imagine most of the wash away is not close to the exhaust, but down slope, mainly consisting of construction, maintenance, and vehicle activities.

Though the area does receive many orders of magnitude more water from natural rainfall than the deluge system, so anything present in that water would have been washed away anyway.

Not according to the tests SpaceX submitted themselves. But if it were you would first show that to the EPA and then they would give you a permit to go ahead.

I think your second paragraph is spot on.

I just don't understand why this seems to be an issue with this launch in particular, cause to me it just something that's done at every launch ever (throw water at a launching rocket). Isn't this a very well understood env impact anyway that Falcon 9 launches don't face those delays?

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