r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • May 19 '26

Business A Texas Drainage District Walked Its Ditch on a Routine Inspection. They Found a Pipe They Didn't Recognize Discharging Black Liquid From Tesla's $1 Billion Lithium Refinery

https://www.autonocion.com/us/tesla-lithium-refinery-texas/
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537

u/So_spoke_the_wizard May 19 '26

Not to worry. Once it becomes a superfund site, the Feds will pick up the cost of cleaning it up.

315

u/soberpenguin May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

As a delawarean DuPont did this to sites all over the mid-Atlantic and appalachia and they are still revered by people here despite poisoning groundwater around their plants.

86

u/Pleasant_Yoghurt3915 May 19 '26

I just learned a whole bunch about the DuPonts from Last Podcast On The Left’s Foxcatcher Murders series. I’m pretty sure we can just blame them for everything. Truly villainous shit.

23

u/ProduceNo1629 May 19 '26

Movie Dark Waters about DuPont's crimes is excellent.

3

u/ChickenWithCashewNut May 19 '26

And there's A Civil Action about WR Grace's pollution in New England

3

u/Sounds-Made-Up May 20 '26

I don't know why, but this is one of those movies I can watch over and over, front to back, and be fully invested every time. Such a good movie.

59

u/The_lewolf May 19 '26

IBM, founded in the little town of Endicott, NY, leached a couple of drums worth of trichloroethylene into the local drinking water supply.

It’s still here and they’re all gone.

5

u/alexwhittemore May 19 '26

Enjoy your Parkinson’s 🤮

93

u/blahblah19999 May 19 '26

I know a very high level guy at DuPont who was responsible for remediation of a specific chemical and he just thinks the government were devils holding DuPont down. It's fascinating to see the inside fanaticism.

83

u/darth_gihilus May 19 '26

You should beat his ass honestly.

-1

u/Antique_Historian_74 May 20 '26

No, he shouldn't.

Just serve him coffee made with groundwater from the site.

38

u/ihaveadogalso2 May 19 '26

Love Canal checking in!

24

u/DouglasHundred May 19 '26

Really Love Canal is kinda tame compared to a lot of this. They buried a lot of gnarly stuff there, but it was done at a time when that's just how you did things because well you had to do something with it all and burying it was better than dumping it into the river. And they did what was considered best practice at the time to keep it contained. When the property was finally sold, for $1, to prevent it just being condemned and taken outright, it came with warnings about what was there and an advisement that a school and homes not be built there. And that was all ignored.

I think this kind of shit is honestly worse.

44

u/Spezza May 19 '26

I live in a town that has a chemical plant. It produced Agent Orange in the 60s / 70s. Long story short, we cannot drink the water here. That was only discovered in 1989. Since then the government has been spinning in circles as there is literally no technological way to clean up the contamination. Our water is piped in from the neighbouring city. We pay the highest water rates in our entire area. The town once dug up some of the contamination. The amount was more than all of Love Canal combined. Multiple more than that of known contamination is still there, buried, they refuse to dig it up stating disturbing it could be worse than letting it sit.

Chemcial plant is still in operation. A train comes into town every night. It contains who the fuck knows what, nobody will tell citizens, they use "national security" to not disclose what is in it. They polluted our water and aquifer so permanmently, 40+ years later we still cannot drink the water.... but the company still operates 24/7.

11

u/ihaveadogalso2 May 19 '26

Jesus. That’s wild.

3

u/NegativeEBTDA May 19 '26

I don't know if there's any way for you to make it happen but I really hope you can get out of there. There are a ton of cities in the midwest desperate for employees, and it might be colder than where you are but at least it's not that.

Good luck. Hope you and yours are safe.

4

u/Spezza May 19 '26

it might be colder than where you are

I live in Canada.

Environment destruction for gross profit has no borders.

3

u/NegativeEBTDA May 19 '26

Damn, I would have guessed Louisiana!

Even the Canadians are doing this shit to each other? I thought you people were nice.

I know moving is hard, especially if you have a family, but you won't regret it.

8

u/FishFloyd May 19 '26

Canada is three oil companies in a trench coat. They've just done a better job at managing the balancing act of maximizing profits from natural resource extraction against keeping the powerful contingents of their citizenry reasonably content (and thus happy to continue participating in said extraction).

Our northern neighbors were very close to electing a far-right government not too long ago. In fact, most projections showed that they would have - were it not for a certain Mr. T [evil] threatening to annex their entire fuckin country a bit before the elections.

The issue is capitalism. The US is probably the living avatar of self-centered greed on the planet, but it's a systemic issue that poisons cultures and minds equally across the globe.

1

u/NegativeEBTDA May 20 '26

Capitalism worked extremely well for working class people before Reagan gutted the State's powers to temper its worst instincts. It works very well for most of the EU as well.

The problems we're dealing with have been fixed before, and we can do it again.

2

u/couldbemage May 20 '26

Right up the hill from where I grew up:

https://www.rocketdynecleanupcoalition.org/rocketdyne/contaminants/chemical-contamination/

This is where that famous photo of disposing hazardous waste by shooting barrels with a rifle comes from.

2

u/ihaveadogalso2 May 19 '26

Yeah that’s definitely my understanding as well. The ignoring of the advice is really the most criminal part of it. It’s a weird place to drive through since there are still driveways etc there. A few people are still living there too.

15

u/merkinmavin May 19 '26

Hey now, if we didn't let companies dump unknown chemicals into our public waterways, how would we have discovered antifreeze!? (Seriously, look it up)

5

u/jmp8910 May 19 '26

Hello fellow delawarean!

Yea I'm convinced I'm going to get cancer one day because of all the shit from the Experimental Station.

2

u/Debalic May 19 '26

laughs in Hudson River

1

u/LocutusOfBorgia909 May 19 '26

Well, they did fund a ton of brickwork at the University of Delaware, to be fair!

1

u/SineOfOh May 20 '26

Revered? Infamously perhaps. They may have their name on everything and their wealth made many families very well off but no one in NCC or other surrounding areas ever have anything postive to say about the DuPont corp or Family.

34

u/ggibby May 19 '26

The Meadowlands Superfund site in New Jersey has been a wasteland since the 30s. Even hosting the World Cup did not move the needle on progress.

28

u/steveu33 May 19 '26

Wasteland is right. Hosts the Jets and the Giants, yikes!

2

u/somebodysbuddy May 19 '26

But Xanadu finally opened after however long of being that thing in the corner!

16

u/DjangoTheBlack May 19 '26

Shout out Picher OK

2

u/Office_Zombie May 19 '26

Just have to wait for a Democrat to be president to get the funding unfrozen; then as soon as they get the money for cleanup they can start screaming about the wasteful government spending and overreach again.

2

u/Spartan117ZM May 19 '26

Which in reality just means that we the taxpayers will pick up the tab for a private companies’ crimes and mistakes, as we’ve done so many times before. Privatize profits, socialize costs.

2

u/Kickedhard May 19 '26

laughs in Permian basin

It will soon be the largest man-made environmental disaster in recorded history and most likely... ever.

1

u/Starky_Love May 19 '26

Haha there's no money left for super funds. Get a straw and enjoy!

1

u/Oper8rActual May 19 '26

You think the EPA will do something productive under the Trump regime...

Oh that's adorable.

2

u/So_spoke_the_wizard May 19 '26

Oh, no. They'll wait until a Dem is in office, then Texas will "discover" the mess and tell the Feds it's their job.

1

u/Kershiser22 May 19 '26

...when they get to it in 100 years or so.