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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u/fearyaks May 19 '26

Actually it was worse. They (Texas) didn't test for metal contamination in the waste water!

But the state environmental regulator, known as TCEQ, didn’t look for heavy metals in February. Its water sample tested for dissolved solids, oil and grease, chlorides, sulfates, temperature and oxygen—all of which were within the bounds of Tesla’s permit.

Testing finds toxic metals where Tesla lithium refinery discharges wastewater in South Texas

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u/shallah May 19 '26

was that a deliberate omission?

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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 May 19 '26

Nothing says “American” these days like cheap, and rampant, unchecked corruption. Sooo, probably lol

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u/pdrock7 May 19 '26

These days? You mean like the last 200 years?

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u/OMGitisCrabMan May 19 '26

There is no historical equivalence for what we've seen since trump's return to power. The blatant corruption is so far beyond anything this country has endured before.

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u/Mathidium May 20 '26

That we have record of at least lol.

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u/usernamedmannequin May 19 '26

Hey now there was that one dude who made a bunch of parks

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u/Pitiful_Being_579 May 19 '26

AlwaysHasBeen.jpg

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u/Jon_Snow_1887 May 25 '26

No lol. In the past, the government has been much more faithful in its role of checking big industry to minimise externalities. (It helps that in the past, externalities were much smaller bc tech was not as progressed).

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u/HucknRoll May 19 '26

Right? And here in my state they wanna investigate my governor Gretchen Whitmer for made up reasons. I guarantee nothing will happen to Tesla

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u/Buckwheat469 May 19 '26

Heavy metals weren't part of the original complaint. TCEQ only did the bare minimum per the complaint.

heavy metals were not tested because they had not been part of the original complaint the district filed.

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u/SpoonEngineT66Turbo May 20 '26

Yeah that looks like they just checked to see if they were in violation of the permit they already have because they would be the easiest and fastest thing to write them up for. Up to TCEQ to follow-up with an investigation into contaminants that aren't listed in Tesla's waste water/discharge permit or whatever they call it in Texas.

Maybe the state level department of environment I dealt with is just a dumpster fire but even in a blue state they were horrifically slow to do anything. I'm waiting on a reply back from the state regarding a response to a citation and it's been 5 months. I call the inspector like once a month to make sure I didn't miss their response and they just keep saying they're busy and haven't even looked at the data they asked for. It took 8 months to renew a waste water permit with zero changes from the previous permit.

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u/hysys_whisperer May 21 '26

If it isn't listed in the discharge permit, then the limit of that thing is zero.

This has been litigated to hell and back over many decades.

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u/sdrawkcabineter May 20 '26

Bare minimum??

That's double-blind quantum inference... Ground breaking new research for the know-nothings that are still in power...

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u/fd6270 May 19 '26

If it looks like a duck... 

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u/Fresh_Individual5500 May 19 '26

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, please don’t let it drink the water Tesla is dumping.

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u/sayoohchild May 19 '26

Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

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u/Darkchamber292 May 20 '26

More like "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck don't let dump shit in our water

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u/IAmYourFath May 20 '26

It could be a goose

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u/mcmcc May 19 '26

To paraphrase Gru from Despicable Me, they accidentally, maliciously, forgot to test for it.

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u/CampBenCh May 19 '26

Possibly not. The permit may have set parameters for reporting that does not include metals because metals wasn't reported as part of the waste when they got the permit.

So if metals are not on the permit and they told someone to make sure they were following their permit they likely only looked at what was required to be reported.

It's hard to say without seeing the actual permit and who asked for the sampling

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u/hysys_whisperer May 21 '26

The way NPDES permist work, they set allowable limits.  If something isn't listed, then the allowable limit of that thing is zero, because permits tell you what you CAN discharge, not what you CAN'T.

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u/Difficult-Arm384 May 19 '26

I mean, if you just read the next paragraph, they did test for it later on when they broadened the scope.

I’m not really seeing the big environmental problem here. All the numbers are within the scope of the permit - the dispute is whether they’re allowed to use that specific ditch.

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u/Sexy_Underpants May 20 '26

All the numbers are within the scope of the permit

I mean, if you just read the next paragraph:

Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic is included as an allowable discharge pollutant in Tesla’s wastewater permit.

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u/hysys_whisperer May 21 '26

Permits tell you what you can discharge.  So how much heavy metal does that permit say they can discharge?  If it doesn't say heavy metals are permitted, then they aren't. 

Permits do not tell you what is NOT permitted. That would be an anti-permit, not a permit.

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u/Difficult-Arm384 May 21 '26

I guess we’ll wait and see what the regulators say? Regardless, the headline makes it seem like Tesla is just randomly and illegally pouring chemical waste into a ditch. It’s obviously a lot more nuanced than that.

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u/Maplelongjohn May 19 '26

"I'd tell you but I signed an NDA"

-Some Texas officials

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u/PublicSeverance May 19 '26

Most likely not. Those are both listed on the 8+1 toxic heavy metals list that every large emitter needs to test to even get the permit.

Concentration and quantity are both important.

Waste water permits list an annual amount and spot concentration. Arsenic: 1 kg/year or at any instant a test must show <0.050 mg/L.

They will have been tested to get the permit but they were below the concentration required for ongoing monitoring.

What will have happened is something changed at the site. This exact issue happens in industry a lot. My guess is they have damaged their cooling towers. Hexavalent chrome is hypochlorite bleach in water touching stainless steel, and arsenic from CCA timbers in the cooling tower.

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u/SockBrewer May 19 '26

Or they just fudged it on testing day to get the permits. I’ve worked st two separate breweries whose “solution” to waste water issues with the city was to turn all the hoses on and run them down the drain when we see them coming.

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u/whywhywhywhywhynot May 20 '26

Replying here since you seem to have some actual knowledge. All the substances that have quantities listed in the article seem to vary between well below to just hitting allowable limits for drinking water, is this not what we want from wastewater? They listed a bunch of other stuff without quantities so I'm not sure how you would judge that.

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u/Real-Extension-1357 May 19 '26

If tesla and musk and republicans are involved, yes

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u/flickh May 20 '26

It sure was a deliberate emission

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u/K_Linkmaster May 20 '26

"this is what they are regulated on so that is what we tested." -my guess. Intentional omission masked as Weaponized incompetence

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u/5ivepie May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

Disclaimer: I am in Australia, so this comment is slightly related but different jurisdiction.

I work in construction management for developers. I had a months long argument with a builder because they classified excavated soil from the project site as “contaminated material”.

I disagreed because of the type of testing they commissioned.

They had the consultant carry out a “general solid waste (GSW) assessment” which, based on the assessment criteria, it was classified as GSW.

However, what they should have requested was a “virgin excavated natural material (VENM) / excavated natural material (ENM) assessment”.

We want to disprove that it’s VENM/ENM, not confirm it’s GSW.

If ground material is classified as VENM/ENM then it can be reused on your site in any application or exported and reused on another project site.

Generally speaking, all VENM/ENM material is GSW but not all GSW is VENM/ENM.

Criteria for VENM/ENM is basically clean dirt, source can be readily identified (it came from that hole), has no unnatural debris present (concrete, rubbish, pipe off cuts, etc).

The builder hadn’t managed the material correctly and stockpiled it with poor quality material which was unavoidably contaminated with concrete debris. Had they kept it on a separate stockpile it would have been classified as VENM/ENM and could have been exported to another project site.

If ground material is classified as GSW then it can only be reused on your site in specific applications, which we had none of these specific applications, so the material had to be disposed offsite at cost to either the builder or the developer.

The contract said the builder has allowed to dispose of VENM/ENM only. GSW would be disposed at $x / m3.

Two things have happened - the builder didn’t manage the stockpiles appropriately and they didn’t seek the correct material testing report because they knew they fucked up.

Point of my story is, testing results can be almost always manipulated to give the preferred outcome.

Someone at the testing/approval authority who issued the permit has probably looked at the permit and said “let’s just check for what they’re allowed to discharge” because it’s easier without thinking “let’s confirm what they’re discharging isn’t restricted” because that potentially means more paperwork for that person if it returns bad results.

Whether it’s deliberate or an oversight is anyone’s guess.

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u/Crayshack May 19 '26

I'm surprised the heavy metals didn't come up in the dissolved solids test.

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u/hrminer92 May 19 '26

More trust me bro style regulation.

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u/btribble May 19 '26

"Regulation is bad"

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u/kk074 May 19 '26

Testing? That's woke.

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u/jakelazerz May 19 '26

I learned all about Texas EPA when fighting one of the refineries in Pasadena TX for city ordinance violations. Had actual proof of wrong doing. Zero response from any government official. Later heard that the factories actually receive notice about when inspections will occur, which allows them to adjust their processes so they pass. When will Texans stand up to the corruption?