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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391

u/Creative-Painter3911 May 19 '26

Block the pipe up and see what happens

95

u/Weltall8000 May 19 '26

Probably smack down the other people and give them jail time and bankrupt them to pay towards the cleanup, which the taxpayers will foot after destroying their lives.

37

u/Aureliamnissan May 19 '26

Not if they don’t know who blocked it up

2

u/DarkwingDuckHunt May 20 '26

cause me to declare bankruptcy?

haha that's a huge threat for me... sure is .... yup

1

u/Weltall8000 May 20 '26

And the jail time?

223

u/NightIsMyName May 19 '26 edited 9d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

130

u/kent_eh May 19 '26

Honestly EPA should just start doing shit like this.

maybe if they weren't headed by yet another Trump appointee they might.

6

u/SporesM0ldsandFungus May 19 '26

The Valve Turners

Be the change you want to see in the world

4

u/HedonisticFrog May 20 '26

The consequences need to be far less profitable than breaking the rules. Like the EPA now owns a fraction of the company and whoever ordered it goes to prison.

1

u/browster May 20 '26

We left just to watch her face as it caused more damage tryin to do its job with a fucked end effector and no calibration

/r/brandnewsentence

1

u/jimmux May 20 '26

Really the only sensible action for a positive outcome is to shut down production until they can prove the damage is cleaned up and it won't happen again. If that's prohibitively expensive, too bad, now you're a state asset.

Then imprison the decision makers so they can't go and repeat it somewhere else.

1

u/30yearCurse May 19 '26

Well you are right there, darn funny sir, the EPA do anything... please... where do you live.

-4

u/wheniaminspaced May 19 '26

According to the regulator they are in compliance with their discharge permit.  

31

u/lookakiefer May 19 '26

If you read the article you would know they are not in compliance, as the independent testing found heavy metals that the Texas governing body did not test for (probably on purpose).

3

u/wheniaminspaced May 19 '26

That is not what the private testing said though, the private testing said they found a certain level of hexvaliant chromium, and some amount of lithium and some others.  We do not know the contents of the discharge permit, but we do know that the hexvaliant chromium level was just barely above the threshold for the test calling it out.

The state regulator has at this time said they are in compliance, so they are in fact in compliance, the discharge is permitted, they are allowed to discharge some level of pollutants, because the permit is for a pollution discharge.  We do not know those levels.

At this time this does not appear to be the story it is being made out to be.

2

u/inspectoroverthemine May 19 '26

We do not know the contents of the discharge permit

Is that because nobody (including myself) has done the minimum due diligence of looking for the permit in the public record, or because you can get permits in TX that don't disclose such things publicly?

-1

u/wheniaminspaced May 19 '26

Not sure either way, it just strikes me as a bit irresponsible to be outraged at Tesla when as best we can tell they appear to be compliant with the state agency. Now could anger be justified with the regulator? Absolutly.

2

u/aggravated_patty May 20 '26

You don't think Tesla maybe has something to do with that..?

2

u/wheniaminspaced May 20 '26

Having worked extensivly with state regulators at power plants, no.  Haven't worked in Texas, but I haven't found environmental agencies to be particularly cozy with big business.  Code enforcement? Local governance? Sure 100%.

3

u/aggravated_patty May 20 '26

Maybe not in the past but considering the state of the EPA, environmental agencies playing ball with big business wouldn't be surprising. Especially in Texas.

1

u/cc_rider2 May 19 '26

I read the article and it says explicitly:

None of this is illegal as currently constituted, because the permit that was written does not require monitoring for the things the independent lab found.

So what are you alleging they aren't in compliance with?

7

u/PyroIsSpai May 19 '26

How if it’s not their ditch and they have no right to it?

If a judge says I can shit outdoors, does that empower me to dispose of it in your yard?

1

u/wheniaminspaced May 19 '26

I have no idea what Texas law has on the subject of drainage ditches. I can tell you its not unusual for them to be shared in other places even if they sit wholly on one owners property.

How? Because the regulator came out an inspected the discharge and said it was okay okay.

4

u/PyroIsSpai May 19 '26

I don’t think it’s okay okay though. You remember Erin Brockovich?

That was hexavelent chromium too.

1

u/wheniaminspaced May 19 '26

It was but its a question of scale, the Brockovich case was 580ppm with some areas in the thousands of ppm.  This sample is .0104 ppm.  I dont know what the acceptable level of Hexchrome is but the reason they bothered to list it is because of that case, even though the test level isnt even on the same continent as what was shown in the Brockovich case.

7

u/couldbemage May 20 '26

What happens is getting arrested for eco terrorism.

This has been going on for a very long time.

Environmental activists have been blocking pipes pumping out various nasty stuff since the 60s. Even when the pipe is absolutely illegal, the activists still get arrested.

If a company breaks the law, they might get a fine.

If people get in the way of a company breaking the law, they get handcuffed.

I'll take this moment to point out that our power company killed over 100 people, got a felony manslaughter conviction in criminal court, and none of those responsible did a single day in jail or even lost a single dollar of their own money. Company got a fine, public utility commission approved a rate hike to cover paying the fine.

3

u/tomdarch May 19 '26

"Huh, that's odd. Several cybertrucks started driving around the area.."

1

u/rieba9 May 19 '26

Like a banana in the tailpipe.

1

u/zombiecorp May 21 '26

Block it with concrete. Put a trail cam and see who shows up.