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Don’t hold the multi trillionaire accountable tho
Let’s charge them a comically small fine, that’ll teach them not to do it again!
$5
This is what motherfickers do when there’s no consequences for breaking the law
From the article:
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.
No law is being broken. This may be terrible, but it’s legal.
If our government isn’t up to holding criminals responsible, then it needs to be replaced root to stem.
Why no photo?
Seems like a photo of a pipe dislodging black sludge next to a photo of a tesla factory in a news page would instill a better sense of “evil corporation” to me.Said pipe:
That’s comically evil, except it’s not funny.
At a rate of like 2 and a half gallons of that sludge a second.
I like this take. More shit needs to be not funny.
For some reason I was expecting it to be fully submerged underground at least until the ditch
This article links to another article that has it on video and photographed. You can see the clearly black liquid flowing into the clear water in the drainage ditch. Helps to click the link and read the article!
I did and expected to find an image in the article. See, had I posted this on lemmy, I’d have posted an article closer to the source, with the photos. I assumed others would do the same. I assume too much, sorry.
Yea I’d rather have something closer to the source as well but maybe they don’t wanna give MSNBC the traffic as readily 🤷
Why bother with expensive waste disposing process when you can just dump it somewhere.
Externalities make the capitalism go round
We towed it outside the environment
It’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment… all there is out there is sea, birds, fish, and 20,000 tons of crude oil.
Plug pipe.
Wait nearby for repair crew & arrest them.
Repeat.
Don’t even wait for the drainage district to do it. What’s Tesla going to do, sue you for blocking their illegal dumping?
I think that the crew shouldn’t be held accountable and are victims themselves. So they should be treated with kindness. But in light of this case of course that is more likely to happen than seeing any real consequences for people in charge.
Tesla should receive a FIFA environmental prize.
So, which entry-level employee with no ability to be responsible for this will be fired, and how big will the fine they won’t have to pay be?
Companies don’t make structural mistakes. They are famously individualistic and unorganized and all illegal acts are by lone wolves and bad apples. All good work is done by CEO or the board. The rest of the individuals are parasites
/s in case someone needs
Aabout tree fiddy
Per the article:
The sample was collected on April 7. Eurofins issued its results on April 10. According to the lab report, the 24-hour composite found:
• Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around.
• Arsenic at 0.0025 mg/L. That is below the federal drinking water standard of 0.01 mg/L, but present.
• Strontium at 1.17 mg/L. Mazloum’s technical report on the findings noted that long-term exposure can affect bone density and kidney function in humans and wildlife.
• Lithium and vanadium at concentrations Lazarte’s letter described as abnormally high relative to rainwater or normal groundwater.
• Elevated levels of manganese, iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and potassium consistent with industrial discharge. Manganese, a battery process tracer, can have neurological effects at chronic doses. Excess phosphorus can cause algae blooms that strip oxygen from waterways.
• Ammonia in the form of nitrogen at 1.68 mg/L, amplifying the algae bloom risk
Let’s hope they didn’t just make the data up. Or falsify it at the request of Musk. https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2018/03/14/Pennsylvania-DEP-sanctions-Eurofins-QC-for-water-testing-violations/
3.6 Roentgen, not great, not terrible.
That’s a suspiciously low level of arsenic. Where is the arsenic from their wells or municipal water ending up or are they clandestinely pumping river water?
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And I’m guessing water treatment doesn’t fix these, does it?
It can. But you’d need a facility built to do it.
If you don’t anticipate Strontium in your wastewater, you’re not going to build a system to leech it out or neutralize it.
Isn’t that the important part of the story? Effing Texas regulators didn’t detect Strontium (or other pollutants the factory didn’t mention) so didn’t test for it?
We’re so used to the idea that companies will do the least they are mandated to, but isn’t that why we have regulators? If I get a new water heater I’m required to have an inspector sign off and his job is to flag anything that is off. Why can’t a multibillion dollar industrial facility be held to the same standard?
Effing Texas regulators didn’t detect Strontium (or other pollutants the factory didn’t mention) so didn’t test for it?
I mean, they did. That’s how we know about it. But what can they actually do about it? Prince Abbott will just cover this up and fire anyone who won’t shut up about it.
It was an independent lab that tested it because the ditch owners thought something was wrong. Tesla claims they also measured it incorrectly, but you can’t really dispute the color coming out, so something is in it.
Even if they did measure it incorrectly though, it’s going to be hard to dispute the lithium fingerprint they found, it would only be the other chemicals that become questionable. Seems like such a simple answer is to re-test it and re-test it immediately, and put them under extended re-testing scrutiny if the re-test comes back clean (maybe they changed something to fake the new test). Also re-test where the “incorrect” test was done to see if it gets similar results there as well. It’s not even pocket change to Tesla, it’s like a piece of lint in the pocket that a penny has touched change.
It was an independent lab that tested it
It was a public drainage district - specifically, Nueces County Drainage District No. 2 - that requested the lab be performed. These are municipal offices within the structure of the County that stumbled on a pipe authorized by the state and misused by Tesla’s facilities.
This is effectively a dispute between the county and the state, wherein the state has authorized dumping it should not have the legal authority to provide.
Given the state of Texas’ infrastructure, probably fair to assume this doesn’t exist.
Houston has one of the better waste water treatment plants in the country.
Robstown, though? Idk. Doubt it
If a discharge pipe is traced back to a company - and it is discharging unsafe levels or typically unexpected chemicals - then it should be on that company to get their waste water into a manageable condition.
Just because a municipal/council/whatever has above average water processing, doesn’t mean companies get a free pass to abuse it
It’s Texas so nobody will do anything
Which is why he moved there in the first place
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I know a fun game with Elon Musk and a funnel
Ah, the good old Swedish Drink.
Deregulated Red Run Oblast problems and the voters continue to support it. “Ain’t shit gonna happen to the dirty neo-Nazi.” Good luck with the lack of potable water situation you morons.
This is some Chemetco level shit
Wooow, it’s like when your SimCity takes a terrible turn.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone accidentally crushed that pipe shut with a trackhoe.
pipe shut with a trackhoe
I ran crosscountry in high school.
was this in Idaho?
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Then it goes completely uncontrolled into the ground and is very hard to remove. What you want to do is to seal the pipe so the back flow happens inside the facility (assuming they didn’t completely butcher the pipe installation, which… you know… isn’t safe to assume)
They probably have backflow preventers
Then just build a second pipe directing it right back into their lobby.
That, I can get behind
Nah, that would cost extra.
What an appropriate username for this article
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What it did not do, explicitly, was grant Tesla the right to use public or private property for wastewater conveyance. The drainage district that manages the ditch the pipe was discharging into was never notified that the permit existed. Its workers found out the way drainage district workers in any small Texas county find out about things: by walking the ditch and seeing something new.
If the discharge permit is a good thing or a bad thing for the environment is another topic. But right now this seems to be the only legal issue in the room, right?
At least one that implicates Tesla. The people that permitted them to discharge and didn’t include relevant pollutant values in said discharge are
having a bad dayenjoying their private yacht.
