SpaceX accused of dumping mercury into Texas waters for years

Actual article: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/12/spacex-repeatedly-polluted-w...

SpaceX Responds:

CNBC’s story on Starship’s launch operations in South Texas is factually inaccurate. ... We only use potable (drinking) water in the system’s operation. ... We send samples of the soil, air, and water around the pad to an independent, accredited laboratory after every use of the deluge system, which have consistently shown negligible traces of any contaminants. Importantly, while CNBC's story claims there are “very large exceedances of the mercury” as part of the wastewater discharged at the site, all samples to-date have in fact shown either no detectable levels of mercury whatsoever or found in very few cases levels significantly below the limit the EPA maintains for drinking water. ...

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1823080774012481862

This is NOT true! I'm no fan of Musk but this is false.

How does the mercury get into the water?

In other, totally unrelated news: Cancer rates are rising in young people.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41225678

It's a mystery why.

Don't worry, it's only a matter of time before the supreme court hamstrings the EPA and the clean water act. Then it won't matter how much mercury is pumped into the water.

The article gives no hint as to why there are high levels of mercury in SpaceX's water deluge system.

Elon would not be trying to buff his "Evil Billionaire" rep...right?

There are people that find something wrong with nothing at all.

""environmental organizations published an open letter voicing anger with the tests while highlighting Starbase’s proximity to indigenous sacred lands""

How dare they get close to indigenous lands.

This is what dirty politics looks like. This!

Irrespective of how you personally feel about Musk, consider that this is targeting a company with thousands of employees run by… its CEO Glenn Shotwell, not Musk.

SpaceX is terrifying to the competition: both dinosaurs like ULA, and also newcomers like Blue Origin.

The article states: “In total, the Harlingen region received 14 complaints alleging environmental impacts from the Facility’s deluge system.”

Umm… what!? Fourteen? Fourteen locals were wading through the local mud within spitting distance of the launch towers taking what… water samples? It’s tap water! If it has mercury in it then the real article should be about mercury in the tap water!

“I have a complaint to make! Yes I would like to remain anonymous, but you can call me… umm… Beff Jezos. Yes, I’m personally and financially affected by SpaceX activities and would like to file a complaint.”

The popsci article was definitely written by an anti-Musk hack. I seriously wouldn’t surprised if he took a bribe to write a “hit piece”, because if he didn’t he’s doing dirty work for billionaires for free.

We shouldn’t reach for the stars, unless every local office of everything is fully satisfied that all of the paperwork is filed.

Speaking of which: “Neither regulator answered CNBC’s questions regarding SpaceX’s statement.”

You don’t talk about corruption to the media. It’s shameful what they’re doing, otherwise they’d be happy to clarify the issue to the public.

I think the headline conflates a bunch of things to make clickbait.

It does seems there are accurate and correct complaints about EPA violations, etc at the Boca chica site, and there are also accusations of mercury (and presumably other materials) being detected.

My reading of the article, and the plain text reading of the spacex statement mean I don’t think there’s sufficient factual basis to go from the known EPA violations to “put mercury in the water”.

The regulatory violations seem objectively true, but those regulations are in place because historically that lack of guards led to terrible dumping. So the regulations mean such stuff is detected early and punished if it does happen. However it’s important to realize that the violations in the actual complaint are not “spacex dumped stuff” they are “spacex did not get the required approvals or let us do the testing”. They’re important issues, and need to be addressed, but the issues are very explicitly not “we have reason to believe that there were issues”.

I think a more practical comparison for us normies would be “you had a competent electrician rewire your house or a plumber do significant work without getting a permit or inspection”. In reality for most cases people aren’t trying to have their house catch fire or fill with .. stuff .. but legally you’re required to get permits and inspections.

Those permits and inspections exist to prevent/deter the kinds of people who do try to do substandard work, but you can’t write a law that says “the only people subject to this law are the ones trying to violate it”, so everyone has to do stuff that for most people isn’t necessary.

Alternatively it’s illegal to drive a car without functioning brakes, so in many countries your have to have your car checked annually. Most people aren’t going to drive an unsafe car, but to protect “most” from some, everyone has to get a WOF(or similar).

So my reading of the article is the EPA complaint currently is just “they didn’t follow the approval and testing parts of the regulatory requirements”, nothing more.

The article then brings in a bunch of other allegations that aren’t in the actual EPA complaint to try and put those accusations on the level as the actual complaint, because yay clicks!

It’s quite possible those other allegations are true (because that’s pretty standard corporate behavior - prior corp behaviour is why the EPA and similar exist), but equally they could be false (there’s no additional pollutants), false (the pollutants are there, but from old dumping), false (the pollutants are there but from a different company), etc

Musk is a shitty person, and corporate behavior when awful chemicals are involved is often garbage, but misrepresenting things merely provides ammunition when groups are actually doing illegal stuff to say “look, this is the same lies and BS they wrote here” so I really wish it would stop.

If people want to shit on space Karen they should focus on the awful shit we know he does, there’s no need to invent stuff.