As I noted in previous threads this is brazen lying: they are not dumping tap water into the ground they are dumping (boiling hot) water that has been processed by blasting it with rocket fuel, which their own third-party analysis contains contaminants that are not present in "tap water".
By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.
This is probably the most basic environmental and health and safety law, namely to prevent businesses from dumping toxins into the water; trying to frame this as government overreach and knick-knack regulations is seriously depraved and it would be banana-republic-esque if he actually succeeds in ignoring or removing these rules.
Hello. I just want to start by saying I appreciate this post as every other post on this article is: "this is politically motivated because I think it is".
That being said... on the linked page it says:
> Outflow water has been sampled after every use of the system and consistently shows negligible traces of any contaminants, and specifically, that all levels have remained below standards for all state permits that would authorize discharge. TCEQ, the FAA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated the use of the system prior to its initial use, and during tests and launch, and determined it would not cause environmental harm.
I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but parent's comment that
> By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.
is patently wrong and unfortunately undermines their entire comment.
I believe SpaceX is stretching the truth and trying to sneak by with improper permits, but also people lying about what SpaceX is doing is not helping keep them in check and gives them ammunition.
Of course water in contact with the flamey end of a rocket has chemicals not found in drinking water, that's not really relevant. What's relevant are the actual levels in that water.
This unprofessional release mentions "literal" tap water being used. It appears that this is "literally" not true - is this a lie, or are you just upset with the parent comment's conclusion?
Both sides can be wrong and lying. Does it matter if water is "tap water" or if it meets the regulations for tap water? Lying to call someone out for lying just undermines the point.
Edit: Sigh, on re-reading the SpaceX statement they say the input water is "potable" and then later say, "Again, it uses literal drinking water", they never say "tap water". While an exaggeration, that is the definition of potable. They are not saying the output water is drinking water! Only that "all levels have remained below standards for all state permits that would authorize discharge."
But again, I'm not claiming they aren't lying or stretching the truth, just that we should be contesting them on the facts.
I wouldn't trust any analysis that SpaceX submits itself given Musk's long history of lying, including right now on this very subject. Others have pointed out problems in the way the water is being sampled (surface water vs ground water) but I'm not an expert. It is certainly possible that no serious contamination has already occurred.
But the way it works is not that you dump stuff out of your factory and then, after getting caught, try to run some tests to show it's okay. It's almost impossible to remove contaminants out of the water after the fact so the way it works is that you go through a process with the government where you show that you are not going to dump contaminants into the ground, then they issue a permit, then you can discharge the water. Otherwise you would have people doing what Musk is doing now, which is to dump the water first and if there is any irreversible contamination say "oops, my bad".
Contrary to what SpaceX has claimed USFWS does not regulate industrial waste water discharge (unsurprisingly). The TCEQ has said they are in violation. FAA has paused launches pending an investigation. Both should have done this many months ago.
In any case with respect to existing contamination the only thing I would trust is an independent third party testing lab testing the water with the data made public. I don't know why you would want anything else.
Industrial waste water permits are not less restrictive than domestic waste water. They could not have "filled in the wrong form" because they need a domestic waste water permit as well.
Also, these permits can't be applied for ahead of time for new technology that is still being developed.
I regularly face this issue in IT circles, where I'm supposed to have a time machine to compensate for the multi-month forewarning everyone else needs.
How is this different than launches at Canaveral or elsewhere? Don’t those pads also have water deluge systems and service a variety of liquid fueled rockets?
Can you link me to those processes? From everything I've seen, the shuttle basically had a much much more toxic exhaust and they just treated the pH of the water before dumping it or letting it evaporate.
Please remember that comments are supposed to get more interesting as they nest more. That guideline helps keep discussions from turning into flamewars or reddit style jokes.
It is telling, though, that the strongest argument against SpaceX seems to be whether they followed all the correct procedures rather than whether there was actually any harm.
If the facts aren't on your side, then pound the law I guess.
The area around the launch sites is used for neither.
As others have said, the letter of the law is being applied in a way that appears either punitive or corrupt. In all honesty if a few decades later it turned out that Bazos or Boeing were behind this I wouldn’t be shocked in the least.
“We can’t beat them with technology so we’ll beat them with red tape!”
The water is tap water. If it's toxic, then the source of the tap water should be punished for poisoning the civilian population, not the users of the tap water.
The fuel is just natural gas. Again, if it contains toxins such as mercury, then the source of the fuel should be punished because they are certainly delivering it to civilian users for cooking, or to industrial users elsewhere.
Why are we not hearing about those other linked pollution incidents!?
Or, is it that the pollution doesn't exist -- it is merely a sufficiently plausible fiction that is being used as an excuse to halt their progress?
Because from where I sit, it definitely looks like the latter.
Before you respond: Please very specifically explain why it is perfectly logical that there is no uproar about the "poisons" in cooking gas or the town water supply, but SpaceX's use of the same justifies stopping multi-billion dollar projects. But... not in any way investigating where the "poisons" might have come from. Just stopping SpaceX. No other actions. Just that.
How does this mixing happen? Consider the location of the deluge system and consider its right next to the ocean (which you really really shouldn't be drinking).
Do you actually think it plausible that any human could get sick when trying to drink their home water due to this discharge? Or are you just being contarian here?
SpaceX did not obtain a permit from the EPA to discharge industrial process water into the ground and therefore did not go through the steps the EPA requires to show that they aren't contaminating the water. I don't know if the tests they ran are reasonable or acceptable to the EPA --- we have expert agencies for a reason --- but in any case are only a part of the permitting process, where I imagine you have to show a number of things like how the contaminants will not build up over time, documenting mitigation and ongoing testing procedures, change processes etc.
It's funny too that apparently it's simultaneously tap water and also water that contains contaminants not found in tap water and that requires testing.
I guess at the end of the day I prefer the American government does everything it possibly can to fast-track these SpaceX launches. And I prefer the American government and the American citizen prioritizes space supremacy over the local environment of a launch site facility.
I think studies should be done to understand the environmental effects of the launch site. I think mitigations for pollutants (etc) should be put into place. I think there are reasonable requests that the government can make, and SpaceX (being a business) has different incentives. But I also see a clear political bias from the current administration, and we can't have that sort of thing preventing real and obvious technological progress. Our children need to see America achieve something great and that achievement needs to be tangible. Not a commodity. Not something ephemeral or stuck in "the cloud" somewhere. I understand that Kamala Harris wishes she had the censorship machine that Twitter provided her in 2020, but those days are gone and she and her boss need to put America first and find a way to put some rockets into space.
There are significant questions about how they do their testing. Apropos of anything else, the water is generally superheated which causes issues with microorganisms in the soil.
Saying "hey, below level trace contaminants over here, later on" isn't conclusive.
SpaceX IS being deliberately deceptive when they say (and emphasize in bold, in case we're dense): "Again, this is drinking water". Great. Let's do what they did in Flint, and have Musk and SpaceX take a drink from that "drinking water".
Remember, according to Tesla, FSD is already dozens to hundreds of times safer than human drivers[1].
[1] On the subset of roads, in the subset of weather, in the subset of driving conditions where it may be activated, when compared to "all human drivers, on all roads, in all weather, in all conditions". And don't forget, if airbags don't deploy, it's not an accident, according to Tesla.[2]
[2] This includes collisions at 20mph or more where the passenger restraint subsystem determines that it is safer not to deploy airbags (first gen airbags were dumb - impact above a certain force, deploy. Current airbags take into account angle of impact, deflections, etc., before deploying). Tesla amazingly also doesn't consider it to be an accident for their stats when the airbags didn't deploy because the vehicle was so damaged or destroyed by the accident that the system could not or did not deploy.
So forgive some of us for taking any Musk venture condescending press release with a grain of salt.
Drinking contaminated water to show it is safe is such a bad trope and doesn't prove anything; it's just the sort of stunt Musk would love to pull and we just may see it.
Unfortunately that is not how it will be perceived. If he drinks the water it will be taken to be proof that there is no problem with the water. This stunt has occurred before where a CEO drinks water that is later shown to be contaminated to prove it is safe.
You seem to be willfully misinterpretating SpaceX's post. They say that only potable water is used in the deluge process. That's all they are saying. They aren't saying that the post deluge water is potable.
No-one cares about the water before deluge, that's why. Worst case scenario, a leak there floods some wetlands with "drinking water".
People are only concerned about the post deluge water.
Why does SpaceX repeatedly, and condescendingly, keep saying "Again, this is drinking water!"
So no, I don't think he's willfully misinterpreting SpaceX's post. In fact, I think SpaceX's repeated references to drinking water, at a non-problematic stage of the complaints, is willfully misleading.
Combustion is imperfect and it is occurring over metal which will erode into the mix of air and water. Then there is also whatever chemicals and material are on the ground prior to launch activities that get washed away with the deluge system
I would imagine most of the wash away is not close to the exhaust, but down slope, mainly consisting of construction, maintenance, and vehicle activities.
Though the area does receive many orders of magnitude more water from natural rainfall than the deluge system, so anything present in that water would have been washed away anyway.
Not according to the tests SpaceX submitted themselves. But if it were you would first show that to the EPA and then they would give you a permit to go ahead.
I just don't understand why this seems to be an issue with this launch in particular, cause to me it just something that's done at every launch ever (throw water at a launching rocket). Isn't this a very well understood env impact anyway that Falcon 9 launches don't face those delays?
By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.
This is probably the most basic environmental and health and safety law, namely to prevent businesses from dumping toxins into the water; trying to frame this as government overreach and knick-knack regulations is seriously depraved and it would be banana-republic-esque if he actually succeeds in ignoring or removing these rules.