SpaceX’s Starship launches at the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, have allegedly been contaminating local bodies of water with mercury for years. The news arrives in an exclusive CNBCreport on August 12, which cites internal documents and communications between local Texas regulators and the Environmental Protection Agency.
SpaceX’s fourth Starship test launch in June was its most successful so far—but the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built continues to wreak havoc on nearby Texas communities, wildlife, and ecosystems. But after repeated admonishments, reviews, and ignored requests, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have had enough.
And you just know Texas lawmakers were fine with this because the right people got paid off to look the other way by Musk.
The dangers of mercury poisoning are well understood. We’re talking about insanity, paralysis and death. Nobody can pull a, “we had no idea” excuse. Google “Minimata Japan disaster” if you want to know what happens when a corporation poisons people with mercury for nearly 40 years.
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This is how they make more Republicans.
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i thought that was how they cracked the tiles for aesthetic purposes.
No, that was just how they hit the crack.
oh, that’s what they mean when they say crack.
They are susceptible to various brain damaging chemicals
I thought that was lead.
Little bit of this, little bit of that.
I wish some good old boys would force musk and his lackeys to drink and swim in that water, it’s the right thing to do and rase them much higher in my eyes
I remember this article from a couple days ago where some chess player poisoned their opponent’s board with mercury, and I’d like to believe they copied this strategy from Musk’s SpaceX. He is truly a visionary and innovator, inspiring chess players to discover new strategies.
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Clean water is for pussies.
Well when you only consume monster energy drinks and miller lite, why would you need water?
Not ‘conservatives’
Nothing conservative about them
I mean they are referred to as conservatives because of their predominantly archaic social and economical laws not because they conserve the ecology
Their politics are not conservative. They are inflammatory and extremist.
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Agreed. I’ve read an article hear and there over the past couple years about this and how a reckoning is coming. Space-X leaving California in favor of Texas is too big an advertisement for their brand. They won’t do anything to upset the Musky child.
Y’all actually need to read the article before commenting:
One of the major initial concerns—the wastewater’s mercury content—stems from what experts believe may be egregious typos within SpaceX’s records. Lab reports indicate polluted waters contained 0.113 μg/L of mercury, while subsequent summaries appear to misplace the decimal point to show 113 μg/L. If the former measurement is accurate, then Starship’s wastewater contains roughly 1/17th the legal mercury limit.
SpaceX has done some shady shit regarding their environmental practices, but this claim about mercury just ain’t it. Some of the comments further down go into more detail.
That says if the former figure is accurate… But if it’s the latter? Then it’s 100 times more than 1/17th which would mean it’s waaay more than the legal limit… So it depends in which is the typo.
I’m going to assume a lab report is more accurate than its summary.
I am going to assume letting companies police their own pollutants is fucking stupid.
Yo gen alpha with mercury in their brains?
Ok so, going to the CNBC article and my own memory, as charitably summarized as I can:
Boca Chica is originally built with certain parameters and specifications, before Musk announced they would be doing all of the testing for Starship at that location.
Then, SpaceX just started doing so, and then asked for permission from relevant regulatory bodies … later.
At this point, Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube did a video or two specifically going into the details of exactly how bonkers it is to do huge scale rocket testing basically half a kilometer away from protected nature zones.
Then, one of the Starship tests blew apart huge parts of the launch pad after Elon had said that would not be a problem.
Then, Elon folded on that notion, and built the water deluge system and modified the launching configuration, without getting any permits beforehand from relevant regulatory agencies.
So the run off from all that water has been going into a protected natural environment for… about a year now.
The EPA began investigating this in August of 2023, and informed SpaceX they were in violation in March of 2024.
Literally the day after SpaceX was formally notified their water deluge system was in violation, SpaceX did its third Starship test, again using the water deluge system.
Now, cue SpaceX lying all over the place, saying that they’ve been told they were allowed to do this the whole time, and that there were no detectable levels of mercury in the discharge, even though their own permit that they belatedly filed indicates the detectable level of mercury in the discharge were about 50x the safe level.
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its permit application that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health.
To conclude:
“Further wastewater discharges could trigger more investigations and criminal charges for the company or any of the people involved in authorizing the launches,” he said.
- Eric Roesch, Environmental Engineer
Basically, the environmental aspects of this have been a known and ongoing shit show for over a year, but have only been covered by a few YouTube channels and blogs, vastly drowned out by the cacophony of SpaceX fans.
I highly suggest every one check out Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube, they have been calling bullshit on SpaceX for a while now.
In particular, one interesting vid they did shows that a former NASA administrator bullshitted her own request for project process to get it awarded to SpaceX, using blatant double standards.
I say former NASA admin because quite quickly after rubber stamping a huge amount of taxpayer money toward Starship development, she now works for SpaceX.
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its permit application that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health.
Upon closer inspection, it seems possible that this discrepancy is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report. The actual value may be closer to 0.113 micrograms per liter, not 113.
I’m very curious as to who this NASA admin is…no name comes to mind?
Kathy Lueders
Ah you beat me to it, I stepped away for dinner =P
Thank you!
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Yes, thats what SpaceX is saying.
As of right now, the original blurb I quoted from the CNBC article has been modified to this:
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its July permit application — under the header Specific Testing Requirements - Table 2 for Outfall: 001 — that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health
CNBC is currently sticking with their report. This is not factually inaccurate information, it is a clarification, a specification.
Perhaps SpaceX could actually provide evidence that they submitted a version with the typo fixed, that TCEQ is ‘currently updating the application’, or that other lab tests corroborate that the 0.113 number?
Either way, doesn’t change the number of complaints the TCEQ received, that SpaceX was releasing deluge water for roughly a year without permission to do so, that they were told to stop doing that and then did it again literally the next day.
They also wrote <0.113 on table 16 at the same outfall.
Table 2 and 16 also have 139 and 0.139 for sample 2, reversed so T2: (113/0.139) T16: (<0.113/139)
No matter how you look at it, that’s extremely shoddy reporting by CNBC. Whoever wrote that report also needs to have a long chat with their supervisor.
Also SpaceX claims they had permission to do it based on existing rules they are under, AND TCEQ was there to help with the first test even. The EPA had factually incorrect information when they requested they stop, and then gave the A-OKAY once SpaceX corrected their misunderstandings.
edit: Selenium also goes from 2.86 to 28.6 on sample 1
Don’t worry, with the Chevron ruling out of the way, this can be thrown out in court and promptly swept under the rug. 💪🇺🇲🦅
Thanks for the summary! Very easy to follow.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but wouldn’t diluting the runoff with more than 1:50 ratio with fresh water fix this problem? If it’s joining a large body of water down the line, wouldn’t that effectively negate the problem?
I don’t know anything about the area or it’s ecosystem. But it seems like being close to protected wilderness is kind of a prerequisite for this kind of thing, because you can’t have human inhabitants nearby. And it seems that logically, large swaths of unoccupied land would be zoned as such until there was a need for some kind of development.
I am far from an expert on the toxicity of mercury (and that’s nearly certainly just one kind of pollutant in this scenario), but it seems unlikely this would solve the problem.
The same amount of mercury is still being emitted, it just might lessen the amount that gets absorbed by immediately local soil… and just disperse it a bit more evenly over a longer range eventually mostly pooling along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Which… is still part of a protected natural environment with endangered species living in it. As I recall, there is specifically a species of endangered turtles that live in this area, so, they’re still fucked, along with I think some other endangered birds, reptile and small mammals.
What they should have is a proper method of containing this dirty water, filtering and extracting dangerous chemicals, and a proper way of disposing those.
But that would require foresight and planning, which is anathema to Musk’s ‘move fast and break stuff’ style of ‘rapid iteration’.
Also, It is not true that large sections of uninhabited land are necessarily zoned as some kind of protected habitat. It is true there are lots of areas of the US where this is the case, but not totally.
Musk was trying desperately to get NASA to let him use Cape Canaveral for Starship, but they viewed this (correctly, in hindsight) as too risky.
So, when they said no, and he had deadlines to meet, basically said ‘fuck it’, took his existing facility and massively illegally upgraded it far beyond what was legally allowed by initial use permits, and just did everything Starship there, generally completely ignoring any concept of ‘regulations’ that might apply to this.
He could have actually given investors and NASA themselves more realistic budget and timeframe ideas for how expensive and time consuming it would be to do this properly, but he did not.
What they should have is a proper method of containing this dirty water, filtering and extracting dangerous chemicals, and a proper way of disposing those.
It is also important to note that the dirtiness of the water may have been misreported. It seems possible that this story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report. The actual concentration of mercury may be 1000x lower.
One of the fundamental principals of the RCRA is that dilution is not an allowable solution to pollution. Otherwise, you could just say that any amount of pollution is below applicable concentrations after it mixed into the oceans, atmosphere, whatever. And any company could emit as much as they wanted as long as they diluted it. Oil spills could simply be left alone because they’d eventually distribute throughout the earth.
Concentrations must be considered as they occur in their process streams. The process stream must meet certain requirements first and foremost, and it must be further checked to see if that could significantly affect the air or water in which it is emitted, just to make sure its good to go since water flow, temperature, and wildlife migration change throughout the year. The same is true for air emissions as well.
Thank you for some more specific commentary on this.
I had a gut feeling that uh… reverse homeopathy probably is not a legitimate methodology to approach environmental toxins with.
I highly suggest every one check out Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube
They lost their credibility as soon as they started hating on Musk for clicks and views. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of valid criticism of Musk, but criticizing anything and everything related to Musk no matter what has become Common Sense Skeptic’s entire brand and business strategy. I don’t think they can be considered an unbiased party.
Thank you very much for the synopsis. I am disgusted and unsurprised.
Just a small correction about the pad exploding/water deluge system.
They were already working on the water deluge system before the pad blew up. They simply didn’t think it was going to explode like that since it worked as expected during the half thrust test, and the water system wasn’t ready yet.
Maybe they should have had the water system ready before the full test just in case.
Like someone concerned about health and safety would do.
Why would you wait to have something else ready if you think what you have is going to work?
All the physics modeling they did and live tests showed that the concrete should work.
When it looks like something should work, you test it. They had approval to test it after showing it should work.
These people are launching and landing rockets at a pace never done before, they know how to model these kind of things. Now obviously something went very wrong here, but it wasn’t just a willy nilly choice.
You test the things that you think will work, otherwise you never know if they’ll work.
While the concrete may not have been their final decision for Boca Chica, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a possible solution for other location where a large quantity of potable water isn’t available.
Edit: just further to possible other locations, the concrete if it worked, wouldn’t allow the rapid turn around time they want as they’d need to set new concrete vs piped water ready to go. But for a launch location that maybe wouldn’t need the rapid cadence, maybe it’d be perfect and cheaper if it’d work.
Why would you wait to have something else ready if you think what you have is going to work?
Because it might not work, and we’re talking about millions of dollars worth of rocketry here, not a bottle rocket launched in your back yard.
These people are launching and landing rockets at a pace never done before, they know how to model these kind of things.
Obviously not, or the pad wouldn’t have blown up.
Now obviously something went very wrong here, but it wasn’t just a willy nilly choice.
Which is why you implement backup/alternative systems.
Because it might not work
LOL. Dude, they weren’t even sure that the ROCKET wouldn’t destroy the pad (edit: as in, the WHOLE launch pad including the tower). They’re literally making the largest most advanced rocket ever. There are countless unknowns until you test it.
Exactly, which is why implementing backup systems or planning for catastrophic failure modes is a Really Good Idea.
lol
Standard for engineers is to have backup systems to your backup systems.
Especially for something as important as a rocket that will someday have astronauts on it.
This was cost cutting and rushing which is bullshit pushed by management, not engineers who know what they’re doing.
This is a TEST rocket program.
The goal of the program is to figure out what does and doesn’t work.
There are numerous
zerosingle failure points all over the ship currently as they figure things out.Using the concrete was a way to test if they could set up a launch pad easier. ALL their tests and modeling proved it should work.
Tests and modeling aren’t the end all be all though and sometimes things you don’t or can’t anticipate happen and then you remodel with the new info. This isn’t a high school project, it’s rocket science.
There was nothing bullshit about testing it out.
The goal of IFT1 was don’t blow up the entire stage 0. They didn’t blow up the entire stage 0. They learned the concrete doesn’t work, but also hopefully they were able to learn WHY. And if they found a why that why may lead to it being attempted again in the future maybe even by someone else.
You’re not an engineer, are you?
No, I’m not an engineer (and that’s an Ad Hominem fallacy). But for the love of god, SpaceX is a terrible company because they launched a rocket with INTENTIONALLY missing heat shield points to see what would happen (edit: all while knowing if certain heat shield tiles failed it would guarantee the complete destruction of the ship, that would obliterate any crew you’re oh so concerned about in this test phase!), and even launched their rocket with wing flaps that they suspected would be destroyed by the hot plasma and had already made changes in future designs! God forbid they test a ablative concrete launch pad that survived all their real world tests and showed it should work in models.
Good thing the supreme Court expects companies to not do this shit
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Extremely not based >:(
Cringe, some might say
When sending probes to Mars or other rocky bodies, NASA is very careful about biological contamination. They don’t want to seed the planet with some extremophile, or contaminate their own samples and mistakenly think it’s native life.
When SpaceX wants to go to Mars and is also doing this shit, why should we trust them to take the same care?
Planetary Protection is one of my absolute FAVORITE can of worms!! Obviously it is a good idea to be careful and mindful, but I personally believe that NASA’s current policies are complete overkill.
Let’s think this through. Why don’t we want to bring earth life to another world?
Maybe because then we won’t be able to tell whether it is indigenous or not? Baloney! Imagine you accidentally bring a lizard to an island that doesn’t have them. If it is indigenous, there would be evidence of them being there in the past, through fossils or otherwise!
Maybe we don’t want to infect any life that is on that other planet, that earth life could take over that ecosystem like an invasive species? Astronomically unlikely. All earth life is evolved to live in its specific environment and to interact with the species with which it has evolved alongside. As such, totally unrelated organisms form different planets would be so completely alien to each other that they would be unlikely to interact to begin with. Additionally Mars, for example, definitively has no macro-fauna or flora. As such, any possible microbes on Mars would be completely at a loss on how to interact with humans or indeed any earth life.
Finally, Earth and Mars, for example, exchange ~500 kilograms of material every year. Analysis shows that some of that material never exceeded a temperature high enough for sterilization. Thus, if there was any life on mars, it would have reached us by now, living in our biosphere along with us.
Anyways I’m a big nerd and I hope this stuff is interesting!
Maybe we don’t want to infect any life that is on that other planet, that earth life could take over that ecosystem like an invasive species? Astronomically unlikely
If you were to pick out any one microorganism and try to get it to grow on Mars without any support, you’re right that it would probably die off. If you were to take a pile of random dirt full of microorganisms and drop it on Mars, they would also probably all die off. But if you keep doing this a lot with dirt and rocks from many different environments on Earth, you may eventually find one that thrives.
There are organisms that carve out some tiny evolutionary niche until they have just the right conditions, and then explode. For example, Ideonella sakaiensis eats PET plastics. It was sitting around doing its thing for millions or billions of years, and then we gave it a place to thrive with all our plastic junk.
There are places on Earth that have some similarities to Mars. It’s quite possible something would survive there.
I agree completely! Life is so cool. I would also say that we are a very, very long way from sending tons of dirt to Mars, but current probes are essentially sterilized, which adds billions to their cost, and for what?
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I can see why Elon hates government regulatory bodies.
How dare they stop him poisoning millions of people and entire ecosystems, causing irreparable damage just so he can save a few bucks on waste disposal fees? This is so unfair!
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If we are going to say that foreign members can’t own large media companies aka Tiktok, maybe we could expand it to all media companies to ensure a certain Australian has to sell his, and government contracts all be required to be owned by naturalized americans as well. Seems like they have proven are a huge threat and have violated multiple factors of our government/ laws
If you’re referring to Murdoch, unfortunately he is a US citizen…
SpaceX has replied to the CNBC report
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1823080774012481862
For those not wanting to click an X link
CNBC’s story on Starship’s launch operations in South Texas is factually inaccurate.
Starship’s water-cooled flame deflector system is critical equipment for SpaceX’s launch operations. It ensures flight safety and protects the launch site and surrounding area.
Also known as the deluge system, it applies clean, potable (drinking) water to the engine exhaust during static fire tests and launches to absorb the heat and vibration from the rocket engines firing. Similar equipment has long been used at launch sites across the United States – such as Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Stations in Florida, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California – and across the globe.
SpaceX worked with the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) throughout the build and test of the water deluge system at Starbase to identify a permit approach. TCEQ personnel were onsite at Starbase to observe the initial tests of the system in July 2023, and TCEQ’s website shows that SpaceX is covered by the Texas Multi-Sector General Permit.
When the EPA issued their Administrative Order in March 2024, it was done without an understanding of basic facts of the deluge system’s operation or acknowledgement that we were operating under the Texas Multi-Sector General Permit.
After we explained our operation to the EPA, they revised their position and allowed us to continue operating, but required us to obtain an Individual Permit from TCEQ, which will also allow us to expand deluge operations to the second pad. We’ve been diligently working on the permit with TCEQ, which was submitted on July 1st, 2024. TCEQ is expected to issue the draft Individual Permit and Agreed Compliance Order this week.
Throughout our ongoing coordination with both TCEQ and the EPA, we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop and we were informed that operations could continue.
TCEQ and the EPA have allowed continued operations because the deluge system has always complied with common conditions set by an Individual Permit, and causes no harm to the environment. Specifically:
- We only use potable (drinking) water in the system’s operation. At no time during the operation of the deluge system is the potable water used in an industrial process, nor is the water exposed to industrial processes before or during operation of the system.
- The launch pad area is power-washed prior to activating the deluge system, with the power-washed water collected and hauled off.
- The vast majority of the water used in each operation is vaporized by the rocket’s engines.
- 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.
- Retention ponds capture excess water and are specially lined to prevent any mixing with local groundwater. Any water captured in these ponds, including water from rainfall events, is pumped out and hauled off.
- Finally, some water does leave the area of the pad, mostly from water released prior to ignition and after engine shutdown or launch. To give you an idea of how much: a single use of the deluge system results in potable water equivalent to a rainfall of 0.004 inches across the area outside the pad which currently averages around 27 inches of rain per year.
With Starship, we’re revolutionizing humanity’s ability to access space with a fully reusable rocket that plays an integral role in multiple national priorities, including returning humans to the surface of the Moon. SpaceX and its thousands of employees work tirelessly to ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in space, and we remain committed to working with our local and federal partners to be good stewards of the environment.
Water is hauled off… where? Beyond the environment?
Mars.
Probably to a proper treatment facility like all other potentially bad water goes.
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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.
I think this discrepancy may have been caused by a typo in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.
Wow.
I wonder what CNBC is gonna say about that.
That’s pretty embarrassing if that’s what happened partially triggering this article.
Also that poor person who wrote the report up is probably going to get an earful too now.
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I wonder what CNBC is gonna say about that.
If they have integrity, they’ll issue a retraction/correction. However, I do not have high hopes.
that poor person who wrote the report up is probably going to get an earful.
LOL, yeah. I bet they never expected their report to get blown out of proportion to this extent.
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Can you stop spamming the fucking thread.
Interesting, glaring red flag and no one caught it, or cared, until someone made a stink about it. Credit where credit’s due, that’s what journalism does. This tells me there were zero eyes that cared on this entire permit process.
If the TCEQ measured it, the EPA needs to double check their work. The typos in the report are a cause for concern, and the Texas agency needs to be put under scrutiny.
So you still think there’s a mercury problem?
we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop
If that question is being asked then maybe it should be stopped.
What a weird take to make.
They are constantly in talks with these people. They probably ask this exact question every time they’ve used it and sent them more data about it.
Should you stop eating? I think you better since the question is being asked!
My point is that Space X obviously think this is a concern. If they were totally confident their actions are sufficient they wouldn’t keep asking.
Any and all claims being made by SpaceX should be verified by an objective third party. We should never simply take a company at their word, but that is especially true of a company that has Elon Musk, a man known to disseminate falsehoods as its Chair, CEO, and CTO.
Musk != SpaceX
Related, yes, but not equivalent.
The cornerstone of all annual business ethics training so many drones (like me) have to endure every year: If you’re known for being dishonest, people will stop believing you. According to the training, they’ll also stop doing business with you, so maybe it’s a bit out of date.
According to the training, they’ll also stop doing business with you, so maybe it’s a bit out of date.
It is baffling. I, for one, would never buy any product or service from a company associated with Musk, but many other people are not so discerning.
Drop the hammer on them.
I think we would’ve noticed if they had crashed an entire planet into Texas, right?
