Austin Samsung Facility Spills 763,000 Gallons of Acidic Waste into Local Tributary, “No Surviving Aquatic Life”

Tsing

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Image: Samsung



Samsung Austin Semiconductor, Samsung’s only manufacturing center in the U.S., had spilled over 700,000 gallons of acidic waste into its stormwater pond and an unnamed tributary of Harris Branch Creek in Northeast Austin over a period of several months, according to a memo shared on the city’s official website.



Austin’s Watershed Protection Department was alerted to the predicament on Tuesday, January 18, by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which found that “up to 763,000 gallons of acidic waste reached the stormwater pond on the Samsung property and also impacted the nearby tributary of Harris Branch Creek” over a period as long as 106 days. The spilling resulted in the tributary’s pH level falling to between 3 and 4, values that are overly acidic for surface water...
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MadMummy76 said:
But don't worry, pH has already returned to normal levels!

Like saying don't worry, oxygen levels will return to normal after you get spaced in an airlock.
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We have killed all of the fish but now the PH levels are returning to normal. These results are puzzling as it seems the fish caused the PH spike.
 
Why is there a way for the acidic waste to even get in to the retention pond in the first place? Oh, that's by design.

Same thing here on Lake Norman, but with raw sewage. Seems at least once a year Davidson County mistakenly dumps 10's of thousands of gallons of raw sewage directly in the lake. WOOPS. Why is there a raw sewage line leading directly to the lake unless the intent was to dump raw sewage in the lake.
 
Riccochet said:
Why is there a way for the acidic waste to even get in to the retention pond in the first place? Oh, that's by design.

Same thing here on Lake Norman, but with raw sewage. Seems at least once a year Davidson County mistakenly dumps 10's of thousands of gallons of raw sewage directly in the lake. WOOPS. Why is there a raw sewage line leading directly to the lake unless the intent was to dump raw sewage in the lake.
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That is a **** good point.
 
Riccochet said:
Why is there a way for the acidic waste to even get in to the retention pond in the first place? Oh, that's by design.

Same thing here on Lake Norman, but with raw sewage. Seems at least once a year Davidson County mistakenly dumps 10's of thousands of gallons of raw sewage directly in the lake. WOOPS. Why is there a raw sewage line leading directly to the lake unless the intent was to dump raw sewage in the lake.
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I had a similar thought on a recent river monsters episode where Jeremy Wade was tracking giant catfish in areas around Chernobyl that had existed for decades but recently been dying out. Things only got worse when he was allowed permits and tracked their diseased, dying, cousins in the cooling pond at Chernobyl and I was in shock to realize that water is just allowed to rejoin its own tributaries. Now granted that just shows how little I know about such things but it sure seems like that shouldn't be going back into the life water of all the farming communities downwind.
 
David_Schroth said:
Someone posted this on reddit and it caught fire... saw the highest load of visitors that we've ever seen, then the mods removed it. So sad!
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Way to remove any doubt about why censorship exists across social media.
 
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