Samsung Spilled Up To 763K Gallons of Sulfuric Acid Waste Into Austin Tributary (kxan.com) 56
New submitter blackprint writes: The City of Austin released a memo saying that Samsung released as much as 763,000 gallons of sulfuric acid waste into a Northeast Austin creek over a period as long as 106 days. They confirmed the leak has stopped, but no fish or macro invertebrates survived in the impacted area. They don't know if there are any long-term impacts, but pH levels in the area have returned close to normal. According to the memo, "Public access to this area is limited, and there are no nearby parks."
They have not stated the cause of the spill. "Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment," reports local news station KXAN, citing the memo. "WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish."
They have not stated the cause of the spill. "Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment," reports local news station KXAN, citing the memo. "WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish."
Sloppiness (Score:5, Informative)
According to Samsung’s report to TCEQ, the discharge stemmed from “a leak in a sump underneath a subfloor.”
Re:Sloppiness (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually pretty a common failure. Low pH water like this would need to be contained in a sump lined with acid brick or some kind of acid resistant polymer. If it wasn't regularly inspected (most aren't), a leak will quickly eat away the concrete and find itself a way out. I've seen it before, although the leak was just into the surrounding soil and not a waterway (and also not the worst thing to ever leak out).
1. 763k gallons over 106 days = 5 gpm, not a trivial leak but also not a flood. This is probably a swag from some poor engineer at Samsung who got a panic call when they found it because the math works out to almost precisely 5gpm. It's 200 gallons shy of 5gpm, so I bet the actual report was for 763,200. You can look them up on the TCEQ site if you're that interested. .... A drop of water is usually considered about 0.05 cc, so 1/18th of a drop in a liter of water. You could probably safely drink it in small quantities, even if it tasted like shit.
2. Because it is a strong, diprotic acid, a pH of 3-4 for sulfuric acid is actually a very low concentration, between 0.0005 and 0.00005 molar, or about 0.005-0.0005 wt% (molecular weight of sulfuric is close to 100g/mol). This is approximately 0.0027 mL of acid in one liter of water (gravity of 98% sulfuric is ~1.84)
While immediately bad for the aquatic life, and a complete fuckup by Samsung to not notice for this long (usually you are required have pH monitoring on outfalls to detect these kind of leaks), it is also not a long-term problem and will quickly return to normal because that's just how chemistry works.
Now if the waste had some persistent pollutants, that's a much bigger problem because they accumulate rather than neutralize.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely a f-up by Samsung and I'd expect a review to be done by the authorities of the plant in general to see if there are more infractions coming up.
Re: Sloppiness (Score:2)
LOL :)
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely a f-up by Samsung and I'd expect a review to be done by the authorities of the plant in general
Based on my experience working with regulators, that isn't going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Could still be a federal issue and not a state issue if the EPA gets involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely a f-up by Samsung and I'd expect a review to be done by the authorities of the plant in general
Based on my experience working with regulators, that isn't going to happen.
Especially "pro business" Texas regulators.
Re: (Score:3)
It was wastewater, not merely diluted sulfuric acid. So the question becomes what other shit was in the wastewater and whether that will have long term effects on the tributary itself. Probably not as there was no significant effect seen in the main creek branch. Also, the leakage that made it into the tributary was probably much less than 763k gallons, as that was largely what was caught in the stormwater pond itself.
Re: (Score:2)
O.o
No, the dead ecosystem will not "quickly" return to normal. It will take years, if not decades... If it ever does return to normal.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Libraries of Congress
Re: (Score:2)
Length of CVS Pharmacy receipt?
Re: please convert to standard units (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
763k US gallons (since that's in Austin) translates to 2888269.19 liters or in better terms 2888 cubic meters.
Or if you like to use 25x10 meter swimming pools you'd get 77 swimming pools of liquid.
If you lose that amount of sulfuric acid you should notice that even over that time. But maybe the company has been cutting costs so hard that there's nobody with competence at the plant to notice such things. A pretty common issue actually, and those left are executing a work climate of "not my F-in problem" and
Re:please convert to standard units (Score:4, Informative)
What is 763,000 gallons in Sydney Harbours?
The usual volume unit is Olympic swimming pools. Is there some reason not to use that?
For reference, according to my friend Mr. Google, an Olympic pool has 660,253.09 gallons of water, so this was just over an Olympic pool of sulfuric acid spilled.
Re: (Score:3)
Not to disparage your volumetric Google skills, but the leak has been corrected to described it as "diluted acidic wastewater", not sulfuric acid. See the previous description by ByTor-2112 above about the probable composition of the acidic content. [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What is 763,000 gallons in Sydney Harbours? If it was in 44 gallon drums, how many Golden Gate Bridges would it span? Raw numbers are meaningless. Writers should stick to real world units of measure.
Well, to start with, it's a cube about 48 feet on a side. It's about 0.0006% of a Sydney Harbour. In 44 gallon drums, it would span about 3.9 Golden Gate bridges with the drums arranged upright, side to side.
Don't want to anthropomorphize too much (Score:4, Interesting)
But that seems like an unpleasant way to die.
Re: (Score:2)
Well to a fish it's not any better than being eaten and encountering an acid in the stomach.
Repercussions (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully they will get a sternly worded warning about doing something like this again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully they will get a sternly worded warning about doing something like this again.
Hopefully, they will get a multimillion dollar fine, but I am not holding my breath. There is no excuse for this sort of thing. They should be monitoring the pH of their waste streams in real time. It is very easy to do, all you need is a pH meter and an alarm and you would know immediately. The plant manager should be fired and in a perfect world sent to jail.
Re:Repercussions (Score:4)
This is Texas, the reason companies are coming here is precisely because the government will be doing nothing. If the average joe funds it via taxes AND those taxes can't be siphoned off by the state government somehow, it can happen, but applying a regulation? Nope.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I've started up 3 factories in the last 4 years in Texas. The requirements to do so weren't significantly more lax than those I started up in Illinios, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine in the same period.
Texas is actually tougher in water quality than all of the states I listed, which is relevant here. For air permitting they are more likely than average to allow "de minimus" provisions but average or better after that. Waste-
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully they will get a sternly worded warning about doing something like this again.
Hopefully, they will get a multimillion dollar fine, but I am not holding my breath. There is no excuse for this sort of thing. They should be monitoring the pH of their waste streams in real time. It is very easy to do, all you need is a pH meter and an alarm and you would know immediately. The plant manager should be fired and in a perfect world sent to jail.
Agree, however it seems to me that the @"MMC Monster" post was sarcastic.
Re: (Score:2)
If we are going to put people in prison for a leaky pipe, we will need a lot more prisons.
Re:Repercussions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
In this case the safety standards, specifically the stormwater pond on the property, caught most of the leak, with significantly less entering the tributary. Which is why no difference was seen in the health of the creek the tributary fed into. Indeed, the memo explicitly states as much but the idiots at kxan apparently couldn't be bothered to even read the thing,
Re: (Score:1)
Hopefully they will get a sternly worded warning about doing something like this again.
Pretend you didn't notice or they will raise our entertainment tax and blame it on hippy sanctions.
Re: (Score:2)
A tiny tributary feeding into a creek, which remained unharmed from the leak to all appearances, is a grand scale now? Interesting.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
While it's good that according to the article, "It is good that Samsung has clearly started that effort in terms of notifying all the appropriate authorities and trying to figure out what the next steps on remediation are", it doesn't forgive them that they didn't notice this over a time period of over 106 days. While most companies tend to try to hide and cover up these issues, it doesn't mean Samsung is in the complete good because some type of auditing for safety eithe
Re:Repercussions (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully they will get a sternly worded warning about doing something like this again.
Seeing this happened in Texas, more then likely a passive aggressively worded memo with a phrase "Thank you for your corporation" at the end.
"Sus." (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok... Now I'm not, and never will claim to be, a PROFESSIONAL waste materials handler, but how in the flying fark do you -NOT- notice that more that three quarters of a MILLION GALLONS of something goes missing in your process inventories? That's almost all of one of those 50' around and 35' high tanks.
I've worked at more responsible companies what stored waste liquids and not only did everything nasty had secondary containment (Leaks are a "when", not an "if"), there were pretty friggin' strict inspection schedules and routines, usually monthly, but some were more often.
You're telling me that not one single person thought to themselves "huh, that tank doesn't seem to be filling up as fast as normal", or there wasn't regular enough inspections to notice the level dropping in a longer term store?
Either I call bullshit on this being an accident, or someone needs to have their ass held accountable for gross negligence.
Re:"Sus." (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"Sus." (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
It's waste product. No one was missing something they did want to have in the first place. Each new shift just thinks the last shift emptied the tank. Job well done!
Sulfuric acid? Just add sugar ... (Score:2)
Now they should dump a bunch of table sugar and make a carbon snake [wikipedia.org] ... Okay, that probably won't work now that it's all diluted ... damn. :-(
(I remember that from the TV show Bones, (s12e3) "The New Tricks in the Old Dogs" [thegameofnerds.com])
That's a big number so it must be important (Score:2, Insightful)
Scary acid is scary clickbait.
Related news... (Score:2)
... when trying to access the OP linked article this popped-up:
"This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."
So... after almost 4 YEAR since the new GDPR became mandatory the NBC owned website is unable to comply with it...
Quite incompetents they pay to do so... or... is that they don't want to protect the privacy of its readers?
I mean, what company would sell without any regret private in
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they didn't do anything to comply and now they're being investigated by the regulators.
Or perhaps their ad revenue depends on storing customer data. No point serving the page to someone if they can't make any money from them.
Re: (Score:2)
It is very simple, in order to comply they have to not sell customer data. Assuming they won't sell just EU customer data to keep their regular revenue stream, then they don't have any financial motive of paying the development costs to make the change, as they won't be making money off of EU visitors.
The "EU" block page is a very good tell of whether you should be visiting that site in the first place IMHO.
Johnny was a chemist.. (Score:3)
Johnny is no more
'cause what Johnny thought was H2o
Was H2SO4
There should be some basic solution for this (Score:3)
There should be some basic solution for this, but if I make suggestions you're probably going to get salty.
And? (Score:1)
Like anyone cared.
Hell, they probably threw Samsung a parade for putting business above all else (and so they could rub it in the commie, liberal, environmentalists' faces; MAGA!).