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.

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    TCEQ has no power to enforce anything in Texas without the Governor and AG’s cooperation. Mark my words. As long as Texas is run by conservatives, absolutely nothing at all will be done to protect the environment in Texas. Absolutely nothing. Everything related to the environment is performative in Texas, not substantive.

    Conservatives delight in pollution. They equate pollution with freedom. Conservatives in Texas intentionally choose vehicles with the worst exhaust, they litter, they dump chemicals directly down drains, into sewers and into waterways, they “roll coal”, they joyfully embrace chemical plants and they mock absolutely anyone who has any problem with dirty air or water. If you can’t handle chemical-laden air, you are considered weak or “librul”. Clean water is for pussies.

    There’s a reason the number one cancer research center in the U.S. is based in Houston. The air is famously polluted by nearby refineries that do not report what they release into the air to the public. They are permitted to “self-report” that they are not violating any rules, but there is no actual check performed by TCEQ without a great deal of advance notice and preparation.

    Texas is a conservative haven of airborne and waterborne carcinogens. Musk knew that when he moved here. That’s the reason polluters move here. Because conservatives fucking love pollution.

    When I hear of a conservative in Texas getting a brutal form of cancer, I just smile and nod because I presume they’ve achieved their goal. It’s the only silver lining in Texas, other than the silver-laden clouds.

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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.

    • CafecitoHippo@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Clean water is for pussies.

      Well when you only consume monster energy drinks and miller lite, why would you need water?

      • daellat@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I mean they are referred to as conservatives because of their predominantly archaic social and economical laws not because they conserve the ecology

          • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Those concepts are not at all mututally exclusive. In fact, they are typically correlated.

            It is not possible for a conservative to enter a conversation or debate in good faith.