From Inside Climate News:
Tesla opened the first North American lithium refinery in Robstown, Texas, in January 2026, in an effort to onshore the supply chain of electric vehicle batteries. Elon Musk, the company’s CEO and the richest man in the world, touted the facility near Corpus Christi in Nueces County as the cleanest operation of its kind.
Within the first month of the plant operating, Nueces County drainage district workers found a pipe releasing black liquid from the refinery into a ditch. There was another surprise: Tesla was permitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to discharge its refinery wastewater into that ditch, which the drainage district manages…