The pipe belonged to Tesla. The dark liquid was wastewater from the company's nearly $1 billion lithium refinery, which began operations in
Drainage district workers in Nueces County, Texas, were doing routine maintenance on a ditch outside Robstown in January 2026 when they noticed something they had not seen before. A pipe they did not recognize, stretched across an easement they oversee, was discharging dark liquid into the ditch they manage. “Very dark and murky,” is how Steve Ray, a consultant for the drainage district, described it to KRIS 6 News. “I would say it was actually black. We’re used to seeing good running water, and so we didn’t know exactly what it was.”
The pipe belonged to Tesla. The dark liquid was wastewater from the company’s nearly $1 billion lithium refinery, which began operations in December 2024 and was, at the time, the first commercial-scale spodumene-to-lithium-hydroxide refinery in North America. Tesla had marketed the plant for years as an “acid-free clean process,” promising sand and limestone as the main byproducts. The drainage district had not been told that 231,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day would be flowing through its infrastructure.
