Musk's Massive Tesla Lithium Plant Hunts for Water in Drought-Hit Texas

[SARose]

Kara Carlson
Tue, January 7, 2025

Bloomberg) -- Twenty miles outside Corpus Christi, Texas — an area so dry the local water company distributes shower timers at high school football games — the world’s richest man is nearly done building a lithium refinery that could require as much as 8 million gallons of water per day.

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In 2022, Tesla estimated it would need 400,000 gallons per day to run the lithium plant, rising to 800,000 gallons per day at peak usage. Two years later, a Tesla employee told a consulting firm, Raftelis, that the forecast has spiked to as high as 8 million gallons per day, according to South Texas Water Authority records obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request.

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One way he’s (Musk my insertion) been able to expedite projects has been to build factories in Texas’ city buffer zones or unincorporated areas that have fewer rules and government oversight compared with bigger cities.

Musk’s Robstown site fits the bill. The factory sits on former farmland in an unincorporated portion of Nueces County in South Texas. The area is industrializing, with the Port of Corpus Christi and other companies buying up space in the area and driving up water needs.

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More

Per the article,

For Robstown, which had 3,804 households as of 2023, that would equate to about 1.1 million gallons a day. At the high-end estimate of 8 million gallons per day, Tesla would be using eight times Robstown’s average residential water use. That’s enough water to fill eight ten-foot-deep swimming pools that are nearly the size of a football field, according to the US Geological Survey.

Sooooo Musk is paying $80,000 a year (I seriously doubt this) to 250 people and our dear leaders are perfectly happy with giving him unlimited water is an area that is known as “brush county.”

Oh well nothing there but a bunch of low wage brown people. They should be grateful they even have jobs. 🤬

Wonder how many immigrants worked to build this facility and will work there?

😬

[BoRaGard]

1. Free clue to G.O.P Billionaire Bros (R)

You can't eat or drink batteries

[Bo Zarts]

3. Let 'em drink lithium hexoflourophosphate!

[Think. Again.]

2. such good planning. not.

[TexasTowelie]

4. We had marching contest in Robstown every November.

The field was hard as a rock with hardly any grass and plenty of cleat marks. I don't know why they couldn't find a better location, but then I think of Bishop where the center of the field was a dip which also meant that the marching formations were thrown off.

[SARose]

6. Yes yes yes

I have family living in Robstown. It’s always been dry.

[biophile]

5. He will steal it from the people, farms, and wildlife

Because his profit is so much more important than anyone or anything else.