SpaceX Violated Environmental Rules by Dumping Toxic Wastewater, Regulators Find

A Texas agency has given Elon Musk’s SpaceX a slap on the wrist for spewing toxic wastewater into the fragile ecosystem around its sprawling Starbase launch site, according to CNBC.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) accused SpaceX of “discharging deluge water” without their approval in early August, adding to a total of 14 complaints against the aerospace company for polluting the surrounding environment.

The notice could potentially delay SpaceX’s ambitions of launching more than two dozen rockets annually at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, in addition to any plans for space missions at Cape Canaveral, Florida (where SpaceX has also received environmental complaints).

SpaceX responded to the Texas notice and CNBC report in a lengthy post on the social media platform X-formerly-Twitter, saying that the company has been careful about any “excess water” not coming into contact with “local groundwater.” This all comes amid the fact that SpaceX has actually been working alongside the TCEQ and the US Environmental Protection Agency on the subject of the violation notice, its water deluge system, which uses water to cool “the heat and vibration from the rocket engines firing.”

“Throughout our ongoing coordination with both TCEQ and the EPA, we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop and we were informed that operations could continue,” SpaceX tweeted.

Captain Planet

Besides this latest violation, residents and environmentalists have already complained about the impact of rockets launched at the Boca Chica site, which is situated next to a beach where endangered sea turtles breed and a critical migratory bird habitat.

Rocket launches at the site have scorched the lands, blasted apart the nests of migratory birds, and rained rocket debris on fragile flora, but Musk, SpaceX CEO, has been able to successfully yield his influence within the Federal Aviation Administration while running roughshod over upset officials at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, according to a July report in The New York Times.

In Florida, Musk and SpaceX are already facing complaints about how the company may potentially launch more than 70 rockets at Cape Canaveral, with a whole array of disparate stakeholders — residents to commercial fishermen — upset at the impact of that unprecedented, high number of rocket launches in a single year.

Any complaint taken far enough could, theoretically, forestall these rocket launches. Though — given the sheer tonnage of financially and politically incentivized parties lined up behind Musk and SpaceX — it would likely take an advocacy effort as ahistorical as Musk’s ambitions to slow them, if there’s even one to be had.