Environmental Commission looks into acid waste spill at Samsung facility
Samsung’s semiconductor facility spilled a large amount of acidic wastewater into its stormwater pond and into a tributary of Harris Branch Creek in Northeast Austin, killing virtually all aquatic life within the 1.5-mile stretch. As much as 763,000 gallons of the acidic waste was discharged into the waterways for a period of up to 106 days.
While the remaining spillage has since been valved shut and isolated into the stormwater pond, the teams overseeing the incident have begun damage control. Samsung initially reported that the chemicals in the water caused the tributary’s pH to drop far below normal levels, causing significant harm to the aquatic community and ecology of the tributary. The Watershed Protection Department is now conducting weekly water quality tests for the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, and reported that the water pH is bouncing back to almost normal levels.
Katie Coyne, an environmental officer at the city’s Watershed Protection Department, briefed the city’s Environmental Commission on the spill, and reported that it’s likely to take between six months and two years for the water’s ecosystem to recover, as it will have to completely rebuild itself.
“During recovery, due to the new state of the channel, it’ll probably go through a lot of boom and bust phases, including some algae blooms, and dominance of a lot of pioneering and opportunistic species,” Coyne said. “It’s going to be really vulnerable at that time to invasives and it might get stuck in alternative stable states. If that occurs, we know that restoration assistance might be necessary.”
Read more: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2022/02/environmental-commission-looks-into-acid-waste-spill-at-samsung-facility/
