
Foxconn Will Take 7M Gallons of Water per Day from Lake Michigan to Make LCDs - startupflix
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/04/foxconn-will-drain-26-5-megalitres-of-water-per-day-from-lake-michigan-to-make-lcd-screens/
======
rascul
Here is the article linked to by Slashdot: [https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-
drain-7-million-gallons-of-...](https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-
drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-day-f-1825624659)

The article by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources:
[https://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4513](https://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4513)

According to the DNR article, the non consumed water will be returned:

> As part of the diversion approval, the city of Racine must ensure that the
> diverted water is returned to Lake Michigan minus consumptive use such as
> evaporation. The water returned to Lake Michigan will be treated at the
> Racine Wastewater Treatment Plant to meet all applicable state and federal
> water quality discharge standards. Any industrial customers, such as
> Foxconn, will work with the City of Racine to meet pretreatment requirements
> for wastewater.

It's not immediately clear how much of that water will be returned, but at
least it won't be consuming 7M gallons daily. I'm not sure what impacts this
might have, and neither article really goes into it.

~~~
xienze
> It's not immediately clear how much of that water will be returned, but at
> least it won't be consuming 7M gallons daily.

Even if they did, Lake Michigan is estimated to contain one quadrillion
gallons of water. Foxconn will have long ceased to exist by the time anyone
even notices the water is missing.

~~~
rascul
How long would it take to notice, say, an inch decrease? Or whatever other
small unit if it's not measurable to an inch.

~~~
CodesInChaos
Consumption: 7M Gallons/day = 26.5E3 m^3 / day (fed to foxconn's personal
black hole)

Area of Lake Michigan: 58000 km^2 = 58E9 m^2

Corresponds to 4.6E-7 m/day or about 6 years for one millimeter or about 150
years for the oddly specific 25.4mm you were asking for.

If we take the 39% loss figure from the article, we get 15 years/1mm and 390
years/25.4mm.

~~~
PeterStuer
So does that mean it takes just 390 Foxconns to have the lake drop an inch
each year?

------
HenryBemis
I (almost) always try to make positive/helpful comments in this forum. But
reading (again) about these "complaints" the below comes to mind:

...<title of Lake Michigan article>, while at the same time, somewhere else on
this planet (perhaps China?) many factories do the exact same thing, and since
it hasn't caused noise, very few think about it. And at the same time people
in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, rest-of-Asia (countries that don't
host such factories), go on in their day looking at their smartphone screens,
reading news about Lake Michigan.

~~~
tw04
And why on earth should someone in - The Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania,
rest-of-Asia care if China wastes their OWN water? China can do whatever they
want with their own natural resources. As long as they aren't actively harming
other nations, it's their prerogative.

So yes.. of COURSE people in the US are going to care when a Chinese company
comes to the US and starts wasting our natural, shared resources while at the
same time not caring at all when China wastes their own shared natural
resources. I'm not sure why that would seem odd or confuse you in the least.

In other news: Lots of people are pissed that the current US president is
removing protections on national monuments. Same people don't bat an eye when
Xi Jinping refuses to create national monuments in China. The sky is blue.
Water is wet.

~~~
rangibaby
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company

~~~
akditer
Taiwan is same as China

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
sqidyyy
Even if we assume the treated water wont return to the lake basin. Would still
need 508,806 years to drain.

Are there any other dangerous side-effects or why is this a thing? Enlighten
me please.

~~~
dashundchen
I would say the real story here is the absolute giveaway this deal is to
Foxconn.

The subsidy given to a giant corporation is now past $4 billion, to a company
with revenue in the range of $140 billion. Specific exemptions are being cut
to allow the company to not produce an environmental impact statement for any
emissions or pollutants discharged. It's clear Scott Walker and co want to set
a precedent for future deals.

This sort of corporate coziness between a mega corporation and a state not
only is unfair to other businesses not getting the tax deal, but unfair to the
citizens who had these regulations enacted.

Additionally the Great Lakes have a legacy of industrial pollution we're only
starting to recover from. It's hard to understate how dead these lakes were
and still are in many places. Tributary rivers once regularly caught on fire
from pollutants sitting on the surface. Hundreds of thousands of acres
surrounding the lakes are contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs, radioactive
waste - uninhabitable without extreme treatment. These lakes are 1/5th of the
world's fresh water.

This stemmed not just from the era of no pollution regulation, but even during
the EPA era, there was an unwillingness for the government to enforce
regulations on the big polluters and employers. Of course when the factories
close and the full extent of pollution comes to public light, the companies
who made the profit often have merged or evaporated beyond responsibility,
leaving taxpayers on the hook with poisoned land and water.

Do you think the politicians making this deal will have any incentive to
follow up and take action if Foxconn does start exceeding their already
relaxed permitted emissions?

[http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-
politics/bro...](http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-
politics/broader-relaxation-of-environmental-rules-seen-coming-from-
foxconn/article_2192c025-2984-5713-9463-7b4092e1dd09.html)

------
_blaise_
Lake levels are near record high currently, and causing massive amounts of
erosion all along the coastline. It's actually quite interesting to watch
houses, dunes, roads and other structures fall into the lake as nature does
what it does. [0] Removing a few million gallons a day isn't going to hurt the
the lake that much.

[0] [http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/continued-
erosion-...](http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/continued-erosion-
causes-observation-deck-at-portage-lakefront-and-
riverwalk/article_0acf75f7-ba22-5632-ac25-76a7222900de.html)

~~~
jcrubino
The joke going around is: Is that a climate catastrophe or taxable waterfront
property?

------
tomrod
Cool. I bet it will be quite the feat of mid-scale engineering. So, less than
3 Olympic sized pools at 2.5 MM gallons.

~~~
joekrill
An Olympic sized swimming pool is 2.5MM _liters_. That's roughly 660,000
gallons. So it's actually ~10 Olympic sized pools.

~~~
tomrod
My mistake -- I appreciate the correction!

------
sschueller
4.2M Gallons will be treated and returned to the lake basin.

~~~
isostatic
The rest gets evaporated

~~~
DougN7
Which of course means it will return as rain somewhere. I guess I don’t see
what all the controversy is about.

~~~
eesmith
It's a perceived lack of adherence to the Great Lakes Compact, which specifies
how to manage the Great Lakes Basin's water supply.

Regulation of water withdrawal appears to be important as otherwise I don't
see why the states would have gone through the effort of putting the
regulations into place.

~~~
maxerickson
Maintaining control over withdrawal is important. I'm not sure the people
complaining care about characterizing the actual impact though, there's a
branch of conservation that reflexively opposes almost everything.

One of the Slashdot comments points out that billions of gallons can evaporate
from the lake naturally in a day. Moving some of that to land near the lake
seems like a low risk to me.

~~~
eesmith
"there's a branch of conservation that reflexively opposes almost everything."

Sure. There's also a branch of business which says to screw the long-term
environment health and environment consequences for short-term gains.

That these exist doesn't mean that either viewpoint has relevancy for what's
going on here.

------
ryanworl
For reference, Lake Michigan has 1.3e15 gallons of water.

~~~
danesparza
For the scientific notationally challenged, that's 1,300,000,000,000,000
gallons of water.

Incredibly, 7M gallons of water a day is a rounding error for lake Michigan.

I don't mean to minimize the impact this factory might have -- I just mean to
emphasize the incredible amount of water Lake Michigan has.

~~~
froindt
I find gallons to be an unintuitive unit of measure, so I like to convert to
cubic feet because it gives a better visual sense of the volume.

7M gallons is 935,800 ft^3.

This would fill a football field 19.5 feet high.

If you made that into a cube, it would be 97.8 ft per edge.

If you convert to a flow rate, that's 10.83 ft^3/second.

~~~
Y_Y
I find gallon and cubic feet to be on the same level hogsheads and cubic
cubits in terms of applicability and usage. There's no trouble visualising a
volume unit like a litre, particularly if you're used to working with such
quantities. It is tough visualising unit that have no traction outside of one
metrically-solopsist region though.

Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian,
Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different
grounds in some cases. Not a great unit.

~~~
froindt
>Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian,
Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different
grounds in some cases. Not a great unit.

I was going full American here with American football fields (standard 300x160
feet) forgetting about the ambiguity saying "football".

I understand your frustration, but having an idea of what 7,000,000 of
anything would look like is non-trivial. If it were 7,000,000 cubic meters you
might re-express things to be easier to visualize.

Unfortunately for the time being, the US is using gallons, so I'm stuck making
these comparisons to grasp at what that volume looks like.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I was going full American here with American football fields (standard
> 300x160 feet)

American football fields are 360×160 feet.

~~~
froindt
I guess end zones count. I had them excluded.

Knocks it down to 16.2 feet.

------
alex_young
Better source that doesn't break the back button:
[https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-
of-...](https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-
day-f-1825624659)

------
djsumdog
Original article: [https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-
of-...](https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-will-drain-7-million-gallons-of-water-per-
day-f-1825624659)

------
toblender
Will they put it back?

I mean I can't imagine them holding 7 million gallons of water per day for
very long before they run out of storage space.

My guess is that they will process stuff with the water, then filter and send
the water back into the lake.

------
julienfr112
Does anyone know why so much water is used to manufacture LCDs ? And why can't
it be in close circuit, like using an aero refrigerant tower like the ones of
nuclear plants ?

~~~
shagie
Washing and polishing the glass prior to attaching the polarization plate.

Washing the product to remove toxic compounds from the surfaces is where there
is a bit of concern. [https://phys.org/news/2014-12-toxic-effects-chemicals-
tft-lc...](https://phys.org/news/2014-12-toxic-effects-chemicals-tft-lcd-
aquatic.html)

~~~
djsumdog
Which is why that water has to be evaporated, so the toxic solids can be put
in a landfill?

------
tropo
This is .000018 inches off of the lake each day.

Per year, it is .0066 inches. That is about 1/6 of a millimeter.

At that rate, the lake contains 508198 years worth of water. Thinking in terms
of human evolution here... that is a decent chunk of time.

This supposed problem is all FUD, based on big scary numbers. Somebody has a
motive to spread this. For example, a country that wants the industry might
encourage opposition in the USA.

------
josefresco
This is a great example of why the US doesn't want manufacturing "back" even
if they/we could have it. Both because _this_ example isn't that big of a deal
(but yet, has created controversy), and because if this _was_ a big deal
Americans simply would not tolerate the pollution, in exchange for the
manufacturing jobs.

~~~
wil421
As other posters pointed out this is less than 3 Olympic sized swimming pools.
They will also return less than 2 Olympic sized pools back to the lake.

~~~
josefresco
Exactly, and there's "outrage". Imagine if it was 100 Olympic size swimming
pools... The American public can't handle the biproducts of modern
manufacturing.

~~~
shifter
There are multiple "American publics". The outrage machine will not like it,
you are correct, but take a drive through Nevada or West Virginia and you'll
see folks used to such side effects.

~~~
josefresco
True, I shouldn't make the assumption that "the public" is one thing, or
another in absolute terms. However, I wouldn't call it an "outrage machine"
just because people are concerned about pollution/misuse of natural resources.

~~~
shifter
Clarification: the outrage machine _does_ exist as a phenomenon in American
politics. It's real.

I agree that stewardship of the environment is __very __important.

------
originalsimba
That's unsustainable.

