Tesla Motors last week dumped more than 500 gallons of water-treatment chemicals that it uses to cool its supercomputer into a storm drain near Matadero Creek, prompting a cleanup effort at the creek and in the nearby Ventura neighborhood, according to local and state officials.
The spill occurred at about 5 p.m. on Oct. 17, according to a hazardous spills report issued by the governor’s Office of Emergency Services. While the office could not say how much of the mixture was released and how much of it affected the creek, the Palo Alto Fire Department recovered 550 gallons of the mixture from the storm drain, the report stated.
The report attributes the discharge of chemicals to “human error,” and notes that the incident occurred while Tesla personnel were draining the system. The car company last year opened its engineering headquarters in Stanford Research Park, at a Page Mill Road site formerly occupied by HP.
The Palo Alto Fire Department responded last week to what was described as a “hazardous materials incident” at 1501 Page Mill Road. The containment and cleanup work in the industrial area around Tesla headquarters was completed fairly quickly, according to the city. But Fire Department officials then identified areas east of the spill area near Park Boulevard, Lambert Avenue and Ash Street, for remediation and additional clean-up, said Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, the city’s chief communications officer. That work is expected to stretch into next week.
“The incident at the location was closed out fairly quickly when the Fire Department responded,” Horrigan-Taylor told this publication. “Since that time, there’s been some work in the industrial area.”
“At the point of the incident it was quickly determined that there’s no risk to life or health,” Horrigan-Taylor said.
Even so, the city is still testing the substance to determine exactly what it is. The governor’s Office of Emergency Services described it as “a mixture of dye and an unidentified water treatment chemical used for the chiller system to cool the Tesla Artificial Intelligence Supercomputer.” Tesla has hired the company Clean Harbors to clean up the incident.
Mike Hedblom, who lives in Barron Park, saw the spill when he was out for a walk on Hanover Street. The liquid was flowing out of the Tesla campus and into the gutter. He used the city’s 311 system to report the incident and to upload a video of the liquid flowing into the storm drain. He later got in touch with city officials by phone and reported the incident.
“It was a fluorescent, green liquid going down the gutter,” Hedblom said. “I couldn’t believe how bright it was. You could easily have filled a gallon a minute. It was a pretty significant flow.”
Hedblom said that he saw a few Tesla employees come out with cleaning supplies such as spill pads. Fire Department personnel then showed up at the scene and talked to the Tesla employees.
Cari Templeton, a member of the Planning and Transportation Commission who is currently running for the City Council, observed the cleanup effort on Tuesday night after hearing from a resident who lives in the area. She saw large trucks pumping liquid out of the channel near Boulware Park and in the area around the former Fry’s Electronics site on Portage Avenue. She said she was “shocked at the amount of activity happening in our creek and in our city for a chemical spill.”
“On the site, I saw two tanker trucks, major hose lines connected to a nearby fire hydrant running into the creek bed, bulldozers and several dumpsters apparently filled with silt from the creek,” Templeton said in an email.
Templeton, a former resident of both Ventura and Barron Park, took photos of the work site and notified the media about the Tesla spill and the cleanup effort. She also reached out to Valley Water, the jurisdiction in charge of the creek, and learned that the water agency was not aware of the spill.
“After learning of this incident, I worked with members of the community and with professional water and environmental leaders in the area to determine what we currently know about the spill,” she said. “While I have located the (OES) report … I am concerned about how little we know about the chemicals that were spilled, and the lack of communication about this incident between appropriate agencies and to Palo Alto residents.”
She said in a phone interview that the work was taking place after 11:30 p.m., with bright lights installed in the channel, and loud noise.
“None of the neighbors had been notified about what was happening,” Templeton said. “I have obvious concerns about this chemical that’s unknown being spilled into the creek but there’s an additional area of concern, which is: Why weren’t people notified?”
Horrigan-Taylor said the incident wasn’t more widely publicized because the initial work was limited to the industrial area near the Tesla headquarters and was resolved so quickly. The Fire Department was only notified late Tuesday about work shifting closer to residential areas, she said. She said the company has been cooperative.
Horrigan-Taylor said that there will be no 24-hour work in the residential areas. Weekend work has been authorized, she said.
Tesla Motors did not respond to questions about the spill.