The Superfund Sites of Silicon Valley

Federica Armstrong chanced on when she moved to Palo Alto, Calif., that Silicon Valley is no longer what it appears to be like.

The arena’s capital of tech innovation prefers to defend its superlatives, correct and unsuitable, under wraps. Alongside its Prius-choked roads, it seems to be like Any place, U.S.A.: single-household-home suburbs south of San Francisco, bordered by chain shops, auto dealerships and corporate parks — somewhat a couple of beige, boxy corporate parks.

Within these undeniable vanilla structures, the put C.E.O.s in hoodies and jeans stockpile extra cash than the G.D.P. of establishing countries, newly minted techies whinge that “S.V.,” the arena’s most fascinating wealth generator, is too pricey and that its exhausting work tradition is poisonous.

So, too, is the land beneath their toes.

From its origins as a manufacturer of silicon chips and semiconductors, Santa Clara County is riddled with 23 poisonous Superfund sites, extra than any county within the country. This became information to Ms. Armstrong, who lives a mile from in actual fact one of many sites. Ms. Armstrong, a contract photographer, moved to Silicon Valley eight years within the past no longer thanks to tech but in spite of it — she and her husband had followed his profession in agribusiness from Malaysia to the Netherlands and Japan. She might perchance ignore the arena of birth up-ups — till she couldn’t.

The venture just will not be any secret — Silicon Valley authorities officers are properly-schooled on the sites and records organizations possess written about them. Serene, Silicon Valley’s Superfund sites no longer generally construct information. Like other concerns simmering below the bottom — Fb’s allowing hundreds of thousands of profiles to be at possibility of aid political campaigns with out users’ records, whisper — it takes viral headlines to bring the venture to the overall public’s consideration.

From a story in The Palo Alto Weekly, Ms. Armstrong learned that the Environmental Safety Agency had officially declared trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent commonly show in degreasing agents, disclose cleaners and used Silicon Valley semiconductor vegetation, a carcinogen. The compound is linked to heart malformations in uncovered fetuses and wreaks havoc on the liver, kidneys and brain. The chemical became heavily susceptible within the manufacturing of semiconductors and is the main toxin in 23 Superfund sites all by the county.

These sorts of websites, serene under remediation, have fully occupied place of job structures, others are in or close to parks and playgrounds. One, a feeble Hewlett-Packard property, is a soccer self-discipline inside of strolling distance from the put Ms. Armstrong lives.

“I wasn’t attentive to Superfund sites,” she recalled, “and bought intrigued by the notion of so many sites, 23, in Santa Clara County.” When she started to analyze the sites, she became struck by how many gave the impact of odd locations, with of us going back and forth.

“So many, albeit serene unsuitable and within the formula of being cleaned up, are susceptible for a more than a couple of of actions and commercial enterprises,” she mentioned.

The corporations that susceptible TCE did so no longer vivid it would contaminate the soil and groundwater and spend decades to easy up. Ms. Armstrong chanced on out that the work performed by the E.P.A. in Silicon Valley over the closing 20 to 30 years to remediate contamination possess plan the requirements for the manner Superfund sites are managed nationwide.

In some cases, nonetheless, the underground contamination has moved past the boundaries of the Superfund sites. “Vapor intrusion, when chemicals evaporate inside of structures and of us are uncovered to them, is a venture that needs ongoing monitoring,” Ms. Armstrong mentioned.

She grew to vary into a Superfund professional by poring over pages on the E.P.A. net plan and visiting every single plan in Santa Clara County. The slack course of of making photography with a medium-structure camera allowed her to spend her time documenting what, to birth with witness, explore like weird and wonderful structures and grounds. Her mission, “In Straightforward Location” will at closing spend her to the total Superfund sites in California — extra than a hundred of them.

Till then, her aim is to present an explanation for the venture to as wide an viewers as imaginable, as a minimal all by Silicon Valley. With the Trump administration threatening important cuts to the E.P.A. funds, including a 25 % decrease in Superfund plan cleanup, the venture needs wider consciousness, she mentioned. “Most sites are at this time occupied by workplaces, some home a couple of of basically the most prestigious corporations of Silicon Valley,” she mentioned. However others, she added, are fully obscured by their new life as retail areas and non-public residences.

“Most of us I talked to within the neighborhood gave the impact unaware of their presence,” she mentioned. “Typically, even the notion of Superfund sites is international to many of us. We are at possibility of taking for granted the protection of the setting we inhabit. I feel the necessity to pay extra consideration to it.”