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The Superfund Sites of Silicon Valley

“Federica Armstrong discovered when she moved to Palo Alto, Calif., that Silicon Valley is not what it seems.

The world’s capital of tech innovation prefers to keep its superlatives, good and bad, under wraps. Along its Prius-choked roads, it looks like Anywhere, U.S.A.: single-family-home suburbs south of San Francisco, bordered by chain stores, auto dealerships and corporate parks — lots of beige, boxy corporate parks.

Inside these plain vanilla buildings, where C.E.O.s in hoodies and jeans stockpile more money than the G.D.P. of developing countries, newly minted techies complain that “S.V.,” the world’s largest wealth generator, is too expensive and that its exhausting work culture is toxic.

So, too, is the land beneath their feet.

From its origins as a manufacturer of silicon chips and semiconductors, Santa Clara County is riddled with 23 toxic Superfund sites, more than any county in the country. This was news to Ms. Armstrong, who lives a mile from one of the sites. Ms. Armstrong, a freelance photographer, moved to Silicon Valley eight years ago not because of tech but in spite of it — she and her husband had followed his career in agribusiness from Malaysia to the Netherlands and Japan. She could ignore the world of start-ups — until she couldn’t.

“Most people I talked to in the community seemed unaware of their presence,” she said. “Often, even the notion of Superfund sites is foreign to many people. We are used to taking for granted the safety of the environment we inhabit. I feel the need to pay more attention to it.””

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Backyard Talk News Archive

Ashes to Ashes–Coal Ash = Death

coal ash ncIn North Carolina, Duke Energy is storing 130 million tons of coal ash at 32 sites at 14 power plants. The state law requires Duke to safely move all of it by 2029, and from four leaking ash ponds by 2019. Where is Duke planning to put the toxic ash?  Not surprisingly, in a low-income community of color in Lee County, NC.
Local resident Donna Bray said, “Duke is hitting the poorest rural neighborhoods, where they think people won’t be able to fight back against a big corporation. I’m worried about contamination of the vegetable garden that provides half the family’s food.
Duke might think they can dump in Lee County because it’s not seen as wealthy or powerful, but residents are getting organized. “This community is not willing to stand by and be dumped on — it’s a toxic mess, and we don’t want it,” said Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which has organized hundreds of residents opposed to Duke’s plan.
The United States uses coal to generate 30 percent of its electricity. A typical power plant produces more than 125,000 tons of coal ash—the byproduct of burning coal—every year. Earthjustice estimates there are more than 1,400 coal ash sites in the United States and at least 200 of them are “known to have contaminated water sources.”
For decades, power companies dumped this toxic waste, which can contain toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury, into unlined ponds that had the potential to leak and contaminate the drinking water of nearby communities.
Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it will scrap Obama-era rules governing coal ash disposal. The Obama administration finalized regulations in 2015 that imposed new standards on coal-ash disposal sites, in part by increasing inspections and monitoring and requiring measures such as liners in new waste pits to prevent leaks that might threaten nearby drinking water supplies.
The changes Pruitt is making would provide companies with annual compliance cost savings of up to $100 million, but environmentalists warn that doing away with the regulations risks poisoning clean drinking water for millions of Americans and pollute already-endangered ecosystems.
The changes would extend how long the over 400 coal-fired power plants across the country can maintain unlined coal ash ponds and allow states to determine how frequently they would test disposal sites for groundwater contamination.
Bottom line, energy corporations save $100 million and it place over 1.5 million children who live near coal ash disposal sites across the country, an increase risk of developing learning disabilities, asthma, cancer or born with birth defects.
If you are interested in making comments to Trump’s plan to scrap the coal ash rules click this link.

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A once thriving coal town has turned toxic, and citizens are desperate for help

“West Virginia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And people are tired of being collateral damage and they’re tired of living in a toxic waste dump,” Paula Jean Swearengin, a West Virginia native, told ThinkProgress.
“We’re just wondering if we do get on the NPL [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][National Priority List], will any of this happen fast enough to actually help the people in Minden?” Brandon Richardson of Headwaters Defense said. “If you wait 10 years to relocate people and come up with the money to do it, you may as well spend that relocation money on burial plots and tombstones because I don’t know if they’re going to have anyone to relocate.”
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After Decades Of Air Pollution, A Louisiana Town Rebels Against A Chemical Giant

“Robert Taylor isn’t sure why he’s alive.
“My mother succumbed to bone cancer. My brother had lung cancer,” he ticks them off on his fingers. “My sister, I think it was cervical cancer. My nephew lung cancer.” A favorite cousin. That cousin’s son. Both neighbors on one side, one neighbor on the other. “And here I am. I don’t understand how it decides who to take.”
For decades, Taylor and his neighbors wondered if emissions from the plant were making people in the community sick, but most people thought that challenging a chemical giant was a lost cause. The company was rich, the people were poor.

“People say, ‘What’s wrong with y’all? Ya’ll trying to fight DuPont?'” Taylor remembers. “‘Y’all crazy? You can’t win fighting DuPont!'””
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Trump nominates Dow Chemicals lawyer to oversee EPA toxic waste program

 
“Donald Trump on Friday nominated a Dow Chemicals lawyer to head-up an Environmental Protection Agency unit that oversees hazardous waste disposal and chemical spills from toxic“Superfund” sites.
Dow Chemicals facilities are involved in dozens of Superfund projects.
Dow had accrued $219 million in accrued obligations for remediating Superfund sites, according to the company’s fourth quarter 2017 10-K filing.

Overall, Dow had accrued $1.3 billion in“probable environmental remediation and restoration costs,” according to the 10-K.”
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Cleaning products damage women’s lungs as badly as a 20-a-day cigarette habit

Scientists at Norway’s University of Bergen found that lung function decline in women regularly using cleaning products was equivalent over the period to those with a 20 cigarettes a day smoking habit.
“When you think of inhaling small particles from cleaning agents that are meant for cleaning the floor and not your lungs, maybe it is not so surprising after all,” said Øistein Svanes , a doctoral student who led the study.
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Did Flint’s Water Crisis Damage Kids’ Brains?

“Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley recently noticed a startling fact about kids in the lead-poisoned city of Flint, Michigan: They have become increasingly bad at reading since the water crisis began in 2014. A state government report showed that, from the year 2014 to the year 2017, third-grade reading proficiency in the city dropped from 41.8 percent to 10.7 percent. “That’s nearly a three-quarters drop in third-grade reading proficiency among children whose lives were affected by lead poisoned water during the Flint water crisis,” she wrote.

The Center for American Progress declared that Flint’s water crisis “has lead to a reading proficiency crisis,” while HuffPost reporter Alanna Vagianos tweeted that lead exposure in Flint was “having a significant developmental effect on children.” Their worry is grounded in the fact that, according to the CDC, lead exposure to children “can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and, at very high levels, seizures, coma, and even death.””

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Air pollution: black, Hispanic and poor students most at risk from toxins – study

New researching documenting disproportionate danger to students of color and poor students from air pollution at school.
“Pollution exposure is also drawn along racial lines. While black children make up 16% of all US public school students, more than a quarter of them attend the schools worst affected by air pollution. By contrast, white children comprise 52% of the public school system but only 28% of those attend the highest risk schools. This disparity remains even when the urban-rural divide is accounted for.”
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Happy Valentines Day

heartBy Teresa Mills
Today as I opened my Valentines Day card I was immediately transported to a place that I had forgotten existed.  It was a small  neighborhood where the streets were lined with beautiful majestic trees with leaves just beginning to bud.  The sweet smell of spring was in the air.
As I walked along the streets, I did see an occasional patch of dandelions.  It was plain to see that the neighborhood children loved these tiny flowers as I found several rings and necklaces made from these golden flowers.  As I picked up one of these tiny rings, I noticed that these childhood treasures were the only things discarded on the sidewalks.  The lawns seemed natural; I wanted to take off my shoes and run through the yards like I did when I was young.
In this place I found adults sitting on their porches drinking tea out of beautiful handpainted porcelain cups, no throwaways here.  (Remember when houses had porches.)
As I passed by a group of neighbors talking about their upcoming neighborhood picnic, I could hear how excited they were, and it arose such a warm feeling in me that took me back to my childhood. Back to the days when teenagers would get so upset because everyone in town knew your business and kids knew they could not get away with anything, ya just knew someone would tell your mom.
When I looked up all I saw was a blue sky with an occasional puffy cloud.  I felt I could see forever.
Just as I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, I realized I had broken this wonderful spell I was under.  When I opened my eyes I was back to reality.  The sweet smells became the all too familiar heavy odorous smells of industry.  I once had an elected official tell me that the smells showed the community was prospering.  Really?
The so-called perfect manicured lawn I see every day are not natural they are lawns doused with man-made chemicals.  Have you ever look at one of those little signs they put in your yard after it has been sprayed?
Have a heart today, wish your neighbor a Happy Valentines day or just a good day. Today people go for months or even years without talking to their neighbors.  What a shame.
I tried to open my Valentines Card again to see if it would once again be transported back to my childhood days.  But my card turned out to be just a Happy Valentines Day Card from my loving husband.  But oh I wish I could go back to those carefree days.  Think of your childhood and have a beautiful Valentines Day.
 

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A Toxic Tour Through Underground Ohio

The small white and maroon trucks that deliver the waste often come at night, she says. They contain what regulatory agencies innocently refer to as produced water, or brine, a slurry generated during fracking operations that can contain more than 1,100 chemicals and which is carcinogenic, flammable, and radioactive. Garman says she and her son occasionally smell, “a sweet odor in the air, almost like antifreeze.” One night last winter an alarm went off. “There was a red light and a real low siren,” she says, “and no one to call to see what was going on.”
In the morning, before heading off to work, Garman is back on her porch with a coffee, staring at a series of tanks, where the waste is temporarily held before being shot down the injection well. “The biggest thing,” she sighs, “is the worrying. What am I not hearing? What am I not seeing? What is being released into the air? The water? The soil? What does this mean for our health years down the road? That is the stuff that really eats away at me constantly.”
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