Spring 1999
Cleaning Up Our Valley-1999
by Sydney Brown
On a rainy Saturday January 23, more than sixty Peninsula and South Bay community and church men and women gathered for the 5th annual “Cleaning Up Our Valley” workshop and toxic tour. Participants came from fourteen different Protestant and Catholic churches, religious orders, students and faculty from Stanford and Santa Clara Universities, the League of Women Voters, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and others. This workshop coincided with the meeting of the National Presbyterian church’s committee on corporate responsibility. Eleven members of this committee who travelled from as far away as Kentucky and New York participated in this workshop.
We focused on impacts the electronics industry have on worker and community health both here in Silicon Valley and overseas. (Most of the major high tech companies have third-world “off-shore” production facilities where more attention is often paid to producing a very clean chip than to producing a clean facility with safety and workers.
Raquel Sancho, of the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health, interviewed workers during a recent trip to her native Philippines. She showed slides of Filipino women electronics workers whose health had been devastatingly harmed by toxic exposure in the workplace.
Ted Smith, of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, called for a computer take-back plan, for the computer manufacturers to address the enormous pile of outdated computers and the growing computer graveyards many of us have in our basements and garages. This initiative is underway in several European countries. SVTC, through its international network, the International Campaign for Responsible Technology is participating in this effort.
Sharon Delgado, pastor of the 1st United Methodist Church in Santa Cruz called on members of the religious community to “wake-up, pay attention and become involved.”
Brad Eggleston, a hazardous waste monitor for the City of Palo Alto reported on some industry clean-up efforts from a city’s perspective. Reed Content of Advanced Micro Devices reported on AMD’s progress on closing the loop on water use and recycling. IBM’s June Anderson spoke of IBM’s efforts to meet international production standards that had been recommended by SVTC and religious shareholders.
With bag lunches in hand, 47 peopled crowded onto a school bus for a tour of the Valley’s toxic “hot spots” sites. People were astonished to see Sunnyvale neighborhoods and schools adjacent to manufacturing facilities and sitting on top of high tech Superfund sites; a Netscape facility built on ground severely contaminated by Fairchild and Intel, and to find Romic, a major hazardous waste treatment facility, much too close to residential areas in East Palo Alto.
A lively assessment and next-step discussion led by Leif Erickson and Leslie Byster of SVTC closed the day.
Sydney Brown is an SVTC Board member and works with the Northern California Interfaith Council on Economic and Environmental Justice.
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