Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
interests frequently vary and are often opposed. He shows how, and why, construction
demolition dumps were located in many African American communities in the
1980s, how an incinerator was sited in the African American community of Robbins,
and how a non-profit recycling initiative was replaced by a profit-based programme
run by a big corporation. The least powerful had the least influence on policy decisions
and suffered accordingly. Minority workers, including homeless and indigenous
people from the poor areas where waste had been dumped, were employed as 'alley
entrepreneurs' to collect contaminated recyclables to be exchanged for cash. The
work was hard, of low status and hazardous to health, resulting in many workers
struggling for dignity and autonomy. Recycling work is not necessarily fulfilling and,
as in Pellow's study, can become just like any other exploitative and degrading
business activity if the social and labour implications are excluded from environmental
goals. In
The Silicon Valley of Dreams
, Pellow and Park (2002) demonstrate how
the hi-tech information society rooted in California's Silicon Valley rests on a pro-
duction process that is toxic to both land and people. Some 80 per cent of the
production workforce are new immigrants, women and people of colour. Wages are
low and jobs are tedious, and in some instances potentially injurious to health.
Housing costs are high. Personal testimony bears witness to environmental injustices
spreading over years, with people telling stories of chemical spillages, land and air
pollution, miscarriages, birth defects, asthma, cancers, death, community resistance
and labour protest. In reviewing the book, Stacey Warren states the contradictions
very clearly, calling for a politically engaged scholarship:
In short, it is almost inconceivable that this is the same Silicon Valley heralded
by the media and in the popular press, or analyzed as part of the growth of hi-
tech industrial landscapes. What is treated parenthetically in otherwise sound
treatments such as Castells and Hall's (1994) classic examination of 'Technopoles',
is brought out into the light here. The same broad, global processes inform both,
but by subtly shifting the focus to the production worker herself, Pellow and
Park change forever the way we think about Silicon Valley. At the outset of the
book, the authors describe themselves as engaged in 'advocacy research', which
they define as 'the theory and practice of making the scholarly enterprise more
application-oriented, more sustainable and more relevant to communities' (p21).
Indeed, this seems the only responsible way to study Silicon Valley.
(2004: 402)
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) was formed in 1982, when groundwater
contamination was discovered throughout Silicon Valley. Toxic chemicals had leaked
from underground storage tanks formerly considered safe. Over 100,000 homes in
the San Jose area were exposed to toxic chemicals emanating from the Fairchild
computer chip factory. Workers and community members suffered a range of illnesses
and started to campaign against this environmental injustice. The coalition of hi-
tech workers, community residents, environmentalists and emergency workers
campaigned successfully for state and federal legislation to monitor these types of
tanks. The SVTC has also helped to mobilize and organize communities in successful
campaigns to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to secure a proper clean-
up. The health effects of toxic contamination can be severe and long lasting, so the
