Much has been written about how the tech boom has contributed to exorbitant housing costs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Less reported has been the environmental impact of this boom, which includes suburban sprawl, severe traffic congestion and other impending menaces. This is not surprising. PM Press, located in Oakland, California, has called its neighbor Silicon Valley the “crown jewel” of hypercapitalism, and one thing capitalism does is pollute.
The question here is whether the tech empire’s power, money, governance and green solutions can match the environmental challenge of Silicon Valley’s smoggy sprawl. The challenge includes the need for an end to low-density development (fewer McMansions surrounded by acres of cosmetically sculpted land, more apartment buildings), pollution controls, cleaner cars, inland parks and dealing with water shortages and climate change in one of its most drastic forms – wildfires, according to Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Richard Walker. This book portrays a region where “boom and bust cycles are written into the landscape.”
Tech Empire’s Environmental Degradation
Although air pollution from traffic congestion and sprawl is the most visible environmental problem caused by Silicon Valley, there are others, according to Walker. Groundwater plumes of solvents have moved under working-class housing areas near industrial zones, as Walker explains in a recent email to Truthout. However, these plumes of solvents do not migrate to affluent Palo Alto or Menlo Park. It is the old story of proximity to environmentally hazardous industry causing working-class neighborhoods and communities of color to be far more exposed to pollution than whiter and wealthier areas.
“There are hundreds of sites in Santa Clara County [Silicon Valley] where solvents or other contaminants have been released to shallow soils and/or groundwater,” explains Vanessa De La Piedra, manager of…