Looks like a map of Google territory. The pollution has been there long before they arrived. I'm curious about what they think of this plan.

The progressives have been touting bio-remediation as a cleanup option for years now. Good to see the new EPA has climbed on board to join them.
Lets keep moving forward.

I hate to be Debbie Downer. But my father was an expert engineer that established the modern standards of Spectrophotometry, successfully engineered more than a dozen EPA clean air act monitoring systems, he was an expert for EPA pollution control systems and a PHD in Chemistry.

During 10 years of this work, I was is assistant in performing this work during my ages of 14-24. You bet I learned quite a bit in that time without a “formal” education. Including participating in working projects with the EPA, NASA, and DOD as a recognized member of the groups.

My research in Bioremediation has indicated that it has not yet been proven to be successful in such a large scale situation such as Mountain View. In fact most research goes out of its way to make sure it does not claim it is proven yet. It is still being tested in a small scale or laboratory environment.

In fact that approach was attempted in Mountain View regarding a specific scientific experiment. Thus you would have figured that the EPA would have had “CONTROL” of the pollution site. But the words used in their report was:

“EPA proposes to change the remedy because the groundwater treatment system central to the remedy is no longer effective and because vapor intrusion (see page 3 for more information) was not considered in the original remedy.”

It went on to say:

“Groundwater was extracted and treated on the former Teledyne property and in two areas west and north of the Teledyne property (i.e., Spring Street Area and North Bayshore Area; Figure 1). The Spring Street Area Groundwater treatment system ran from 2007 to 2015, and the North Bayshore Area system ran from 1990 to 2017.

The system at the Teledyne property ran from 1986 to 2005, and was turned off to do a groundwater cleanup pilot study, followed by a complete full-site cleanup study.

These studies showed bioremediation (a technology that treats chemicals with microorganisms) was effective at decreasing pollutants in groundwater (see Figure 2). This bioremediation technology is known as enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD).”

The figures in my opinion are subjective. They did not track the actual progress of the improvement “solely” based on “bioremediation”. In order to prove that this process works, they will have to be required to disclose if any other methods were being used simultaneously, and remove any “cross-process” impact on the “improvement”. This report does not do that.

What this report in fact proves that the EPA has no “Control” on the polluted site, and in fact is showing signs of being worse. Especially involving the vaporous TCE pollution in the area. There inly solution regarding that is to make sure all working and living structures are designed to prevet the “Vapor” of TCE from entering the buildings. What about the ambient TCE vapors in the city? This report in effect makes the point that the EPA will do nothing regarding that problem. Why? Because they have no way to address it.

I am a realist, not a liberal/progressive, or a conservative/libertarian. I am a scientific realist, and from what I read, the City is still in an environmental crisis that is not improving at all.

Oh yah, I don't think anyone is expecting a quick cleanup. Not with current tech.
I currently work in the field of environmental remediation (w/ 30 yrs experience).
Nobody I know thinks organic solvents like TCE are an easy fix because they simply aren't. Nasty stuff.

If the [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language] want to include "natural attenuation" and bioremediation, whatever the hell those are, that's fine. Still, I'm "old school", and EPA must continue to include tried and true Superfund cleanups methods for Supersights, such as excravation (sp?) of contaminated soil, impermeable subsurface barriers to contain spills, and activated carbon and vapor stripping of contaminated subsurface water. [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]
I suspect that CA Federal Courts will view such anti-[Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]
lawsuits quite favorably.

@The Business Man --- Check out this article in the MV Voice from 2003

Publication Date: Friday, February 21, 2003


Polluting Superfund system to be shut down
By Gabriel Friedman


One of Mountain View's biggest polluters said this week that it will stop pumping its contamination out of the ground and into the air.

Fairchild Semiconductor, which leaked the solvent trichloroethene (TCE) into Mountain View's ground water in the 1970s and '80s, earned praise this week from residents who questioned the logic of cleaning a toxin from underground aquifers by releasing them from a tower just outside office buildings and near residential areas.

Fairchild Semiconductor said Tuesday that it plans to install a carbon filtration system that will virtually eliminate TCE emissions.

Alan Hilburg, a spokesperson for Fairchild, said the company would like to guarantee the health and safety of people living near the Superfund site bounded by Whisman Road, Ellis Street and Middlefield Road. The area, referred to as MEW, was designated a Superfund site in 1991 due to the TCE pollution by Fairchild and a group of other companies. Since the late 1980s, the companies have spent in excess of $100 million on an ongoing cleanup effort.

To clean the site, a system was installed that pumps TCE-laced ground water into two-story "air strippers," towers which allow the toxins to evaporate before the water is pumped back in the aquifer. As the Voice first reported in 2001, at least two of the air strippers, including one that sits adjacent to the Netscape campus on Whisman Road, are permitted by a grandfather clause to emit 24 times the amount of TCE that is considered safe each day.

Fairchild's announcement follows a series of disturbing findings over the last year that indicate TCE to be far more dangerous than thought, linking long-term, low-level exposure to lupus and Parkinson's disease, in addition to cancer. The EPA last month held a community meeting in Mountain View attended by more than 300 residents, many of whom, already worried that TCE would enter their homes from ground water, were outraged that Fairchild's cleanup system itself could pose a health risk.

On Tuesday, Hirburg and another Fairchild official, Bob Eales, traveled to a Mountain View City Council meeting where Mayor Mike Kasperzak officially announced the company's plan to cut emissions. Immediately afterwards, EPA officials presenting council members with information on TCE's dangers praised the decision. "We are very pleased with their willingness to do this before EPA finished their evaluation of the air strippers," said Kathleen Salyer, an EPA manager.

The cost of installing the filtration system, approximately $1 million, will be funded entirely by Fairchild. Although the US Superfund law requires polluters to pay for cleanups, EPA has not yet required any Mountain View polluters to cut emissions.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, said he feels Fairchild's decision strengthens the argument for examining all sources of TCE when the EPA tries assess risk in the city. Hirburg said the decision to cut emissions was driven by the feeling that it was distracting Mountain View residents from focusing on other concerns, including the possibility that TCE is evaporating from ground water into homes.

William Hutchins, TCE and all others ICYMWTK:

I grew up as a neighbor of Woburn Mass. It is famous for the book “A Civil Action”. I know there was serious problems with the conduct of the EPA during that time.

Here is a brief reminder: (Web Link

After finding that her child is diagnosed with leukemia, Anne Anderson notices a high prevelance of leukemia, a relatively rare disease, in her city. Eventually she gathers other families and seeks a lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to consider their options.

Schlichtmann originally decides not to take the case due to both the lack of evidence and a clear defendant. Later picking up the case, Schlichtmann finds evidence suggesting trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination of the town's water supply by Riley Tannery, a subsidiary of Beatrice Foods; a chemical company, W. R. Grace; and another company named Unifirst.

What was a problem was this:( Web Link


“I felt a huge amount of frustration at not being able to move the bureaucracy as fast as I thought it ought to be moved,” he says. “Now, looking back, I think it moved pretty quickly.” Indeed, by 1985, before the trial even began, Paleologos’s work on the toxic-waste problem was essentially done. The EPA’s investigation was well under way. (The EPA officials who at the time moaned that Schlichtmann’s lawsuit was impeding their progress will either laugh or cry at the close of the movie, when it’s “revealed” that the EPA got involved in the case only as a result of Schlichtmann’s work.) Today, Grace, Beatrice, and three other property owners are paying for a multimillion-dollar project to clean up East Woburn: the Superfund law makes property owners responsible whether or not they actually contaminated their land. (Beatrice, unlike Grace, has never even admitted to responsibility for pollution on its own site.)

My research regarding the Santa Clara County is that the EPA is very carefully testing only very few sites, for a short sample, and not dealing with the County Wide public health. They do short term tests, they do not do random public wide monitoring. This is designed to establish a “lack” of proof that the public as a whole is in risk. Proper Santa Clara wide testing would likely indicate that TCE vapors are all over and at dangerous levels. But the EPA is under pressure to prevent this data from being discovered by the politics in Santa Clara County.

If it turns out that TCE is all over the valley, installing TCE vapor controls only inside the buildings simply is not controlling the pollution. The EPA should either provide personal respiratory filters to those living in the county, take steps to clean up the vapors in the environment, instead of just making buildings “safe”, or consider the possibility of a relocation plan for the Santa Clara County so that the citizens of the valley are not at risk.

The reality is that if it is proven that TCE is in the ambient atmosphere of the entire county, it does pose a critical threat to property values in the county. The County governments are powerless to mitigate that reality and take all steps possible to prevent this possible discovery.

Guess there's no app for that.

To All:

I went to the meeting, and I have been converted by the EPA.

The demonstrated a completely different method of breaking down TCE underground. It still will take time, but it appears scientifically sound and is not the method I was thinking about.

However there is a new hitch.

The EPA will prevent residential housing deeds in North Bayshore area, and most likely any residential deed request in areas known to have TCE vapors.

This could put a block on the Google project altogether, the City cannot override the EPA

The EPA simply understands that commercial/industrial areas and residential areas should not mix where there is a known “superfund” site is involved.

But, the TCE issue looks like it will eventually be solved in a significantly shorter period of time than I though, by a factor of 3.

But in general, the balance of this news is even in my skeptic point of view originally, vastly improved.