Sometimes, an article intended to be reassuring ends up provoking more questions than answers. Take this piece in Friday's Post-Star (only available to subscribers). It took a look at the environmental record of Advanced Micro Devices Inc which wants to open a plant in Malta's Luther Forest technology park.
"I'm worried about their environmental record," said Barbara Trypaluk, chairwoman of the Saratoga County Green Party. "Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon for jobs, but what about the Earth? When you hurt the Earth, you hurt people.", the daily reported.
But the paper's headline intended to allay those fears.
AMD's record good on cleanup
Whew, I felt better...
...until I realized that this meant they had made enough messes to develop a record on cleanups.
I would've been more reassured if the paper had found that AMD did have any environmental violations.
The paper added, The contamination at the three AMD sites, which are all in Sunnyvale, Calif., is the result of faulty chemical-holding practices. "It's essentially the same problem at all sites," explained Steve Groseclose, AMD's director of global environmental health and safety. "The groundwater was contaminated by solvents leaking from underground storage tanks."
Ok, I was relieved again...
...until I asked myself why AMD had the exact same problem with chemical-holding practices at three completely different sites!
Their failure to learn from problems at their first two plants in California led to the problem at the third. Why should local residents have any confidence that the same failures won't reoccur in Malta?
If AMD contaminates the groundwater in this area as well, will they buy bottled water for all local residents?
An AMD spokesman insisted that The seeping chemicals, however, didn't come just from AMD, and [he] believes AMD didn't do as much damage as some might think. In Sunnyvale, an area near Silicon Valley, there are all sorts of companies that have also contributed to the problem, he said.
That put me at ease...
...until I remembered that Luther Forest is trying to become a little Silicon Valley. If AMD makes a lot of messes and they're good (by the industry's standard) at cleaning them up, what about the others that will inevitably follow? A good environmental record is not defined by successful remediation. A good environmental record is defined by not doing anything that requires remediation in the first place!
I guess AMD's arrival is a great thing, so long as you don't think too hard about it.
1 comment:
Some can't see the "forest" for the trees of green money
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