[CPEO-BIF] Mountain View, California's mysterious TCE hotspots

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

More toxic sites linked to leaky sewers
Watchdog group links mysterious spread of TCE to storms drains and  
sewers

by Daniel DeBolt
Mountain View Voice (CA)
January 3, 2014

It's long been a mystery as to how high levels of dangerous  
trichloroethylene (TCE) were found in the Silva family's well on  
Sherland Avenue in the 1970s, but now there's a new explanation.

The Silva family had used the 465-foot deep well for farming the area  
and had been drinking from it since 1949 until they received notice  
that the well water was found to be toxic in 1982. The carcinogen TCE  
-- a solvent once heavily used by local silicon chip makers -- was  
found in the Silva's well at 14 times the level the state considers  
safe for drinking.

"I love water, because I know what the value of water is," a 77-year- 
old Joe Silva told a reporter in 1982. "It is my life savings. It is  
the way I make my living. I love that well as much as I love my wife  
and my family."

Sewer lines spreading TCE?

It was originally thought the well may have been contaminated by a  
leaking underground storage tank at the Intel semiconductor  
manufacturing plant at 365 Middlefield Road the leak was discovered  
in 1981. But the connection never proved true, and Environmental  
Protection Agency officials found that the 1.5-mile-long plume of TCE- 
contaminated ground water that Intel and others left behind fell  
short of the Silva's well by half a block. The plume -- now mostly  
cleaned up -- doesn't reach much farther west than Whisman Road.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/01/03/more-toxic-sites-linked-to- 
leaky-sewers

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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