When landfill failed
Posted on September 25, 2006 - Filed Under Punch Forum |
Ms. Ric
25 Sept 2006
For fifteen years I worked, played, and lived in an area lush with the towers of Sony, Intel, HP, Apple, Motorola, etc. Avenues teemed with million dollar homes and sidewalk cafes burgeoned with the brightest minds America had to offer. In the middle of this fabled land entombs what used to be the Santa Clara Landfill.For nine years, I worked just a mere mile away from this site. Getting from the parking lot to the office was a breathing exercise to avoid filling the lungs with the aromatic flavor of the day. When in the office, measures were taken to secure what was daily hoped to be airtight windows. Unison of “shut the door” greeted every deliveryman who almost always lost in the race to beat the waft of putrefied aroma waiting by the doorstep. On a timer, at eleven and three o’clock, the office radios slowly climbed a few decibels up to the tune of Billy Joel or The Beachboys to mask the blaring horns of gigantic dump trucks, compactors, and all those other machineries they have going inside the imaginary walls of “the Landfill”.
Due to public pressure, it was closed in the late eighties. Offices were erected, along with an elementary school, and a golf course, which changed the vista and the aroma of this molehill forever. The politics surrounding it, however, only intensified.
Within months of operation “incidents” started making the news: parking lots started buckling, children getting sick, and an explosion at one of the greens. Public outcry and lengthy and expensive investigations later confirmed the publics’ fear. The leachate leaked and methane gas was also found moving laterally underground. This happened amidst promises of high tech and the best safeguards money can buy. This happened in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, USA.
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