I clicked into the tail-end of a documentary about toxic areas in Silicon Valley and they were showing a tower outside of a Netscape building which looked like it might be art, but was really a Superfund cleanup project. The tower is taking contaminated groundwater and spewing the chemicals into the air to clean it out. I’m assuming that’s a safe way to deal with it, but it makes me nervous. Netscape’s campus is on the former Fairchild Semiconductor Superfund site. Here’s the irony of computer manufacturing: because the facilities need to be impeccably clean, they use(d) large amounts of strong solvents and cleaning solutions. The underground storage tanks for these chemicals (and you can be sure there were many in the Silicon Valley) sometimes leaked. At the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition website, I used their maps to find the Superfund sites near where I live. As was disclosed during my condo purchase, I’m not sitting on top of one (though there are plenty of old underground gas tanks nearby). But the area is definitely peppered with them. Be aware.