After spending billions of dollars building next-generation computer chip factories in the United States, the Biden administration is facing new pressure over the health and safety risks the facilities could pose. Supporters say environmental reviews of new projects need to be more thorough. They lack transparency about what toxic materials factory workers might be handling, and plans to prevent hazardous waste like permanent chemicals from leaching into the environment are vague.
Since then, a coalition of influential labor unions and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, has submitted comments to the Commerce Department on the draft environmental assessment, calling the results substandard. The coalition’s comments listed potential problems with several projects in Arizona and Idaho, including how opaque manufacturers were about the safety measures they took to protect workers and nearby residents.
“We don’t object to the presence of these plants. We know they are going to have to use harmful substances.
They said the groups did not want to stop the plan from progressing. Their goal is to ensure that the industry avoids the mistakes of the United States, which produced large quantities of semiconductors. America’s first generation of semiconductor factories, or fabs, left a toxic Superfund site in Silicon Valley that is still being cleaned up decades later. That’s why they say it’s critical now to assess environmental risks and give communities a chance to weigh in on the new factories popping up across the country.
“We are not opposed to the existence of these plants. We understand that they will have to use harmful substances. Obviously, we are pushing for alternatives as much as possible, but one of our biggest problems is the lack of transparency,” Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO) said Executive Director Lenny Siegel.
Federal dollars come with strings attached
Siegel is a member of CHIPS Communities United, a coalition formed in the past year to hold semiconductor manufacturers accountable to the communities where they open factories. The group is also spearheaded by a number of prominent unions, including the Communications Workers of America, the United Auto Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The alliance was formed at a critical time for the United States. The “Chip and Science Act” passed in 2022 creates $52.7 billion in funding for chip manufacturing. This should help build a domestic supply chain for computer chips to meet high demand in everything from cars to gaming to artificial intelligence. As of June, more than half had been allocated to eight companies building plants in 10 states. The Biden administration said private industry has invested an additional $395 billion in new U.S. semiconductor and electronics manufacturing since 2021.
If a company receives federal funds, it may be subject to additional environmental regulations in addition to any local rules it must follow on construction sites. A fundamental environmental policy in the United States is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to conduct environmental reviews of major projects and share their findings with the public.
If NEPA applies, the agency will first put together a document called an environmental assessment to determine whether a “significant” environmental impact is likely. If no significant effects are found, the review process ends. But if significant risks are considered, a more detailed environmental impact statement must be prepared and more public participation procedures must be opened.
“Nothing is guaranteed”
So far, the Commerce Department has released draft environmental assessments for three specific project sites: Micron’s plans in Boise, Idaho, and Intel and TSMC’s factories in Arizona. All three drafts generally describe potential environmental impacts as minor or stipulate that as long as control measures are in place, “no significant impact will occur.” (The term they use is “best management practices,” or BMPs.)
CHIPS Communities United doesn’t believe it. It submitted comments to the Commerce Department calling on it to develop better environmental impact statements for each project. One of the key issues they identified was a lack of sufficient transparency about what these best management practices are and how they are monitored or enforced.
“These are huge projects that will have environmental impacts. The draft environmental assessment makes assumptions about what measures will be taken to mitigate those impacts, but there is no guarantee that those mitigation measures will be implemented,” Siegel said.
Computer chips have a toxic history
A longtime activist, Siegel also served in 2018 as mayor of Mountain View, Calif., where chip factories polluted soil and water before manufacturing began moving overseas. Santa Clara County, where Mountain View is located, has more Superfund sites than any other county in the United States. Arsenic, chloroform and lead are just a few of the many harmful substances that seeped into groundwater and are still being cleaned up at old production sites.
Today, manufacturers use an ever-evolving mixture of chemicals when making computer chips. The industry has taken steps to prevent contamination and replace certain substances linked to miscarriage and other health risks. But toxicologists say chemical mixtures often change faster than potential hazards can be identified. To make matters even more difficult, companies often don’t like to share the kinds of chemicals they’re using, protecting them as trade secrets despite pressure from advocates to tell workers what they’re handling.
Judith Barish said: “We would also like to see workers within factories empowered to not only know what they are doing, but to have a say in health and safety protocols and be empowered to respond when danger arises “We want to know that if workers speak out, they won’t be retaliated against. ”
Lately, Forever chemicals have become a bigger concern in wafer manufacturing. These include thousands of different per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been used for years to make everything from fabrics to nonstick pans more durable. The United States is just now beginning to enact regulations for the most common PFAS, but there are still thousands of other permanent chemicals without mandatory exposure limits. Scientists are still trying to understand the effects of exposure on the human body, but there is evidence that high exposure increases the risk of certain cancers, liver damage, high cholesterol and some reproductive health problems. The semiconductor industry also created its own PFAS Alliance to study the chemicals and minimize contamination.
How to permanently eliminate chemicals is another area of active research because they are so named because they are particularly difficult to destroy. Not surprisingly, CHIPS Communities United is concerned about how new semiconductor factories will handle hazardous waste, including PFAS. All three draft assessments concluded that hazardous materials on site “will not cause significant impacts” – but only if so-called best management practices are adopted.
CHIPS Communities United would like to know how these practices are implemented. When it comes to Forever Chemicals, TSMC and Intel’s assessment says the companies will separate PFAS from other waste streams and send it to off-site disposal facilities. What happens once these chemicals leave the site remains a concern for the league. PFAS are known to leak from landfills and remain in the air even after incineration.
They believe more detailed environmental impact statements for each proposed project could help fill in the gaps. It will also provide more opportunities for nearby communities to weigh in on what solutions they would like to see. Among other things, they want to see manufacturers enter into legally binding community benefits agreements. They also said the Commerce Department should spell out specific environmental and health protections in contracts with companies.
In the absence of up-to-date regulations, such agreements can go a long way. New PFAS federal regulations focus on drinking water rather than wastewater. Most chemical exposure limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have not been updated since the 1970s. OSHA says on its website that its exposure limits are “outdated and insufficient to ensure protection of worker health.” Attempts to update them have repeatedly been met with strong opposition from industry leaders and lawmakers with a deregulatory agenda.
Proposed rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are also in jeopardy in the wake of multiple Supreme Court rulings and the prospect of Donald Trump being re-elected as president. The coalition is also concerned about how these new plants will control climate pollution. How much water these facilities will use is another point of contention, especially in places like Arizona that are dealing with worsening droughts. Comments CHIPS Communities United sent to the Commerce Department about factories being built by Intel, Micron and TSMC cover a range of issues, including climate change and air quality, hazardous materials and waste, and the cumulative impacts of building multiple manufacturing facilities nearby. each other.
“In the absence of enforceable, transparent requirements to address such impacts, applicants’ commitments to address them will not eliminate them,” the alliance’s response to Micron and Intel’s plans said.
Intel declined to provide a formal response edge. The company is building two new wafer fabs and updating an existing fab at its Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona. TSMC, which is building three new semiconductor factories in Phoenix, did not respond to a request for comment. Micron Technology is building a new 1.2 million square foot fab at its headquarters in Boise. in an email edgeMicron said questions about the draft environmental assessment should be directed to the Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Program Office (CPO).
“We issued a draft [environmental assessments] Seek public comment to provide transparency and promote public input in the process. The CPO will carefully consider all public comments received during the comment period as we work to finalize the NEPA process.
In other words, Commerce must consider all of these issues when completing its environmental review. This in itself is what makes federal review under NEPA such a powerful tool. Last year, an attempt to exempt new chip plants from NEPA entirely failed.
“We believe that people who work in factories and live nearby have the right to know what they are using,” Siegel said. Others are also trying to figure out where to build new homes or child care centers, he added. “People and planners need to have this information.”
