（文章翻译）被污染的鲜果：硅谷的环境不平等问题
作者：Jason A. Heppler
Jason A. Heppler 是乔治梅森大学罗伊·罗森茨维格历史与新媒体中心的历史学家和软件开发人员，著有《硅谷与高科技城市化的环境不平等》（Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism）（俄克拉荷马大学出版社，2024 年）
发布时间：2023 年 11 月 15 日
原文网址: https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/november-2023/spoiled-fruits-environmental-inequality-in-silicon-valley
When Wallace Stegner arrived in Palo Alto, California, in 1945, he wrote a friend with his first impressions of his new home. The novelist and new Stanford faculty member found the Santa Clara Valley to be “very pleasant country” of “golden wild-oat hills dotted with marvelous old liveoaks and bay trees, with a dark pine-covered ridge of the coast ridge behind, and in front the hills dropping down over orchards and towns to the bay. . . . There are views to knock your eye out all over these hills.” Two decades later, Stegner’s celebration became a lament. “The orchards that used to be a spring garden of bloom down the long trough of the Santa Clara Valley,” he wrote in 1965, “have gone under so fast that a person absent for five years could return and think himself in another country. . . . The once-lovely coast hills reaching down the Peninsula below San Francisco have been crusted with houses in half a lifetime, the hilltops flattened, whole hills carried off to fill the bay, the creeks turned into concrete storm drains.” Employment in high-tech companies drove massive migrations to the valley that, in turn, led to sprawling cities who competed with one another over land.
1945年，当华莱士·斯特格纳（Wallace Stegner）抵达加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托时，他写信给一位朋友，讲述了他对新家的第一印象。这位小说家与斯坦福大学的新教员发现，圣克拉拉山谷是一个“环境宜人的地方”，“金色的野燕麦山，点缀着奇妙的老橡树和月桂树，后面是海岸山脊上长满黑松的山脊，在前面是山峦起伏，越过果园和城镇，一直延伸到海湾……这些山上到处都是令人目眩的景色。”二十年后，斯特格纳的庆祝变成了哀叹。他在 1965 年写道：“圣克拉拉山谷长谷下曾经是鲜花盛开的春天花园的果园，现在已经衰败得如此之快，以至于一个离开五年的人回来后会觉得自己身处另一个国家……曾经美丽的海岸山丘一直延伸到旧金山下方的半岛，半辈子的时间里，房屋都被覆盖了，山顶被夷为平地，整座山被运走填平了海湾，小溪变成了混凝土雨水渠。”高科技公司的就业推动了大规模人口向山谷的迁移，这反过来又导致城市不断扩张，相互争夺土地。
Stegner arrived at the front edge of a massive migration to the Santa Clara Valley—stretching from San Francisco through San Jose to Hollister—in the immediate postwar era. For the next decade, the landscape of orchards and pleasantness remained a key selling point enticing white-collar workers and high-tech manufacturers. As late as 1953, the San Jose Chamber of Commerce continued organizing blossom tours that gave residents a chance to drive along the county’s highways and witness the seasonal blooming of prune, pear, almond, apricot, and cherry orchards. Yet it was this landscape that helped lead to the widespread and rapid changes Stegner identified in 1965. The valley’s boosters promised a countryside lifestyle for work and home; city councils smoothed the way for new development; and universities pursued military contracts that funneled billions of dollars into the region. Throughout the valley’s burgeoning office and research parks designed to support the growing electronics industry, one booster promised a “pleasant place” of “broad lawns, employee patios, trees, flowers and shrubs, walls of glass, recreational clubs” instead of the “smokestacks, noise, coal cars, [and] soot” of the Northeast and Midwest. High-tech manufacturing, it seemed, solved two problems: assuring the nation of a new form of industrial work as steel-age industry declined while also being a clean and modern alternative to industrial activity. Such promises ignored the material realities of high-tech research and manufacturing, whose reliance on chemicals and attendant urban growth prompted water pollution, environmental inequality, and farmland reduction that reshaped the landscape into the Silicon Valley we know today.
战后不久，斯特格纳就来到了圣克拉拉谷大规模移民的前沿——从旧金山经圣何塞一直延伸到霍利斯特。果园的风景和宜人的环境仍然是吸引白领工人和高科技制造商的一个关键卖点。直到 1953 年，圣何塞商会还在继续组织赏花之旅，让居民有机会驱车沿着县高速公路行驶，欣赏梅园、梨园、扁桃园、杏园和樱桃园的四季花开。然而，正是这种景观促成了斯特格纳在 1965 年指出的广泛而迅速的变化。硅谷建设的推动者们承诺为工作和家庭提供一种乡村生活方式；市议会为新的发展铺平了道路；大学为争取军事合同向该地区输送了数十亿美元。在整个硅谷中为支持不断发展的电子行业而蓬勃发展的办公楼和研究园区，一位支持者承诺将提供一个“宜人的地方”，其中包括“宽阔的草坪、员工露台、树木、花卉和灌木、玻璃墙、休闲俱乐部”，而不是东北部的“烟囱”和中西部的“噪音、运煤车和煤烟”。高科技制造业似乎解决了两个问题：随着钢铁时代工业的衰落，高科技制造业为国家提供了一种新的工业工作形式，同时也是一种清洁、现代化的工业活动替代品。这些承诺忽视了高科技研究和制造的物质现实，其对化学品的依赖和随之而来的城市发展造成了水污染、环境不平等和农田减少，从而重塑了我们今天所知的硅谷的面貌。
Until the 1950s, agriculture was the valley’s primary economic activity, earning it the 19th-century nickname “the Garden of the World.” The exceptional climate, fertile soils, and plentiful water allowed farmers to cultivate a wide variety of fruits. The region’s farms led the state in fruit cultivation, drying, canning, and packing, making it a major fruit distributor in the early 20th century. As early as 1895, the San Francisco Chronicle estimated nearly 40,000 acres of the valley were devoted to fruit cultivation, reaching a peak of 727,000 acres by the mid-1940s.
直到 20 世纪 50 年代，农业一直是硅谷（圣克拉拉谷）的主要经济产业，因此在 19 世纪享有“世界花园”的美称。得天独厚的气候、肥沃的土壤和充足的水源使农民能够种植各种各样的水果。该地区的农场在水果种植、烘干、罐装和包装方面处于全国领先地位，使其在 20 世纪初成为主要的水果集散地。早在 1895 年，《旧金山纪事报》就评估圣克拉拉山谷有近 40000 英亩的土地用于水果种植，到 20 世纪 40 年代中期达到 727000 英亩的峰值。
After World War II, Santa Clara County’s demographics and economy began to shift. By the 1950s, 4,000 people a month were moving into the county, nearly doubling the prewar population. In 1960, the county surpassed San Francisco as the region’s urban center. San Jose typified the pace and expansion of this period. Contained to just 17 square miles in 1952, the city sprawled outward to encompass 137 square miles by 1965 through an aggressive annexation campaign led by city manager Dutch Hamann and a supportive city council.
第二次世界大战后，圣克拉拉的人口结构和经济开始发生变化。到 20 世纪 50 年代，每月有 4000 人迁入该县，几乎是战前的两倍。1960 年，圣克拉拉超过旧金山，成为该地区的城市中心。圣何塞是这一时期快速扩张的典型代表。1952 年，圣何塞的面积仅为 17 平方英里，到 1965 年，在城市经理达奇·哈曼（Dutch Hamann）和支持他的市议会的领导下，通过积极的兼并运动，城市面积扩展到 137 平方英里。
The farmlands, so attractive to new homeowners who wished for a countryside experience, quickly gave way to subdivisions. Some farmers saw opportunity in their land used for urban growth as land prices rose dramatically, fetching as much as $7,000 per acre by the mid-1950s. By the 1970s, agricultural land was selling for upwards of $18,000 an acre. Local historian Yvonne Jacobson estimates that 77,000 acres of the valley floor left agricultural production between 1950 and 1980. By 1982, 20,000 acres of agricultural land remained in the valley, falling to just 4,500 acres by 2001, mostly near the South Bay cities of Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
农田对于想要体验乡村体验的新房主来说非常有吸引力，但很快就被社区所取代。随着土地价格的大幅上涨，到 20 世纪 50 年代中期，每英亩土地的价格高达 7000 美元，一些农民从用于城市发展的土地中看到了商机。到 20 世纪 70 年代，农业用地的售价高达每英亩 18000 美元。据当地历史学家伊冯·雅各布森（Yvonne Jacobson）估计，1950 年至 1980 年间，有 77000 英亩的谷底土地不再用于农业生产。到 1982 年，山谷中仍有 20000 英亩的农业用地，到 2001 年，农田面积下降到仅有 4500 英亩，大部分位于南湾城市摩根山 (Morgan Hill) 附近和吉尔罗伊。
Such rapid growth came with consequences, and not just on the surface. Beginning in the 1920s, population growth led to an increase in both private and public wells, which drew down aquifer levels and led to compression of the ground above. In 1921, engineers warned that the valley’s falling water tables and subsidence threatened to disrupt farming operations and damage city infrastructure. Postwar urban growth, however, accelerated the overdrafting of water resources and ground compression. Downtown San Jose sank 14 feet over the course of the 1950s, while Alviso, located at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay and already below sea level, sank six feet. The shifting ground led rivers and creeks to angle farther downward, allowing them to carry larger and heavier sediment and exacerbating flooding. These altered drainage patterns worsened a massive flood in a Christmas 1955 deluge that overwhelmed Sunnyvale and Alviso.
如此快速的增长带来了不好的后果，而且不仅仅是表面上的。从 20 世纪 20 年代开始，人口增长导致私人和公共水井的增加，从而降低了含水层水位并导致地面沉降。1921 年，工程师们警告说，硅谷地下水位下降和地面沉降有可能破坏农业生产并损坏城市基础设施。然而，战后的城市发展加速了水资源的过度消耗和地面沉降。20 世纪 50 年代，圣何塞市中心下沉了 14 英尺，而位于旧金山湾南端、已经低于海平面的阿尔维索也下沉了 6 英尺。地表的移动导致河流和小溪向下倾斜，使其能够携带更大、更重的沉积物，加剧了洪水泛滥。这些改变的排水模式加剧了 1955 年圣诞节洪水泛滥，淹没了桑尼维尔和阿尔维索。
In response, the county’s water conservation district built a new system of dikes and levees in the latter half of the 1950s. But the flood prevention system ended at the Sunnyvale city limits, leaving Alviso, a predominantly Latinx community, threatened by future floods. Town leaders appealed to the Army Corps of Engineers and congressional representatives to find solutions but found themselves in an impossible situation: the corps rejected appeals for new flood control projects because of high costs, and the city could not secure government grants to pay for the project. Over the next three decades, Alviso would face at least four more city-inundating floods. In addition to the flooding threats, San Jose constructed a sewage processing facility near Alviso’s city limits in the mid-1950s, off-loading smells, chemicals, and disposal away from San Jose city limits. Alviso became a dumping ground for the expanding, mostly white communities of San Jose and Sunnyvale.
为此，圣克拉拉的水资源保护区在 20 世纪 50 年代后半期修建了新的堤坝系统。但防洪系统的终点是桑尼维尔的边界，这使得阿尔维索这个以拉丁裔为主的社区受到了未来洪水的威胁。镇领导呼吁陆军工程兵部队和国会代表寻找解决方案，但他们发现自己陷入了无法解决的境地：工程兵部队以成本高昂为由拒绝了新防洪项目的呼吁，而该市又无法获得政府拨款来支付该项目费用。在接下来的三十年里，阿尔维索至少又面临了四次淹没城市的洪水。除了洪水威胁之外，圣何塞还于 20 世纪 50 年代中期在阿尔维索市区附近建造了一个污水处理设施，将废气、化学物质和工业废物排放到远离圣何塞市区的地方。阿尔维索成为圣何塞和桑尼维尔不断扩大的白人社区的垃圾场。
Situating the spoils of urban growth away from cities allowed them to prioritize the rural aesthetics that mattered so greatly to the growing white-collar class. Undoubtedly the valley has an undeniable beauty, and nearly year-round pleasant weather factored into selling the valley to potential industrial recruits and white-collar workers. But that very perception of the valley’s unique nature helped fuel shifting political attitudes, and voters began questioning the expansion-at-all-costs city councils. Council candidates began running for—and winning—seats by supporting slower growth, opposing higher taxes, and questioning the inability of city services to keep pace with expansion. Again, San Jose typified these changes. Virginia Shaffer’s 1962 election to the council drove the first wedge into San Jose’s drive at growth, followed over the next decade by other antigrowth council members. In 1974, the election of Mayor Janet Gray Hayes solidified a new environmentalist wing of politicians in city government. Hayes, a self-avowed environmentalist and the city’s first female mayor, shifted the city’s policies away from expansion and toward improving city services within existing city limits.
将城市发展的成果安置在远离城市的地方，使他们能够优先考虑乡村美学，这对日益壮大的白领阶层来说非常重要。毫无疑问，硅谷拥有无可争议的美景，几乎全年宜人的气候也是向潜在的工业新员工和白领阶层推销硅谷的因素之一。但是，对硅谷独特性的认识助长了政治态度的转变，选民开始质疑不惜一切代价扩张的市议会。市议会候选人开始通过支持放缓增长、反对提高税收以及质疑城市服务无法跟上扩张步伐来竞选并赢得席位。圣何塞也是这些变化的典型代表。弗吉尼亚·谢弗 (Virginia Shaffer) 在 1962 年当选为市议员，为圣荷西的增长动力打下了第一个楔子，在接下来的十年中，其他反对增长的市议员也纷纷加入。1974 年，珍妮特·格雷·海斯 (Janet Gray Hayes) 当选市长，巩固了市政府中新的环保主义政治派别。海斯自称是环保主义者，也是该市第一位女市长，她将城市政策从扩张转向在现有城市范围内改善城市服务。
While urban growth presented one way of altering the environment, another came from the economic activity of the valley itself. Today, we think of the largely web- and software-based companies of Apple, Facebook, and Google, but until the 1980s, the primary industrial activity was electronics manufacturing. When technology journalist Don Hoefler first printed the name “Silicon Valley” in 1971, thus rendering its nickname as the place name, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and many other companies employed both white-collar research-and-development engineers and scientists and blue-collar workers, largely people of color and predominantly women, who assembled the chips, circuit boards, and other hardware. While high-tech had sold itself as a cleaner, greener alternative to industrialization, manufacturing electrical components relied on chemicals and gases to give silicon components their conductive properties. These chemicals often threatened the health of assembly line workers. Reports of chemical burns, asthma, cancer, and a host of other health issues became common over the 1970s. So often did laborers bring forth stories of adverse health effects that Robin Baker, Amanda Hawes, and Pat Lamborn started the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health in the late 1970s to represent workers harmed by chip manufacturing.
城市发展是改变环境的一种方式，而另一种方式则来自于硅谷本身的经济活动。今天，我们想到的主要是苹果（Apple）、脸书（Facebook）和谷歌（Google）等以网络和软件为基础的公司，但直到 20 世纪 80 年代，主要的工业活动还是电子制造业。当科技记者唐纳德·霍夫勒（Don Hoefler）于 1971 年首次将“硅谷”这个名字印在报纸上，并将其昵称作为地名时，惠普（HP）、仙童半导体 (Fairchild Semiconductor)、英特尔（Intel）、超威半导体（AMD）以及其他许多公司都雇用了白领研发工程师和科学家，以及蓝领工人（主要是有色人种，其中以女性为主），他们负责组装芯片、电路板和其他硬件。虽然高科技以更清洁、更环保的工业化替代品自居，但电子元件的生产需要依赖化学品和气体来赋予硅元件导电性能。这些化学品经常威胁装配线工人的健康。在 20 世纪 70 年代，有关化学烧伤、哮喘、癌症和其他一系列健康问题的报道屡见不鲜。罗宾·贝克（Robin Baker）、阿曼达·霍斯（Amanda Hawes）和帕特·兰博恩（Pat Lamborn）在 20 世纪 70 年代末成立了圣克拉拉职业安全与健康中心，代表因芯片制造而受到伤害的工人。
These chemicals were not widely recognized for their carcinogenic properties, nor were they effectively monitored. In January 1982, readers of the San Jose Mercury reported that chemical contaminants had been found in the city’s public and private drinking wells. When installing a storage tank at Fairchild in the southern end of the city, workers found that an older tank was leaking chemical solvents into groundwater. For residents of the nearby Los Paseos neighborhood, the stories of miscarriages, strange-tasting water, and childhood health problems suddenly had an explanation. The county began a rapid investigation, drilling testing wells throughout the county and revealing more leaks—not just at Fairchild but at HP, Intel, AMD, and elsewhere. Contaminants, it seemed, had left no part of the county untouched. In the wake of this news, attorney Ted Smith formed the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition to track information about chemical leaks, hold companies accountable, and help draft new pollution ordinances. Within a year, California congressional representatives secured investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency; by 1990, the agency listed 29 Superfund sites in Santa Clara County—24 caused by high-tech companies—making the county among the most contaminated in the nation.
这些化学物质的致癌性并未得到广泛认可，也没有得到有效监测。1982 年 1 月，《圣何塞水星报》的读者报道称，在该市的公共和私人饮用水井中发现了化学污染物。在该市南端的仙童公司（Fairchild）安装储油罐时，工人们发现一个旧储油罐正在向地下水泄漏化学溶剂。对于附近 Los Paseos 社区的居民来说，流产、怪味水和儿童健康问题的故事突然有了解释。圣克拉拉开始迅速展开调查，在全县范围内钻井检测，并发现了更多的泄漏点——不仅仅是仙童公司，还有惠普、英特尔、AMD 等公司。看来，污染物已经遍布该县的每一个角落。得知这一消息后，泰德·史密斯（Ted Smith）律师成立了“硅谷有毒物质联盟”（Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition），追踪化学品泄漏信息，追究公司责任，并帮助起草新的污染法规。在一年之内，加利福尼亚州的国会代表确保了环境保护局的调查；到 1990 年，该机构在圣克拉拉县列出了 29 个超级基金站点（由于危险废物的倾倒、露天堆放或其他不当管理，美国有数千个污染场地。这些场所包括生产设施、加工厂、垃圾填埋场和采矿场。CERCLA 的非正式名称是 "超级基金"。它允许环保局清理受污染的场所。它还强制污染责任方进行清理，或向政府偿还 EPA 主导的清理工作的费用），其中 24 个是由高科技公司造成的，这使得圣克拉拉成为全美污染最严重的地区之一。
Silicon Valley’s relationship to nature was and is cultural and material. The valley’s reputation was closely tied to nature—a reputation that persists to this day through its supposed eco-friendly companies, cars, and leisure. Environmental tensions continue and have expanded beyond Northern California through the mining of rare earth metals, cryptomining operations, and server farms that make possible the internet and the laptops, phones, tablets, watches, and other smart devices that power our modern lives. Silicon Valley’s environmental history urges us to dwell on failure: beneath the green veneer of high-tech companies lies a past that was anything but its clean image.
硅谷与自然无论过去还是现在都具有文化与物质性的联系。硅谷的声誉与自然紧密相连，这种声誉通过其所谓的环保型公司、汽车和休闲方式延续至今。环境紧张局势持续存在，并通过稀土金属开采、加密采矿作业和服务器农场而扩大到北加州以外的地区，这些服务器农场使互联网以及为我们现代生活提供动力的笔记本电脑、手机、平板电脑、手表和其他智能设备成为可能。硅谷的环境历史促使我们牢记教训：在高科技公司的绿色外表下，隐藏着一段与干净形象完全不同的历史。
封面：Calgon Carbon 公司工厂使用的过热工艺会向空气中释放名为二恶英的化学物质，这种物质与癌症和出生缺陷有关。
