Contact: Judith Barish
Email: info@chipscommunitiesunited.org
Phone: 510-759-9910
Washington DC – CHIPS Communities United (CCU), a coalition of labor unions, environmental organizations, and community groups, today urged the Commerce Department to undertake a more thorough review of proposed CHIPS Act-funded projects. On the second anniversary of the signing of the CHIPS and Science Act, the organization is concerned that the federal agency is failing to adequately scrutinize the impact of the massive new semiconductor factories subsidized by public money.
By issuing “findings of no significant impact” and failing to conduct full environmental impact statements (EIS) on three projects with proposed CHIPS Act funding (TSMC’s Phoenix, Arizona facility; Intel’s Ocotillo factory in Chandler, Arizona; and Micron’s ID1 plant in Boise, Idaho), the Commerce Department is failing to document in sufficient detail the impacts of these large federal projects and missing an opportunity for environmental leadership. CCU has submitted public comment for each of these documents and calls for a full EIS for each of the new projects to ensure the public understands the impacts.
“To claim that these projects will have no significant impact on the environment doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Lenny Siegel, a member of the coalition and former mayor of Mountain View, California, where he oversees clean-up of former semiconductor manufacturing sites. “These massive industrial plants will have enormous impacts on water and energy supplies and release hazardous liquids and gases, including the ‘forever chemical’ PFAS, into the workplace and environment. Neighbors and employees have a right to know.”
CCU’s public comment on the draft environmental assessment of TSMC’s Phoenix, Arizona facility calls on the Commerce Department to provide leadership on creating a sustainable semiconductor industry. “The CHIPS and Science act offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity not just to reshore the semiconductor manufacturing industry but also to improve product stewardship throughout the semiconductor supply chain, strengthen chemicals management, and promote sustainable production,” reads the comment, which was submitted on July 12.
A letter sent to the Commerce Department on August 7 by Sens. Markey, Warren, Sanders, and Lujan and endorsed by the Sierra Club, United Auto Workers, and Communications Workers of America echoes this challenge.
“As the Department of Commerce works to finalize its agreements to disburse $53 billion in chip manufacturing grants under the CHIPS and Science Act,” the senators wrote, “the Department has both an opportunity and a responsibility to correct historical wrongs linked to the semiconductor manufacturing industry, which include exposure of nearby communities to toxic chemicals, worker mistreatment, and climate pollution. In the ongoing ‘due-diligence phase’ of the grant distribution process, before agreements are finalized, the Department must impose clear and enforceable conditions on grantees to ensure that workers, community members, and the environment are protected and that the grantees fairly engage with any worker efforts to unionize.”
The Commerce Department’s own environmental review documents reveal serious grounds for concern and significant environmental impacts associated with the new developments. The TSMC factory in Phoenix will use more than 17 million gallons of water a day, in a state that has been in a drought since 1994. It will directly generate more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than 32,000 homes and use enough electricity to power 300,000 Arizona households. The factory will dispose of PFAS, the toxic forever chemicals, by shipping them to a treatment facility elsewhere, without specifying how that facility will dispose of the highly toxic waste.
CCU cited similar concerns in public comments submitted on August 8 about Intel’s Ocotillo fab and Micron’s Boise expansion. “It seems obvious that such a significant expansion, moving from research and development to high-volume manufacturing utilizing new production techniques, will have a significant environmental impact, and the draft environmental assessment bears this out, documenting significant air pollution impacts, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic releases, environmental justice impacts, and socioeconomic impacts,” CCU’s comment notes about the Micron Boise expansion. The comment was submitted yesterday.
Micron’s ID1 project in Boise is projected to use more electricity than the entire city of Boise (including industrial users) does today, CCU’s comment observes. “In the section on utilities,” reads the organization’s public comment, “ the [draft environmental assessment] documents the anticipated increase in electricity demand from the operation of the proposed project to be 3,700,000 MWh. This is considerably more than the City of Boise currently uses per year and is equivalent to the electricity use of half a million households.”
CCU also points out that the Commerce Department’s environmental assessment of Micron’s ID1 project entirely overlooks the environmental justice concerns of low-income residents (many of them elderly, BIPOC, and/or disabled) living across the street from the facility and relying on water sourced from a stream running through the site of the proposed new factory.
Given that the environmental assessments surfaced so many environmental concerns associated with the three projects, CCU is shocked that the Commerce Department found no significant environmental impacts and denied the need for a full environmental review. Our coalition insists the federal government has a responsibility to require more from the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers in exchange for billions of public dollars.
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