SACRAMENTO, the United States, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States' ambitious drive to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing faces a new hurdle as labor unions and community groups band together to voice concerns over potential health and environmental risks.

The groups criticized the federal government for what they perceive as inadequate regulation and oversight of the massive chip factories currently under construction in several states.

The push for a robust domestic chip supply chain, backed by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, has allocated 52.7 billion U.S. dollars to boost semiconductor manufacturing.

However, this initiative is now under scrutiny from a national coalition known as Chips Communities United (CCU), which includes influential labor unions such as the Communications Workers of America and United Auto Workers.

CCU submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Commerce early this month, calling for comprehensive assessments of new semiconductor projects to ensure complete transparency regarding their impacts.

The coalition's concerns primarily focus on the environmental review processes for three major projects: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) plant in Phoenix, Arizona; Intel's Ocotillo factory in Chandler, Arizona; and Micron's ID1 plant in Boise, Idaho.

The Commerce Department has released draft environmental assessments for these projects and issued "findings of no significant impact." However, CCU expressed "shock" at these conclusions, arguing that the federal government had a responsibility to demand more from leading semiconductor manufacturers in exchange for billions in public funding.

In their public comments, CCU contended that the draft assessments violate the National Environmental Policy Act by providing insufficient evidence and analysis.

The coalition argued that these assessments relied on standards unavailable for public inspection and omitted critical considerations such as the potential for air and water pollution and the impact on local ecosystems.

One of the most pressing concerns revolved around water usage, particularly in drought-stricken Arizona. The TSMC factory in Phoenix is expected to consume over 17 million gallons (64 million liters) of water daily in a state that has been experiencing drought conditions since 1994, according to CCU's news release on Aug. 9.

Another significant issue is the disposal of toxic chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing. The TSMC facility plans to ship PFAS, known as "forever chemicals" due to their persistence in the environment, to an unspecified treatment facility. Critics argued that this approach lacks transparency and fails to address the long-term consequences of handling such hazardous materials.

According to a Guardian report published Saturday, testing data from 2022 from one U.S. production plant, or fab, seen by the newspaper, showed as much as 78,000 parts per trillion of PFAS in wastewater from some samples. The legal limit of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for several common compounds is 4 parts per trillion.

Similar concerns have been raised about Intel's Ocotillo fab and Micron's Boise expansion. These facilities are also expected to generate chemical waste and greenhouse gas emissions, which critics claimed had not been fully accounted for in the environmental reviews.

The issue of environmental justice also came to the forefront of this debate.

Many communities where these plants are being constructed are low-income or minority neighborhoods. Labor unions and community groups argued that pollution and other environmental hazards often disproportionately affected these areas, demanding the government take extra precautions to ensure these projects do not exacerbate existing inequalities.

Lenny Siegel, executive director of the California-based Center for Public Environmental Oversight, has been vocal about the potential long-term consequences of inadequate regulation.

Drawing parallels to Silicon Valley's history, Siegel, former mayor of Mountain View, California, wrote in a letter to the Commerce Department that the tech industry poisoned the groundwater "throughout much of Silicon Valley with cancer-causing solvents and other hazardous substances" and that it would take decades to clean it up.

The Biden administration defended its approach, emphasizing the need to expand semiconductor manufacturing to strengthen national security and economic competitiveness. However, this stance has done little to ease critics' concerns, including several U.S. senators who believe that more stringent oversight is necessary to prevent environmental degradation.

Senators Edward Markey, Bernard Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ben Ray Lujan have jointly addressed these concerns in a letter to the Commerce Department on Aug. 7.

They argued that the department has "both an opportunity and a responsibility to correct historical wrongs linked to the semiconductor manufacturing industry," including the exposure of nearby communities to toxic chemicals, worker mistreatment and climate pollution. Enditem

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