A trail of toxic waste from the company touted as a symbol of green
technology. This is a must-see video report from CBS San Francisco. The
reporters go to a building in Milpitas, CA that was leased by Solyndra
where they performed final assembly of solar panels. At the site, they
find discarded buckets that are half-filled with hazardous waste and
the place trashed
CBS San Francisco
CBS San Francisco
MILPITAS — Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste.
It’s a tedious process. Slowly but surely, the shattered remains of brand new solar panel tubes head to a recycling plant in Hayward. Meanwhile the next phase of the company’s liquidation is under way. It involves getting rid of all the heavy metals left inside the building that were used to make the panels.
The Fremont Fire Department’s Jay Swardenski oversees the cleanup. He said some materials, such as cadmium, are toxic, and hard to dispose of. “They don’t degrade at all, so we want to make sure we don’t allow these materials to get into the environment,” he said. It’s not just the leftover hazardous materials, but also the machinery used to apply them to the glass tubes.
“Certainly those tools will need to be decontaminated, cleaned up, handled correctly as they are taken apart,” he said. Swardenski told CBS 5 the disposal process is going smoothly in Fremont, but what about nearby Milpitas?
Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay. CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled “hazardous waste.”
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