Environmental Equity in Silicon Valley: A Study of Superfund Sites and the Santa Clara County Housing Market

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, information about groundwater contamination in Silicon Valley became widely available. While many residents already knew of the twenty-three groundwater contamination plumes from facilities connected to the computer industry, the more detailed maps distributed during this time provided new information on the extent of the contamination. This research examines the Santa Clara County housing market in 1992-93 and analyzes the environmental equity outcomes of market transactions. Applying the tools of spatial econometrics, it explores the variations in price impacts of proximity to the plumes across demographic groups. The full research process is presented here, and the steps in the analysis are carefully elaborated. While the study finds only weak evidence of a relationship between neighborhood ethnicity and price impacts, it does find statistical evidence of inequities in the information available to different language communities. This book will be useful to those readers interested in environmental economics, spatial econometrics, housing market economics, and environmental equity.