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On April 27, 2026, I filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction in Gjovik v. Apple Inc., City of Santa Clara, Jenab et al., Case No. 25-cv-07360-PCP, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The hearing is set for June 4, 2026 at 10:00 AM, before Judge P. Casey Pitts in Courtroom 8 — 4th Floor, 280 South 1st Street, San Jose, CA. The hearing is open to the public.
The motion asks the Court to order all hazardous waste, hazardous materials, and toxic gases removed from Apple's semiconductor fabrication plant at 3250 Scott Boulevard within 30 days, to prohibit resumption of hazardous use during the case, and to prohibit the property owner from re-leasing the site to any operator for hazardous use above CalARP, RMP, or Toxic Gas Ordinance threshold quantities. Apple may continue to occupy the building for office or non-industrial use. The relief targets the chemicals — not the building. The full filings:
Since I served the sixty-day notice in June 2025 and filed my Opposition to the City's motion to dismiss in October 2025, the record has only gotten worse for the Defendants. In October 2025, EPA issued a Consent Agreement and Final Order documenting seven RCRA counts. The underlying April 2024 EPA Inspection Report identified 19 Potential Violations — 14 of which were still outstanding when EPA issued its Notice of Violation. Six BAAQMD air-pollution violations remain Pending as of April 26, 2026 — sixteen months after BAAQMD cited them. Santa Clara County's post-Bhopal Toxic Gas Ordinance permitting regime, which exists specifically to prevent catastrophes at facilities like this one, has zero records for this site. Apple's own sworn 2024 throughput report — signed under penalty of law by Apple's EHS Lead in February 2025 — confirms permit-cap exceedances of arsine at 84% over, phosphine at 61% over, and boron trichloride at 824% over. In September 2025, I offered all three Defendants a comprehensive menu of stipulated interim mitigation — air and sewer monitoring with auto-shutoff alarms, public warning signage, basic operator-identification signage (the building bears no public sign identifying Apple as the operator), completion of unfiled hazardous-substance permits, independent professional-engineer assessments, monthly compliance reporting. None of it required admission of liability. All three Defendants refused every measure and offered no counter-proposal. The engineers said it in writingThe most important document in the motion is Apple's own. In its September 2020 Process Hazard Analysis Revalidation, Apple's retained consultant identified specific failure modes — toxic gas leak, fire, explosion, sabotage, truck fire — and assigned to each consequence column the same phrase: "personnel exposure resulting in injury and/or fatality (site personnel or neighbors)." That phrase appears across at least eleven distinct nodes in the document, covering arsine, phosphine, chlorine, ammonia, diborane, silane, and the pyrophoric organometallics like trimethylaluminum and diethyl zinc — chemicals that ignite violently in air or water. Apple's own RMP*Comp dispersion modeling places its arsine worst-case toxic endpoint at 1.1 miles. Inside that envelope: 5,343 residents (a number that excludes the apartment complex across the lot line, which Apple just left out of the count), 1,787 housing units, an amusement park, a college, places of worship, the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail, VTA Light Rail, and Highway 101. The Santa Clara Fire Department — the CalARP Administering Agency that received the modeling — has formally written that Apple's plume models are "not favorable for this area" and on June 17, 2025 withheld approval of an adjacent 166-unit residential project pending environmental review. The Granada Islamic School, with up to 900 pre-K through 8th-grade students, sits inside the arsine plume. In a chemical emergency, the school's Shelter-in-Place plan directs the children to evacuate to Meadow Park — directly across the street from the facility. The evacuation route runs the children toward the source. The failure modes Apple's engineers predicted have already materialized. Between June 2016 and May 2024, there were at least eleven toxic gas incidents at the facility, including:
Five chemical-release events in the past three years alone. Santa Clara has been withholding additional incident records since May 2024. Apple's facility sits directly on top of a pressurized artesian aquifer at about 35 feet below grade. Documented head pressure has been increasing since 1988 — a Honeywell monitoring well next door went from 19 feet depth-to-water in 1988 to zero by 1995, with water rising 100 feet up the well shaft. The 2015 Geotechnical Investigation for the apartment site documented four pressurized springs with measured pressure sufficient to drive the water column 10 to 13 feet above grade if uncapped. Apple stores silane, dichlorosilane, silicon tetrachloride, trimethylaluminum, diethyl zinc, and 49% hydrofluoric acid — chemicals that ignite or react violently with water — directly above this system. The geotechnical engineers' only mitigation recommendation was, essentially, don't dig down into it. Apple has known about the increasing aquifer pressure since 2015 and has done nothing. The City has been here before. The Sixth District Court of Appeal held in LSI Logic Corp. v. City of Santa Clara (1995) that the City of Santa Clara was unlawfully negligent for approving sensitive receptors next to chip fabs, and rejected the City's "shelter-in-place safe room" mitigation as inadequate. Current Mayor Lisa Gillmor was on the City Council at the time. The City was on direct, judicially-noticeable notice — thirty years ago — that doing this in this very City violated the duty owed to the surrounding community. The City did it again here, concealed Apple's CalARP-regulated status from the 2015 EIR, and continues to conceal the danger. Apple is also judicially estopped. In my prior personal-injury case before this same District (3:23-cv-04597), Apple won a statute-of-limitations dismissal on the position that, on notice that Apple was operating a semiconductor manufacturing plant at this address, I and any other victims should have immediately suspected the facility as the cause of severe chemical injuries. Apple cannot now turn around and tell this Court the same facility presents no extraordinary risk to anyone living next door. The fab is either ultrahazardous activity or it isn't. What I'm asking forThe motion asks the Court for what the Defendants would not agree to voluntarily:
What comes nextI'll post updates here as briefing develops. Apple, the City, and the property owner have their oppositions due in the coming weeks; my reply follows. If you want to support the case, you can sign the Change.org petition and share it. The community right next door has been kept in the dark about this for nearly a decade, and the people inside the 1.1-mile arsine plume — the residents, the children at the playground across the street, the 900 schoolkids whose evacuation route goes toward the source, the worshippers at the Family Prayer House nursery, the urgent care patients, the workers who have already been hospitalized — deserve to know. The chemicals at this facility can kill thousands of people in minutes if released. Apple's own engineers admitted that in writing under penalty. It's time for the chemicals to come out. -Ashley
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I Filed a CERCLA Petition to Put the South Bay (Boston, MA) on the National Priorities List2/13/2026 Read the full petition here: Petition to put South Bay on the NPL (Feb. 13 2026).
For those of you following my work, this is going to be a surprise. I've been dealing with a second environmental disaster — this one in Boston — while simultaneously litigating against Apple and navigating bankruptcy. I didn't talk about it publicly because I needed to be sure of what I was looking at before I said it out loud, but I'm sure now & it's a real mess. Today I filed a Petition for Preliminary Assessment under CERCLA § 105(d) and a Sixty-Day Notice for a Citizen Suit under the Clean Water Act and CERCLA, nominating the South Bay in Boston for the National Priorities List. There have never been any NPL sites in the City of Boston. The petition argues there should have been one a long time ago. Most people who visit Boston don't realize that at least a third of the city shouldn't exist. The Shawmut Peninsula (the original landmass) was a tiny, hilly island barely connected to the mainland by a narrow tidal isthmus called "the Neck." Everything around it was ocean, tidal flats, salt marshes, and bays. The South Bay was one of the largest of these. It was a working harbor, a port of international importance, and the economic heart of early colonial Boston. Tidal streams, including the Roxbury Creek and Dorchester Brook, fed into it. The ocean ebbed and flowed, with high tides twice a day. Over approximately two hundred years, Boston filled this bay. They filled it with garbage, sewage, construction debris, coal ash, rubble from the Great Fire of 1872, cinders, street sweepings, and dredged harbor mud. The wharves were built on timber cribbing and wood pile foundations; the spaces between were stuffed with whatever was available. Sugar refineries, iron foundries, and slave-trade shipping operations filled the shoreline for their own purposes. The South Boston Iron Works, the largest foundry in the country by mid-century, repeatedly filled its land from the 1830s through 1860. The Boston Wharf Company (whose directors were also shareholders in the Bay State Sugar Refinery and notorious slave owners) filled the areas around Fort Point Channel. The Gillette razor company moved in around 1905 and was still filling (with straight-up bricks) into the 1960s. The City and Commonwealth were involved in or approved nearly all of it. .... On Dec. 11 2025, I filed a sixty-day notice of an incoming Clean Water Act Citizen Suit, as required by Section 505(b) of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b). This notice communicates my intent to file a citizen enforcement action for ongoing violations of Clean Water Act Sections 404, 401, and 1311 at the Saratoga Creek system and adjacent wetlands in Santa Clara, California. Between approximately 1950 and 1985, the parties identified in this notice discharged fill material into Saratoga Creek and adjacent jurisdictional wetlands without obtaining required permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They repeatedly buried Saratoga Creek (a superficial and 200ft below ground surface aquifer) by placing fill material in the creek channel and installing underground pipes, managing the Waters of the U.S. as if it were stormwater runoff. They filled approximately 500+ acres of tideland-adjacent wet meadow, destroyed rare and nationally important ecosystems, and intentionally installed a drop structure that functions as a complete barrier to fish passage in a stream that provides natural habitat for Chinook Salmon. They also razed prime farmland of international acclaim against the farmers' wishes, non-consensually annexed these pioneer farming families' land, disturbed soils known to contain Native American burial grounds and artifacts, presumably disposed of Native American remains via a garbage dump, clear-cut irreplaceable pear orchards, and filled the natural wetland and creek in order to cover it with concrete and build industrial parks—which they used to create no less than four Superfund toxic waste cleanup sites in just a couple of decades. None of these activities were authorized by Clean Water Act Section 404 permits, and no Section 401 state water quality certification was obtained. These violations continue to the present day. The fill material remains in place in waters of the United States. The buried creek continues flowing through underground infrastructure, or builds pressure underground where it lost the ability to surface and seep. Each day the unpermitted fill remains constitutes a continuing violation of the Clean Water Act. The attached notice provides detailed documentation of these violations. (There is also a text version of the notice). Additional exhibits and supporting documentation are available in an Appendix. The notice will be sent via certified mail will satisfy the sixty-day notice requirement under 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b). If the violations are not remediated within sixty days, I intend to file suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, civil penalties, and attorneys' fees. If the EPA or the Army Corps commences enforcement action within sixty days, a citizen suit may be precluded under 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b)(1)(B). I would strongly prefer that the EPA and Army Corps take action as I am not a civil engineer and this matter will require professional engineering oversight. I have a pending citizen suit already filed in the Northern District of California regarding hazardous waste and related violations at a specific facility in this location (Gjovik v. Apple Inc., Santa Clara, Jenab, et al., No. 5:25-cv-07360, N.D. Cal.). Only in researching that facility did I realize what was done in the overall area, and accordingly I filed this Notice and request enforcement action. - Ashley M. Gjovik  View the creek aerial photo album on Flickr here.
     On September 2 2025, I filed an environmental Citizen Suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The defendants are Apple Inc., the City of Santa Clara, and the property owner. The cases arises out of activities at a modern semiconductor fabrication facility. I'm alleging violations of five federal environmental statutes—the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Clean Air Act (CAA), Clean Water Act (CWA), Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), and Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)—and California public nuisance law. On October 10 2025, the City of Santa Clara filed a Motion to Dismiss requesting to remove themselves from the lawsuit, generally claiming immunity from liability due to their status as a municipal government. On October 25, 2025, I filed my Opposition and Request for Judicial Notice. The hearing is scheduled for November 20, 2025 in San Jose federal court.
In Santa Clara County in the 1970s and 1980s, the County (including City of Santa Clara) became ground zero for semiconductor manufacturing disasters. Reckless industrial practices led to toxic waste dumps, groundwater contamination, chemical spills, deaths, evacuations, and toxic clouds. The result: Santa Clara County ended up with the most Superfund cleanup sites in the nation. Congress looked at what happened in Santa Clara County and enacted the federal environmental laws at issue in this case. RCRA, CERCLA, CAA, CWA, and EPCRA exist largely because of what happened here. Local regulations created in response to Santa Clara County disasters—like the Toxic Gas Ordinance and silane-specific safety regulations—were later adopted nationally in the International Fire Code. The semiconductor fabrication facility at 3250 Scott Boulevard uses some of the most dangerous chemicals in industrial manufacturing including arsine, phosphine, mercury, silane, and extensive industrial solvents while sitting extraordinarily close to residential housing. The facility is also adjacent to two city-owned parks: Meadow Park and Creekside Park. Both parks are advertised on the city's website and feature playgrounds, BBQ facilities, and fitness equipment. The city invites the public to use these parks. The city knows these specific chemicals have caused deaths and mass casualties. The city knows the community has fought for decades against locating these facilities near homes. The city cannot claim ignorance or good faith. In 2023 and 2024, the EPA conducted inspections and found RCRA violations at the facility. According to EPA records, the facility reported releasing 16,083 pounds of air pollutants annually and its currently facing multiple air pollution violations from the Bay Area Air Quality Mgmt District. Beginning in at least 2020, multiple residents filed complaints with the city about chemical exposure. The city did nothing. The City of Santa Clara voluntarily became a Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA). This means the city demanded exclusive control over enforcement of federal hazardous waste laws at the local level. Only three cities in Santa Clara County chose to take on this responsibility. The city positioned itself as the local enforcer of RCRA, CAA, CWA, and EPCRA. According to the city's own 2025 Operating Budget, Santa Clara employs just 3.95 full-time equivalent employees for CUPA administration and enforcement for the entire city. The budget reveals the city's enforcement priorities:
Between 2015 and 2017, the city approved the development of over 2,000 residential units at the Santa Clara Square Apartments location. During this approval process, the city kept the semiconductor facility's operations out of the Environmental Impact Report. The city never disclosed to future residents what was next door. This violated the city's own General Plan, which requires restricting "the use and storage of hazardous materials for industrial uses within 500 feet of existing residential uses." When residents began experiencing chemical exposure, the city concealed information. In 2020 and 2021, I and other residents filed complaints with the city. I spoke directly with the Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Gary Welling, the Water and Sewer Director, about the chemical exposure. Other victims of chemical exposure also contacted both of them. The city did nothing, disclosed nothing, and stopped nothing. Instead, the city concealed ongoing violations rather than reporting them to CalOES or EPA as required. The city refused Public Records Act requests. The city may have even tipped off the facility about an unannounced EPA inspection—which would constitute a federal crime. In response to my Public Records Act request, the city stated it has no documentation of ever enforcing the Toxic Gas Ordinance—an ordinance created specifically to prevent catastrophic disasters at facilities exactly like 3250 Scott Boulevard.   The federal environmental statutes at issue expressly authorize citizen suits against government agencies:
The EPA found RCRA violations at the facility in 2023 and 2024. The city was aware of these violations for years and did not even document them, let alone cite them. The city further concealed violations by omitting details from public records and refused Public Records Act requests. The city may have also tipped off the facility about an EPA inspection, which would be a criminal violation of RCRA -- and repeatedly refused to respond to Public Records requests about this despite there certainly being evidence of communications that led to their ad hoc "inspection" the same day as the unannounced EPA inspection. The facility releases over 16,000 pounds of air pollutants annually, including mercury, arsenic, phosphine, benzene, toluene, NMP, silane, and formaldehyde. The city knew there were not required air permits or abatement technology, the city knew the releases would enter the apartments and parks, and they failed to stop it, report it, warn the residents, or refer the matter to the Air Quality Management District. The city contributed to the construction and operation of a major emitting facility without required air permits, and that facility has already caused irreparable harm. The city also holds a municipal NPDES Permit (No. CAS612008) with specific requirements. The permit mandates that the city "shall implement an industrial and commercial site control program" and "shall conduct inspections, effective follow-up, and enforcement to abate potential and actual non-stormwater discharges." The city violated these permit terms. The city failed to implement the required site control program, failed to conduct proper inspections and enforcement, and failed to respond to complaints about pollution. The stormwater at the facility accumulates (at least) the same pollution being released into the air, and then that storm water flows directly the SF Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The city also took on the role of emergency response commission under EPCRA and has direct mandatory obligations to report EPCRA matters to CalOES. The city failed to report known hazardous substance releases. The city concealed information instead of providing it to the community, directly violating the "Right-to-Know" purpose of EPCRA. The city refused to report violations to CalOES or EPA as required. The city helped conceal and enable ongoing violations with releases of extremely dangerous chemicals that could cause mass fatalities. The city also knew about the use, storage, and releases of lead, mercury, TCE, formaldehyde, and NMP at the facility. The city knew these toxic substances were being mishandled, were not being property reported or controlled, and that the reckless handling of these TSCA regulated substances had and was causing injury to the public and environment. The city failed to report TSCA violations to the EPA, while helping to conceal and enable ongoing violations. The city didn't just fail to enforce environmental laws. The city actively participated in the violations, encouraging and enabling those violations, with full knowledge of the risk and harm. The city approved residential development while concealing what the facility was doing next door. The city kept the facility's operations out of the Environmental Impact Report. The city received direct complaints from injured residents and concealed information rather than acting. The city refused to disclose the facility's activities to people who were being harmed. The city financially benefits from enabling violations through tax revenue and other sources. The criminal provisions of RCRA, CAA, and CWA apply to "any person"—not just facility owners and operators. These provisions can reach contractors, accomplices, and anyone who knowingly contributes to violations. The city's conduct—concealment, enabling, and potential obstruction of EPA enforcement—creates plausible criminal liability. If the city has plausible criminal liability under these statutes, it certainly has civil liability under the citizen suit provisions. This is a novel legal theory in environmental citizen suits. Most cases involve cities that passively fail to enforce laws. This case involves a city that actively conspired with violators and aided their violations. I'm arguing that contribution, conspiracy, and similar theories apply when a defendant crosses the line from passive regulator to active participant. Further, under California Government Code § 830, public entities are liable for dangerous conditions on their property when they fail to warn or protect against known dangers. The city owns Meadow Park and Creekside Park. Both parks are located less than 230 feet from the facility. The city advertises these parks on its official website and invites the public to use them. The parks feature playgrounds, BBQ facilities, and fitness equipment. The parks are contaminated by and exposed to toxic releases from the facility (air, soil, groundwater, stormwater, sewer vapor, etc). The city knew about the dangers and failed to warn park users or take protective measures, and instead invited vulnerable populations to come to the parks, assuring them the parks were safe. I personally used both parks and was injured. I experienced dizziness, difficulty breathing, rashes, and gastrointestinal issues while at these parks—symptoms consistent with chemical exposure. California precedent establishes that counties can be liable for allowing dangerous third-party activities on public land. In Vedder v. County of Imperial, the court found a county liable for allowing explosive chemicals to be stored on property without adequate fire protection. Additionally, under California law, California Government Code § 815.6 ensures municipal tort liability when a public entity has a mandatory duty designed to protect against a specific type of injury, the entity is negligent with that duty, and the entity's negligence caused the kind of injuries that were supposed to be prevented if the entity had not been negligent in their duty. The city has mandatory duties under federal and California law with the statues at issue binding the city with requirements that are communicated with "shall," not "may." I lived at the Santa Clara Square Apartments. I made complaints to the city about chemical exposure and asked for help understanding what was happening. The city concealed what the facility was doing. I lost my job at Apple, my income, my savings, many of my friends, my reputation, my health, and my career due to my advocacy about safety and environmental hazards at this location. My toxic tort claims were dismissed due to statute of limitations, partly because the city concealed information that would have helped me discover the cause of my injuries sooner. While I lost everything, the city continued collecting tax revenue and reputational benefits from continuing to conceal and enable these dangerous operations. This case matters beyond my individual situation. I'm attempting to breathe life back into the underused EPCRA citizen suit provisions. I'm testing whether contribution and conspiracy theories can apply in environmental citizen suits when defendants cross the line from passive regulators to active participants. This case asks: What happens when the regulator becomes the enabler? Can cities hide behind immunity when they actively participate in violations rather than just failing to prevent them? The city took on enforcement responsibilities for federal environmental laws and then established policies, systems, and practices that enabled the businesses in the city to violate those same laws without consequence. The city actively concealed violations for financial benefit. The city enabled the same kind of scenario that these federal environmental laws were designed to prevent—in the very county whose disasters led to the creation of these laws. Relief against the city is necessary and will be unavailable if the city is dismissed. The venue is significant. The San Jose courthouse sits in the county where these federal environmental laws originated. The timing is significant too: semiconductor manufacturing is being re-shored to communities across America, making these questions urgent nationwide. I now live in Boston, Massachusetts. I was able to fundraise the money to purchase a plane ticket to California to attend the November 20, 2025 hearing in person. I believe the city is a necessary defendant, and their dismissal from this case would cause further irreparable harm to the community. -Ashley On June 30 2025, I served Apple, City of Santa, EPA, and the property owner notice of an incoming EPA Citizen Suit under RCRA, CAA, CWA, TSCA, and EPCRA -- as well as a public nuisance claim -- about Apple's illegal semiconductor fabrication plant at 3250 Scott Blvd in Santa Clara, California.
Read the Notice here. |
AuthorUpdates from Ashley Gjovik about her whistleblower battle against Apple Inc. Archives
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