This series documents the role of Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition (SVTC) and other South Bay area community activists in documenting, publicizing, and then attaining state and federal intervention for the contamination of local groundwater supplies by Silicon Valley area electronics manufacturers. Eventually nineteen sites polluted by faulty chemical storage had been declared Superfund cleanup sites under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More leaking chemical tanks were discovered in 1983-1984, and SVTC continued to push for greater intervention by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) and U.S. EPA, especially through the local forum provided by the South Bay Groundwater Contamination Task Force (SBGTCF). In 1985 Ted Smith testified before a California congressional investigation of groundwater contamination in the Valley.

Also included in this series are Smith's notes from the SBGTCF meetings from 1984 to 1990. In January of 1985, the California Department of Health Services (DOHS) released an epidemiological study of South San José near the contaminated public wells. This series includes draft copies of the DOHS report and correspondence between SVTC and various parties regarding its implications. Also included are records of SVTC and other Bay area environmental groups protesting the appointment of Gary Burke, then president of the Santa Clara County Manufacturing Group, to the RWQCB in 1993. This series illustrates how grassroots organizations came together to force industrial responsibility through city and state environmental regulations.