It's not supposed to leach into the groundwater, but nobody is enforcing the companies that are handling these chemicals to ensure they don't get into the groundwater supply. Many of the worst contaminations in the area were caused by big tech companies such as HP who didn't realize their underground TCE tanks were leaking whoops.

As of 2023 only two states have banned TCE (Minnesota and New York), and the federal government has yet to do anything to control it. It has and will continue to be used extensively in industrial application such as at electronic assembly lines, dry-cleaners, mechanics, air force bases, coffee decaffeination, textile industry, and the list goes on. The best you can do is live in a highly residential area which is far from the locations where any of these business could operate.

It's not allowed. These are old plumes and they stay around for a long time and are very expensive to clean up.

Cool, let’s make the companies that caused it pay for it

That's clearly socialism and making companies pay for damage they cause and their externalaties is oppressive regulation. We should instead reduce the EPA's power until they are a shell of an organization. How else are we going to get our burning rivers back?

That's why we have the EPA Superfund program

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superfund

Santa Clara county has the most superfund sites.

There are a lot of superfund sites, man. And it sucks that the FeddyGov is on the hook to cleanup the mess that big corps make.

It should be renamed "minifund" given how small the fund is today and how few sites they actually clean up

The reinstatement of the excise tax in 2022 may actually be harmful to its own environment. It's an import tax on crude oil, which will encourage the domestic oil industry leading to an importing of pollution.

It's clearly not doing its job well, there are still constant ecological disasters that never get properly addressed.

Many of those companies no longer exist...