The City Council, after more than two years of negotiation, voted yesterday to agree with an order outlining responsibility for cleaning TCE from southside ground water.
The city was under the threat of $25,000-a-day fines if it had not agreed to an acceptable cleanup schedule of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent and probable human carcinogen that was discovered in wells in 1981.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued an order last year demanding that Hughes Aircraft Co., McDonnell Douglas Corp., General Dynamics, the Tucson Airport Authority and the city pay for the cleanup.
The airport authority leases the airport property from the city.
Under the agreement, "in essence, the cleanup would be managed by Tucson Water with the other (parties) paying all the cleanup costs, including the city's project management costs," City Manager Joel Valdez said in a memo to the council.
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Cleanup costs could exceed $30 million.
The agreement does not resolve the state's claims that it spent $400,000, nor cover possible claims of damage to natural resources like ground and water.
The TCE polluted nine Tucson wells as it spread in a plume as wide as a mile and stretched four miles north of the airport.
McDonnell Douglas agreed to advance $500,000. The U.S. Air Force, which agreed to pay Hughes' cleanup share, and the airport authority will pay $2.5 million each.
Vice Mayor Bruce Wheeler, a Democrat, abstained because of a potential conflict of interest. He is head of custodial services at the airport.
In other action yesterday, the council debated for more than an hour the expansion of a pilot recycling program but delayed a vote.
Democratic Mayor Tom Volgy had wanted to expand the trial recycling project, begun by the city and Pima County last year, to include up to six neighborhoods.
Wheeler said while he wanted to eventually expand recyling with curb service throughout the metropolitan area, expanding in six neighborhoods would be "exclusionary."
The council also:
• Unanimously supported Wheeler's resolution seeking a moratorium on raids by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service during the federal census from March through July. The council also agreed to contribute $15,000 to a project that encourages Hispanic participation in the census.
• Left in place the city's policy of maintaining roads with chip seal. Volgy dissented, saying city crews did the best work "humanely possible," but that chip sealing was a hardship for residents because of damage it can do to cars. Chip seal Is a method in which oil is spread on a road and then the oil is covered with small stones.
• Reappointed City Magistrates Margarita B. Bernal and Bram J. Goldman.