Murmurings of conflict over who is going to clean up Tucson's two southside toxic waste sites may surface next month when separate reports collide at a meeting of representatives of the U.S. Air Force and state and city officials.
Two separate sites were established four years ago after a number of contaminants, including TCE, or trichloroethylene, and chromium, were discovered in wells at Hughes Aircraft Co. and in one city well.
The Air Force, which owns the buildings and property where Hughes operates, Air Force Plant No. 44, agreed to study the area south of Los Reales Road with money from the Department of Defense.
The city and state, after winning a place on the priority list of the nation's Superfund sites, took the area of tainted ground water north of Los Reales Road. Those funds come from the city and state and Super-fund money administered by the EPA.
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But now, despite new information indicating that the contamination is all one long underground "plume" up to Michigan Street, the Air Force is steadfastly saying it will clean up only as far north as Los Reales Road.
Some state and city hydrologists joke about the road as the "Los Reales Fault" because the Air Force insists that its industrial contamination disappears there.
Further, some hydrologists who are on Air Force Plant No. 44's Technical Review Task Force, refute the Air Force's contention that its plume falls off at Los Reales Road.
James Angell, a hydrologist in the Arizona Department of Health Services and a member of the Superfund's Tucson International Airport Area investigation team, says the data show that the Hughes' plume does not end before it gets to Los Reales Road.
"We don't see any difference in the off-site plume and things north of Los Reales Road," he says.
"People asked me why I drew it as one plume on a map in 1983. I told them the plume from Hughes never stopped," Angell says.
The Hughes plume is swollen by a smaller plume from the now-defunct Grand Central Aircraft Co. and other past tenants at the Tucson International Airport, Angell says.
Other sites are also under investigation, including the Arizona Air National Guard, Burr-Brown Research Corp. and West-Cap Arizona.
F. Thomas Jefferson, lead city water-quality engineer-on the project, agrees it can very well be argued that Hughes is responsible for the whole contamination problem.
But all the Air Force officers and civilians, including Barry Hatfield of the Aeronautical Systems Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, disagree.
"There's no such thing as a plume stoppage. The plume moves," Hatfield says.
But he adds, "The data show that's (Los Reales Road) the place where the plume dies off."
A well tested right on Los Reales Road measures at 350 parts per billion, which hardly shows a "falling off," says Angell.
Indeed, the Air Force's lead consultant, Ralph Schmitt of Metcalf & Eddy Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that is designing the Air Force's treatment plants at Hughes, does not believe in the "Los Reales Fault."
The latest data show that the Hughes plume does cross Los Reales Road at the Nogales Highway at 10 parts per billion, he says.
Don Harvey, the EPA's man keeping track of both the Hughes and Tucson International Airport area sites, confirms that he has been hearing "'murmurings" about how well the "Los Reales Fault" theory will hold up under peer scrutiny.
Making Los Reales Road the dividing line of the two sites was "kind of a policy decision based on the information at the time so the EPA and the Air Force could go in," Harvey said.
"There have been additional data since then. We have not met yet to discuss the implications of any new data collected in the last couple of years."
Those discussions should come up at a meeting of the Air Force Plant No. 44 Technical Review Committee next month.
If there is a serious difference between the EPA and the An Force on who cleans up what, the highest officials in each agency would meet and go to "a higher authority," which could be the president. That hasn't happened yet anywhere in the nation, Harvey says.
The Tucson Water Department's Jefferson says, "We should clean it up and fight about it later."
Asked if the differences could lead to a stall in cleanup of Tucson's ground water, the Air Force's Hatfield said last month, "I just don't know. We'll find out."
He expects to find out when formal and informal comments are submitted in response to the Air Force's recently completed Remedial Action Plan for the Hughes' cleanup.
"Our position will remain — or is today — that Los Reales Road is the boundary of the Remedial Action Plan."
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The two toxic waste sites lie side by side in an "L" shape around the Tucson International Airport.
They date from the late 1940s when aircraft and, later, electronics chemicals were heedlessly thrown out in pits and arroyos.
But they weren't discovered until 1981.
After the shock died down over the news of the contamination of Tucson's ground water, attention moved away from the chemicals that had been dumped in the ground — and may still be there — to the cleanup.
But cleanup was delayed while studies began, stalled, continued and may end in a controversy over whether Hughes polluted some of the wells or all of them.
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The back of the "L" stands straight and tall, stretching up north to Michigan Road and reaching south to Los Reales Road.
People live there, but it's a Superfund site called the Tucson International Airport Area. The cleanup is administered by the EPA.
At this point, the city of Tucson, the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the EPA are cooperating on an investigative report that should name sources and track the movement of the plume.
A final report should be ready for public review in June or July, and a plan for cleanup is yet to come.
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The bottom of the "L" is very thick. It encompasses a swath that runs from Interstate 19, south of Los Reales Road, east to include the Air Force property where Hughes operates the plant south of the Tucson International Airport.
Air Force Plant No. 44 is on a list of Department of Defense hazardous-waste sites, the military's own Superfund, under the Installation Restoration Program set forth in an Executive Order signed by President Reagan.
At this point, the Air Force is getting ready to release its own report for public comment that should include its consultants' view of the problem and offer cleanup plans.