Air Force might start PFAS cleanup under proposed deal with Tucson

The Tucson City Council will vote next Tuesday, Sept. 22, on whether to accept the offer, several sources told the Star.

The arrangement would finally get a cleanup of potentially cancer-causing PFAS started — many years since city officials became aware that groundwater underneath the base was contaminated with it. Officials hope that if a well can be drilled on base to start pumping out the contaminated water, that can prevent the pollution from spreading farther. It has already reached as far north as Broadway. The affected wells have been shut down for years. 

Just this month, city officials held a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the impending opening of a $17 million plant on Tucson's south side to treat PFAS-tainted groundwater in that area. But that plant won't be treating water from the air base.

Mayor Regina Romero announced the Air Force's offer last Friday at what city officials called a water roundtable at Tucson City Hall, sources said. About 20 to 25 people attended, including officials of other government agencies and community activists. City officials asked those in attendance not to discuss the proposal immediately until they could publicly release the information this week.

One attendee, activist Catlow Shipek of the Watershed Management Group, discussed the offer with the Star on the record, saying he hadn't heard officials ask people at the meeting not to talk about it. Three other attendees discussed it on the condition that their names not be printed, because they'd been asked not to disclose what happened.

In mid-afternoon Monday, Tucson Water spokeswoman Natalie DeRoock told the Star, "We're going to issue a press release shortly." Shortly after 5 p.m., DeRoock said the releases would be coming out "hopefully Tuesday."

As Shipek and other sources outlined the offer, the nonprofit Air Force retiree group known as Warbird had gotten the Air Force to agree to pay around $20 million toward the cleanup. In return, Tucson would allow a golf course to be built and operated by this group in an area southeast of the base.

When the group first broached the offer to city officials, they rejected it on the grounds that they didn't want any more golf courses in the city due to their water use, the sources said.

Shipek and other sources who attended the meeting said the golf course would use about 400 acre-feet of reclaimed water, treated wastewater that's not suitable for drinking. That amount of water is a standard assumption of water use for a new, 18-hole golf course that averages 5 acres of turf per golf hole, one source told the Star.

But after the Warbird group came back with an Air Force offer to pay for the PFAS cleanup, top city officials "were all on board," one source who attended the meeting told the Star. 

Shipek, Watershed Management's senior program director, added, "It sounds like they are largely in favor of it. They will formally agree to it on Sept. 22."

The water for the golf course would come from some of the cleaned-up water from the Air Force base, sources said. 

'We can't wait 10 years'

City officials first told the Star of the existence of PFAS compounds in two city wells lying north of the base in 2018. At the time, they said they were uncertain that the contamination was coming from the base and that more data was needed.

But in more recent years, city officials have pushed the Air Force hard to clean the water up. In December 2024, Tucson sued the Air Force, claiming that PFAS compounds released from the base were contaminating the city's drinking water supply. 

The city sought compensation for the damages caused by PFAS pollution released from the base, and said it wants the Air Force to pay for or reimburse the cost of a treatment system to clean it up.

For years, the Air Force's position toward PFAS cleanup in Tucson has been that it needed to finish a detailed remedial investigation of the scope of the pollution and come up with a feasibility study for cleaning it up.

At last Friday's water roundtable, however, city officials said a Tucson-area cleanup is at the bottom of the Air Force's priority list for addressing PFAS pollution because the city has long ago stopped serving the contaminated water to its customers, people who attended said.

"The city was saying if you're proactive, the Air Force recognizes that they've got a problem. They own the problem. They just don't have the budget or other resources to tackle every groundwater contamination with PFAS," said one source who attended the meeting.

"We were looking at up to 10 years before the Air Force would act. We can't wait 10 years," said the source.

Shipek said he personally felt conflicted about the Air Force's offer because it would mean another golf course would be using reclaimed water in the Tucson area, a concern particularly at a time when the City Council is also planning to vote Sept. 22 on a revised ordinance regulating large water users. He welcomed the news that the Air Force would be willing to spend money to clean up some of Tucson's groundwater, however. 

Several people who attended Friday's meeting but declined to talk publicly said they generally supported the arrangement for the Air Force to pony up money for PFAS cleanup in return for the golf course. They said it's worth it because of the need to get the groundwater under and near the base cleaned up.

For many years, military firefighters used foam for training and other purposes that contained PFAS chemicals.