Read the full article by Tony Davis (Tuscon.com)

“Tucson wants the EPA to let it off the legal hook for serving its customers once-tainted water cleaned by a south-side treatment plant.

Tucson Water is negotiating with the Environmental Protection Agency to amend an old agreement that requires the city to serve more than 5,800 acre-feet of water annually cleaned by its plant near the Interstate 19-Irvington Road interchange. That is enough water to serve more than 20,000 Tucson homes per year…

A key reason is to insure the city is never required to sell customers water from the Tucson Airport Remediation Project, or TARP, in the event the plant is overloaded by toxic PFAS compounds. The compounds, in very heavy concentrations, are now slowly migrating through the aquifer toward south-side wells that already send water with lesser PFAS levels to the plant for cleanup.

In a related matter, the city is putting off suing to force cleanup of its PFAS-tainted groundwater by the U.S. Defense Department and other parties for their alleged role in the pollution. Instead, by a unanimous City Council vote on Jan. 7, city officials will seek to negotiate a cleanup with EPA, the state, the Defense Department and other parties, Mayor Regina Romero said. Litigation will be left in reserve as a ‘hole card’ to use in case negotiations don’t work, council members said.

The City Council is also partially backing off from an earlier move directing the City Attorney’s Office to prepare a proposed ordinance banning anyone from using or disposing of PFAS compounds within the city…

In Tucson, PFAS chemicals have been found in wells lying north of the Air National Guard base here, and east of city wells supplying the south-side treatment plant, at concentrations up to 13,000 parts per trillion. Just last week, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality reported that eight nearby private wells had measurable PFAS, topped by an irrigation well containing 11,440 parts per trillion and two drinking wells with 2,300 and 1,300 parts per trillion…

But to date, those high levels haven’t found their way into city wells serving drinking water to people, since water from the aquifer holding the contaminants hasn’t been served to the public for decades…”