Tucson Gears Up For Water Pollution Battle

Tucson residents are gearing up for a legal battle over whether chemical contamination of tap water is making them ill.

Longtime resident Linda Robles is organizing the lawsuit, gathering the stories of locals, according to the Arizona Daily Star. She lost two children to lupus, and her daughter and grandson were each born with a cleft lip.

“Such claims and litigation are nothing new on the south side, where groundwater has been known to be tainted with cancer-causing trichloroethylene (TCE) since 1981. In the 1990s, two separate groups of lawsuits involving hundreds of residents alleged that TCE in the area’s drinking water triggered massive illnesses, including cancer, lupus, central nervous disorders and birth defects,” the report said.

Both cases resulted in settlements from Hughes Aircraft Company and other firms that had dumped TCE into the ground decades ago.

The new case will focus on 1,4-dioxane instead of TCE. The federal government says dioxane is a probable carcinogen. It was found in Tucson’s groundwater in 2002.

“Robles says her plan is to sue Raytheon Missile Systems, which merged with Hughes Aircraft in the late 1990s. Because no litigation has been filed, Raytheon has no comment, company spokesman John Patterson said,” according to the news report.

The case could be difficult to make for a couple reasons, according to the report:

First, residents must prove dioxane caused their illnesses above and beyond any effects from the TCE. “It’s the same as a person getting rear ended twice on two different dates,” Gonzales says. “How do you differentiate your back pain from the first accident versus the second accident?”

Second, residents would have to prove that they’ve been drinking contaminated water in recent years.

Dioxane contamination prompted Tucson Water to install an advanced oxidation process (AOP) facility.

Dioxane “is a contaminant not easily removed with conventional technologies, but TrojanUV’s oxidation systems destroy volatile organic compounds, breaking them down into their harmless components almost instantly. The process combines ultraviolet light with hydrogen peroxide to purify up to 8 million gallons of water a day,” according to a statement from TrojanUV.

The federal government acknowledges that dioxane is difficult to treat. The U.S. EPA, in its handbook on how to handle the contaminant, notes that 1,4-dioxane is “fully miscible in water.”

“As a hydrophilic contaminant, it is not, therefore, amenable to the conventional ex situ treatment technologies used for chlorinated solvents. Successful remedial technologies must take into account the challenging chemical and physical properties unique to 1,4-dioxane,” it continued.

The handbook lists 15 projects where 1,4-dioxane was treated in groundwater. Twelve of the project used ex situ advanced oxidation processes.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.