PHOENIX — It's an environmental battle our state may never win: Highly contaminated areas across Arizona where hazardous waste was dumped or mismanaged decades ago.
The waste comes from man-made chemicals used to produce paints, pharmaceuticals and refrigerants, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Those chemicals seeped into the land and contaminated parts of Arizona's water supply.
They're called superfund sites and in Maricopa County, there are seven the EPA has placed on high priority for clean-up. The problem is, that experts with the EPA said it's not possible for some of the toxic locations to get completely cleaned up.
“There are some sites that we are going to be working on them in perpetuity,” said Michael Montgomery, the director of the superfund and emergency management program for region nine.
Montgomery said there are more than 1,000 superfund sites across the country. They were unknowingly created by industries that didn't realize how dangerous the chemicals were to the environment.
“They grew back in the day when there wasn’t a lot of regulation,” Montgomery said.
The seven locations placed on the National Priority List (NPL) are:
- Williams Air Force Base in Mesa
- Phoenix-Goodyear Airport in Goodyear, which has two separate areas of contamination.
- Hassayampa Landfill, west of Buckeye.
- Indian Bend Wash, which has one location in Tempe and another in Scottsdale.
- Motorola 52nd Street in Phoenix.
Luke Air Force Base and the 19th Avenue Landfill are also superfund sites but are no longer on the NPL.
The EPA has an interactive map of all superfund sites in Arizona and the country.
“There's low-level industrial solvents in the groundwater, in Phoenix, and Scottsdale, and in Tempe," Montgomery said.
Some of these sites have homes, apartments, schools and restaurants built on top of the contaminated land. People living in Tempe on the Indian Bend Wash site said they had no idea they were on a superfund.
"They never told us about that,” said Stephen Fierro who has rented a home near Broadway and Rural roads for the past two years.
Out of the dozen people 12News spoke with in the neighborhood, homeowners and renters did not know what a superfund site was or that they were living on one.
However, Fierro claimed he did work for Motorola and saw the chemicals being dumped firsthand.
“They would glow like a neon orange or a neon green,” Fierro said.
The EPA said Motorola, located at 52nd Street and McDowell Road, dumped volatile contaminants that oozed into the groundwater and then spread about 10 miles west all the way to downtown Phoenix.
Montgomery said every site is under some sort of clean-up operation. Doing that falls on the company responsible for the contamination. However, Montgomery said if the business is no longer operating or goes bankrupt, it then falls on federal funding. The cost of clean-up can reach millions of dollars.
“For most sites, it’s in the millions, for some sites it’s hundreds of millions,” Montgomery said.
Again, some will always require money to keep the areas safe. A spokesperson for the EPA said the Hassayampa Landfill and Williams Air Force base will undergo clean-up forever. Others could take decades of work but could eventually be delisted.
The EPA has also clarified those living on the sites do not need to worry about their water being dangerous to drink or use. For example, those living in the Motorola and Indian Bend Wash areas can safely drink water from the tap or water their plants because that water is supplied through municipal suppliers that have to meet state and federal guidelines.
The drinking water is fine, but the groundwater is not.
If you live on a superfund and still have concerns, the EPA has representatives you can speak with depending on which site you live on. You can find that information on the EPA's superfund website and clicking on each designated location or by clicking here.
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