Environmental Racism on Tucson's Southside: An Overview of the Tucson Superfund Site and a Call to Address New Chemical Contamination

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the term “environmental racism” has become more commonplace in the public sphere and is largely recognized when governments and private industry aim to develop or use land for their own interests at the expense of the health and safety of the communities that reside nearby. This is a positive development in the evolution of dialogue on the environmental impacts on communities of color. Equal attention should also be paid to instances of environmental racism before the term became widely known. One such example is the Superfund site in Tucson, which sits near the city’s majority-minority southside. Federal contractor Hughes Aircraft Co., with the Tucson Airport Authority, spent nearly three decades disposing of a degreaser containing a toxic chemical, trichloroethylene (TCE), which then leaked into the groundwater supply. While this took place largely before the term was coined, a retrospective demonstrates that the release of the TCE, intentional or not, resulted in many residents developing cancer or other illnesses, and falls under the definition of environmental racism. Although the litigation settled over 15 years ago, problems persist in the communities surrounding the Superfund site. In addition to the still ongoing TCE cleanup, a new contaminant, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), has emerged, brought on by the Air National Guard’s use of firefighting foam, showing up in water wells close to the Tucson Airport Remediation Project (TARP). The state and federal governments have an obligation to act quickly to prevent the spread of PFAS in the water remediation system and avert a repetition of environmental harms on communities of color.