Newly installed technology will help clean out PFAS from Tucson's groundwater supply

Officials in Tucson say a recently completed treatment project will assist in the city’s efforts to remove PFAS from groundwater.

The human-made chemicals have been tied to health issues including cancer and are used in a host of industrial and consumer products.

One way groundwater is contaminated with PFAS is through a firefighting foam containing the chemicals that’s commonly used at airports and military installments — like the ones in Tucson’s southside.

The area was declared a superfund site by the EPA in the 1980s because of another contaminant called TCE, and Tucson Airport Remediation Project facility, known as TARP, was set up to treat it by the 1990s.

Tucson Water Director John Kmiec says the treatment plant was also cleaning PFAS, but not very efficiently.

"What we built was another treatment process to add into that treatment train. So all water coming from the TARP wellfield for the Superfund site that the city manages would now go thru PFAS treatment first," he said.

To do that, Kmiec says, the plant now has an ion exchange treatment system that addresses PFAS specifically. The water then moves through a cleaning system using granular activated charcoal and other technology to filter out other contaminants.

Kmiec says drinking water has not been produced at the plant since 2021, partly because the level of PFAS has continued to rise.

"We didn’t want to take the risk, because we didn’t know how high the levels of PFAS were going to continue to load our granular activated carbon and we didn’t want to have a breakthrough," he said.

The new ion exchange system was commemorated earlier this month in a ribbon-cutting event at the Tucson Airport Remediation Project facility.

The water treated at the plant currently enters the city's network of reclaimed water resources, used for things like riparian restoration efforts along the Santa Cruz River.

Kmiec says officials are not planning to use the plant to produce drinking water right now, but it’s being cleaned to meet those standards and could be used one day.