According to my family, everyone loved my great-grandmother Baudelia Aguilar. Born in Tuxpan, Nayarit, Mexico, she was raised by her two older sisters and brother after watching her mother die in an intense flood. All records of her birth were washed away at the same time, so no one ever knew her birthday or how old she was. Everything I know about my great-grandmother comes from the stories my mom told me about her when I was younger. Baudelia took care of my mom and her brothers and sisters while their mom was working. She told me about the peppermint patch Baudelia had in the back yard to make tea for the kids when they were sick and how she cooked warm, healthy meals for them every day. Sadly, I never met Baudelia. She died of pancreatic cancer before I was born. She got sick after drinking water that could have been contaminated. Most of us go to the faucet and pour ourselves a glass of water with no worries. I personally never wondered what was in my water until my mom told me the story about her grandmother. Her cancer was likely caused by what one longtime water activist called "the biggest chemical spill in history." The incident dates back to the 1940s. It is confusing, complex and tragic. ***

 

The chemical spill was the leaching of trichloroethylene, or TCE, a cleaning solvent mostly used as a degreaser in the aircraft industry, into the groundwater on the South Side of Tucson. Companies near what is now Tucson International Airport first began disposing of TCE in washes around the airport in the 1940s. Those disposing of the waste included the Air Force, the Air National Guard, Burr-Brown Corp. and others. When Hughes Aircraft Co. (now Raytheon Missile Systems Co.) built a plant near the airport in 1951, it stored TCE in unlined vats, which then leaked, studies showed. According to legal briefs and media reports, Hughes' own scientists recognized that storing TCE in unlined tanks was a problem and that the TCE would eventually leak. But because there was no law against this at the time, Hughes kept disposing of hazardous waste unsafely. And the nearby groundwater supply kept getting contaminated. TCE has been known to cause cancer, liver disease, heart problems and other serious diseases in lab rats, and is classified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as a possible human carcinogen. The "spill" affected the water supply of about 47,000 residents. Countless people got sick, including my great-grandmother. My mom told me that she would always find her grandmother in pain and holding her stomach. Baudelia used to try to hide her stomach pains, though, so the family wouldn't worry about her. But my family was not the only one affected. In 1984, Jane Kay, a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star, conducted surveys of 500 South Side homes to identify the different illnesses. Her findings showed six diseases occurring at levels far above the national norm: lupus erythematosis, leukemia, testicular cancer and cancer of the bone, mouth and sinuses. ***

 

Tucson attorney Richard Gonzales grew up on the South Side and graduated from Sunnyside High School. "We would get together at the post-high-school gatherings, and there was just an inordinate number of classmates that had cancers and other serious diseases," Gonzales said. In 1983, Gonzales got involved in the legal case. Through his work in the community, Gonzales saw that people were getting angry with the way the industry and the local governments refused to take responsibility for what had happened. "It had been the custom in practice on the South Side that industry had their own way," he said. "The South Side didn't have the political muscle, the will or investment to do anything about it." He remembers one meeting in particular where the head of the Pima County Health Department was trying to dispel the community's fears. "I and others interpreted her presentation as saying that the Mexican-American community leads a very unhealthy lifestyle both in terms of the food they eat and the type of activities they engage in." The official told the community that TCE was basically not harmful and was used in many products, even coffee and peanut butter, Gonzales said. Gonzales said these comments made people very angry, but also sparked them to inform themselves and mobilize. They formed a committee called Tucsonans for a Clean Environment, or TCE, to get the community to fight the issue and get the government to respond. One of the fighters was Myra Jones. Jones, now 61, didn't live on the South Side, but she had spent a lot of time working to improve drinking-water issues in her community, Old Tucson Ranch Estates, which is beyond the city limits. As a housewife there, she was troubled by the fact that when she turned on her faucet, out came "water that was chocolate. It was oily and dirty water." The dirty water made Jones an activist. She began going through water records and soon became an expert on local water issues. When South Side residents fighting the TCE contamination saw her on TV, they wanted her at their meetings. Jones recalled one meeting during a summer monsoon where some 2,000 people shared stories about the TCE contamination and what it had done to their families. "It was just heartbreaking to hear of the children," Jones said. "I think when people saw the number of people that were dying, it scared a lot of people. Truly it was just overwhelming." Jones blames the aircraft industry for the deaths and illnesses of the residents. She said they could have been prevented "by using the best available technology, by not burying hazardous waste, by not dumping it in unlined ponds. They acted like the '50s and '60s were the Dark Ages and they didn't know any better. They did know better." Gonzales also believes there were better ways of disposing of the waste. "Hughes Aircraft is not a mom-and-pop operation. It is a very high-tech 'Star Wars' type of facility." ***

 

When Gonzales began working on the case, he and other lawyers identified the residences of the 1,600 plaintiffs who claimed to be sick by sticking pins into a map. All of the pins corresponded with the location of municipal wells, showing that their sicknesses were likely related to their drinking water. No data measuring groundwater contamination were gathered until 1981, when Pima County and Arizona investigators confirmed that aquifers on the South Side were contaminated with TCE and other pollutants. The discovery resulted in the shutdown of 10 wells and led the EPA to classify the airport area as a Superfund site, forcing a multimillion-dollar cleanup. In October 1985, more than 1,600 families represented by the Dallas law firm Baron & Budd and the Gonzales Law Firm filed a lawsuit. In 1989, the 1,600-plus plaintiffs entered into an agreement with the city, settling the case for $35 million. The condition of the settlement was that the plaintiffs would collect the amount from the city's insurance carriers, Gonzales said. In 1991, the plaintiffs settled the portion of the lawsuit with Hughes Aircraft for $95 million, Gonzales said. Since then, Fred Baron and Gonzales have been working on a final lawsuit to collect the remaining $35 million from the agreement with the city. In late April of this year, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled against the last insurance carrier, finally ending the settlement. Money from the class-action lawsuit helped fund the construction of a new wing of the El Pueblo Clinic, 101 W. Irvington Road, to treat residents within the TCE Superfund area. "We became known as the TCE Clinic," said Frank Hale, director. "We're the clinic you go to when no one else will take you." South Side residents without health insurance can be screened there for cancer, lupus and autoimmune diseases that may be related to TCE poisoning. But the medical monitoring allows the clinic only to screen people, not treat them, Hale said. Even if residents in the area aren't showing any symptoms of illness, getting screened might help detect health issues early so they can be treated. To qualify for the free screenings, people must have lived, worked or attended school near the area for at least one year between 1954 and 1980. "You're looking at the long-term exposures now," Jones said. "Your next generation: the mothers that were pregnant with babies. That was one of the reasons we wanted a large clinic at El Pueblo and a TCE clinic - to look at the ones that were going to be left." Sean Allan Keasey, a 17-year-old high school student, grew up on the South Side near Sunnyside High School. His mom likely drank TCE-contaminated water when she was pregnant with him, and he was born with a heart murmur, he said. His family has now moved from the area. His family received money from the settlement, but Gonzales says the money each family received is never enough to cover the damages or medical costs. ***

 

Nor is it enough to bring back the dead. My family refused the settlement money. When I asked my mom why, she said, "No money can replace my grandmother." Baudelia, as my mom describes her, was "a little tiny woman with a huge heart for giving and teaching." I wish I could have met her and experienced her love for myself. Of course I can't. Just like I can't know everything about TCE and contaminated water on the South Side. The past is the past. But what I can do is remember the stories about my great-grandmother and never forget the environmental tragedy that happened on the South Side. And from now on, I can also do what Myra Jones advised me to do: "Stay alert with the water."