PARTON 8

 Office of Risk Management. (12) The correspondence is addressed to the hydrology firm of Hargis and Montgomery, which was at the time preparing to drill groundwater wells related to groundwater monitoring at the Page-Trowbridge Landfill. The document concerns a request for well information a Dr. Montgomery had made regarding a water well at the Titan Missile Base (#01). The well is listed as being 4000 feet away from the dump site. Records indicate the well shaft may have been drilled to a depth of 500 feet. Dr. Montgomery’s interest in the well may have been twofold. First, that he wished to gather information concerning the drilling of the well. Secondly, that he wished to test a water sample for contaminates. Ms. Anderson’s correspondence reads:
“As per your request, I have made inquiry of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base concerning a possible well to ground water at the Titan Missile Base (#01) between Oracle Junction and the Page-Trowbridge Ranch... and the engineer for the base has determined that a well was drilled at the Titan #01 more than 20 years ago. Initial analysis of the water showed it to have 50 pica curies of radioactivity which was not acceptable since the water was to be used for drinking by site employees. The Air Force completely capped the well at that time and has never challenged its integrity since then. They obtained drinking water from an arrangement with the city of Oracle and have had no further need to disturb the ground water.” (12) 


       The letter was dated 1983. If the well was drilled “more than twenty years ago” as the correspondence states, it would place the time of drilling at 1962 or earlier. This was the year that the University acknowledged the beginning of radioactive waste dumping. Is the well, in fact, radioactive? How did the radioactivity get there? Radioactivity can be a natural occurrence in granite deposits such as those that make up the Catalina mountains, but to that level? No records indicate that the UA Office of Risk Management ever attempted to answer these questions. A June 14, 1999 public