The EPA has informed the Oracle Town Hall that it is reviewing the design of the cap placed over the Page-Trowbridge radioactive/toxic waste landfill to assure that it will adequately protect citizens from toxic chemicals that would infiltrate their water supply should contamination from several million pounds of toxic contaminants buried at Page-Trowbridge leak to the aquifer.

       The purpose of the cap is to prevent rainwater from soaking through to the contamination buried at Page-Trowbridge and carrying it to groundwater.

      The groundwater taken from the aquifer beneath Page-Trowbridge supplies drinking water to local communities from Oracle to northwest Tucson.  The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the state agency entrusted to assure safe drinking water, has admitted that they do not know if groundwater beneath the landfill is contaminated or not. 

       Toxic contaminants were detected three years ago in water samples taken from the aquifer beneath the landfill by two separate water companies.  Immediately after methylene chloride was detected in the Oracle drinking water in 1997, ADEQ granted waivers allowing the water company supplying Oracle with it's drinking water to bypass further testing for methylene chloride in the Oracle water supply.  No further tests for methylene chloride have been conducted at wells supplying Oracle with its drinking water.

       The Page-Trowbridge landfill was capped in 1995, after local citizens were successful in convincing the University of Arizona to stop dumping toxic chemical waste at the site. 

       While the original specification for the protective caps placed over both of the burial sites at Page-Trowbridge called for pure clay overlaying flexible plastic membranes, records from the U of A describe the final cap design as "a single monolithic earthen final cover system". 

       The clay overlay and plastic membranes, initially called for in the original design, were eliminated for cost reasons.

       Concerned citizens in the area are seeking EPA Superfund status for the Page-Trowbridge radioactive/toxic waste landfill.