By
Ayse Guner
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Postponing the auction will allow for further negotiations
The debate over Tumamoc Hill's future is far from finished.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday not to purchase 320 acres of Tumamoc Hill property, where about 365,000 tons of waste were dumped by the University of Arizona and the City of Tucson, because the board considered the property too much of a liability.
"We will not purchase the property if the landfill issue is not resolved," said Lori Godoshian, Pima County Board of Supervisors clerk.
The Oct. 30 auction of the land has been canceled by the State Land Department so that the City of Tucson and the state can re-evaluate who is responsible for the site's repair.
While the auction's cancellation may be a setback for the repair process, Steve Holland, director of UA Risk Management, said there are benefits to the cancellation.
"It will allow that plan to proceed in more organized way," Holland said concerning the purchase and repair of the Tumamoc Hill landfill.
The state-run auction for the southern end of Tumamoc Hill, 1675 W. Anklam Rd., was part of a preserve initiative begun in 1997 to conserve the site.
The county applied for a Growing Smarter grant from State Parks to purchase the land for an estimated cost of $2.68 million. However, after discovering the landfill, the transaction was halted.
However, there was no relation between the auction cancellation and the county's rejection, said Nick Simonetta, communications and legislative affairs manager.
Until the city of Tucson, the state and the UA decide what to do about the landfill and how to pay for it, the waste will continue to sit exposed on the land.
It is still uncertain whether the site contains hazardous materials, so the state has allowed Tucson to perform testing on the landfill.
By seeing the test results, it will yield to a full understanding of what was dumped on the site and parse out the liability and indemnification, Simonetta added.
While Tucson and the state have been negotiating the cost of repair, the UA is not expected to help pay for the clean up, Holland said
"The source of the funding hasn't been identified," Holland added.
If the city and the state reach an agreement for how to pay for the repair costs, it is estimated to cost about $1 million and could increase if further work is needed to seal the site, said James Keene, Tucson city manager.
The UA geosciences department and the UA ecology and evolutionary biology department jointly operate a desert laboratory on Tumamoc Hill with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Vegetation could be needed on the site after the capping is completed to prevent erosion when it rains. But it could take some time to grow vegetation because the laboratory is concerned about keeping native species, Holland said.
The auction will be rescheduled for a later time in the year, Simonetta said.
