The Indian Bend Wash area is a

Superfund Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...

cleanup site in Scottsdale and

Tempe, Arizona , settlement_type = City , named_for = Vale of Tempe , image_skyline = Tempeskyline3.jpg , imagesize = 260px , image_caption = Tempe skyline as se ...

. It was declared a Superfund site in 1983 after industrial solvents were discovered to have contaminated the

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

in an approximately area. It is one of the largest

EPA The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...

sites in terms of volume of groundwater treated, estimated at . During the 1960s, it was typical for companies to dispose industrial solvents directly into the ground and into

dry well A dry well or drywell is an underground structure that disposes of unwanted water, most commonly surface runoff and stormwater and in some cases greywater. It is a gravity-fed, vertical underground system that captures surface water from impe ...

s. In 1981,

volatile organic compounds Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature Colloquially, "room temperature" is a range of air temperatures that most people prefer for indoor settings. It feels comfortable to a ...

(VOC) were detected in Tempe and Scottsdale city wells, including

trichloroethylene The chemical compound trichloroethylene is a halocarbon commonly used as an industrial solvent. It is a clear, colourless non-flammable liquid with a chloroform-like sweet smell. It should not be confused with the similar 1,1,1-trichloroethane, ...

(TCE),

tetrachloroethylene Tetrachloroethylene, also known under the systematic name tetrachloroethene, or perchloroethylene, and many other names (and abbreviations such as "perc" or "PERC", and "PCE"), is a chlorocarbon with the formula Cl2C=CCl2 . It is a colorless liq ...

(PCE), and

chloroform Chloroform, or trichloromethane, is an organic compound with chemical formula, formula Carbon, CHydrogen, HChlorine, Cl3 and a common organic solvent. It is a colorless, strong-smelling, dense liquid produced on a large scale as a precursor to ...

. The wells were shut down immediately, and the area was declared a Superfund site in 1983. Potentially responsible parties

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the ten ...

, along with several smaller companies, have paid for the approximately $100 million in cleanup costs. Cleanup has consisted of several stations that

pump and treat Environmental remediation deals with the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment, or surface water. Remedial action is generally subject to an array of regulatory requirements, and may al ...

groundwater. The area consists of two cleanup sites, the North Indian Bend Wash (NIBW) Superfund site located in Scottsdale (approximately 8 square miles), and the South Indian Bend Wash (SIBW) Superfund site located in Tempe. For eight days in October 2007, trichloroethylene tainted water was released into the water supply of 1500 residents of Scottsdale by the Arizona American Water Company.http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/1116taintedwater16-on.html

Notes

External links

EPA's Indian Bend Wash Area site overview

City of Scottsdale Fact Sheet

Motorola's North Indian Bend Wash Superfund website

{{Coord, 33.4803, -111.9118, display=title, region:US-AZ_type:river Superfund sites in Arizona Geography of Maricopa County, Arizona