GAS STATION CONTAMINATION IN ELMIRA

I'm guilty of only a slightly misleading title above. Yes that is what I will be talking about, however the headline could be misconstrued as suggesting that somehow gas stations in Elmira are more prone to contamination than elsewhere. Absolutely not. I posted a report on this website, Tuesday July 27/10 which asked Woolwich residents about their knowledge of local environmental charges, control orders etc.. In that report I mentioned the former Strauss Fuels site at the north end of Elmira (NW side of Arthur St.). What I did not include are three more contaminated or former contaminated sites also due to gasoline or diesel spills and leaks.

What is of interest here are two issues. One is the difficulty of ever cleaning up a contaminated site to it's original condition. The other issue is whether or not the Ministry of the Environment or anyone else even comes close to that goal. Voisin Motors which was torn down and remediated was one of these sites and is now replaced by Shoppers Drugs. The other remediated site was the Steddick Hotel which had been contaminated by leaking gasoline/diesel from the former Beckers service station next door. Finally the third remediated site was approximately 6 or 7 years ago and was Gord's service station on Church St. It is now covered by the extension to Chateau Gardens seniors home. This third site is coming back to impact the current road and sewer work at the intersection of Church and Snyder Ave. Apparently evidence, including odours has been noted during the excavations and may delay the completion of the job. For me this just begs the question: Why wasn't a better cleanup done in the first place? My second question is: Will any of the other service station cleanups in Elmira come back to haunt us, down the road?