CPAC AGAIN IS FRONT PAGE NEWS

Yesterday's Elmira Independent carrys the following front page headlines: "CPAC member withdraws application" The sub title is "Hydrogeologist concerned about lack of consultation with advisory body". Does any of this sound even vaguely familiar with what occurred at CPAC three years ago? At that time Wilf Ruland (hydrogeologist) submitted his resignation to Woolwich Council claiming that he could no longer work with yours truly, one Al Marshall. Although it is the same characters behind both strategies, there are some differences. First of all, Wilf Ruland was not a voting member of CPAC. He was a part, part time hydrogeological consultant. Secondly he was an accredited hydrogeologist (groundwater specialist) whereas I am positive that Richard Petrone who joined CPAC about fifteen months ago at the same time as Ken Driedger and Sandra Bair, was put forth as a Hydrologist (surface water specialist).

More importantly are Mr. Petrone's credentials as a voting CPAC member. Richard Who should be his name. In this article he is spouting off about subjects with which he is grossly unqualified. For example he complains about the Terms of Reference being ignored. There have been two or three Terms of Reference over the last twenty years. Mr. Petrone who ostensibly has been a voting member of CPAC for the last fifteen months hasn't got the decency or respect to even show up for meetings. I met him once fifteen months ago at CPAC and haven't seen him since. There have been public meetings of CPAC that lacked a quorum and Mr. Petrone is one of the dedicated, reliable members responsible for that. If he couldn't be bothered showing up for meetings are we to truly believe he's up to date on the Terms of Reference? By the way these Terms of Reference have been updated (?) and rewritten by FORMER Chair Pat McLean. Possibly she was assisted by Susan Bryant. I've got copies of the old Terms of Reference but I'm seriously in the dark about "... a past chair, vice-chair and secretary-treasurer...". Have these newer Terms of Reference ever seen the light of day at a public CPAC meeting?

The hypocrisy and sour grapes in this article are stunning. Gee I wonder who gave the "resignation" letter to the Independent. My guess is Pat Mclean and or Susan Bryant. The past Terms of Reference were explicit that a Council member MUST be the Chair of this Committee of Council (CPAC). The only time there was an exception to this was four years ago when Sandy Shantz was appointed as Council's representative on CPAC and former Mayor Bill Strauss O.K.'d his long time colleague Pat McLean staying as Chair. This was contrary to the Terms of Reference yet nobody objected . Further hypocrisy surrounds Mr. Petrone's comment "My big concern was how they were treating some long-time volunteers". Really? You didn't care enough to either show up at meetings or give a good reason why you weren't there, but now you are concerned about your fellow members.

Then we have Pat Mclean, former Councillor, former CPAC Chair and unsucessful candidate for Mayor. "The process certainly has not been respectful of the volunteers, I think, of the long serving and dedicated volunteers". Pat's ability to conveniently forget facts is second to none. How much respect did she have for this long serving and dedicated volunteer, yours truly? I've been actively involved doing research, attending public meetings and holding Chemtura's and The Ministry of the Environment's feet to the fire for over twenty years. She and Susan Bryant, for self serving reasons, unceremoniously had me dumped from CPAC in the middle of a four year term. Now she is whining about proper process not being followed at the end of the appropriate term of CPAC which follows the terms of Council.

Finally I must comment on Susan Bryant's claim that Richard Petrone's experience "has come in handy when reviewing Chemtura's current request to reduce the number of test wells it monitors for signs of contamination". This is first class, outrageous bullshit from Susan. Richard has no experience with Chemtura. He couldn't possibly begin to even find particular test wells on or off site, of the literally hundreds of wells in existence. He hasn't a clue as to the monitoring history of individual wells. He has virtually no idea of which wells in which aquifer, whether on or off site, have always had high readings of contaminants and of which contaminants. Similar to Wilf Ruland, Susan is simply using his credentials to back up CPAC's long time granting of monitoring ($$$) concessions to Chemtura. These concessions are neither based on science nor on common sense.

So what is going on? WHY are Susan and Pat behaving this way? What have they got to hide? Why are they so desperate to stay on CPAC, a volunteer, time consuming organization? Yours truly in the past twenty years has been a formal voting member of CPAC for about ten years and a non member but extremely active citizen attending and participating in these public meetings for another ten years. From 1994 till 2000 I was a non member by choice. Then as now CPAC was nothing but a cheering squad for Uniroyal/Chemtura. This desperate move to use the resignation of a non attending NEW member of CPAC to embarass Council into reappointing them, is insane. The only conjecture left to me is that they are both afraid that a brand new CPAC, without them, may find other private concessions to Chemtura. Specifically my suspicions are that private deals have been made to let Chemtura off the hook in regards to onsite removal of DNAPLs (dense non aqueous phase liquids). This would save Chemtura millions of dollars. If this has occurred it will be exposed by a new CPAC.