CHEMTURA JULY 2012 PROGRESS REPORT

I received this monthly report yesterday and I need to say Hallelujah! This is the first time in as long as I can remember that all the pumping wells on and off-site have met their targeted pumping rates including the ones whose rates have been reduced over the years. Keep this in perspective however. It simply means that Chemtura/CRA's much vaunted hydraulic containment is finally back up to speed for the month of July 2012. This does help in slowing the ongoing leakage of contaminants off-site whether into the Municipal Lower, Municipal Upper, Bedrock Aquifers or into Canagagigue Creek. Way too much of the site is hydraulically uncontained in violation of the November 4, 1991 Control Order. However as we have learned the hard way, Control Orders primary purpose is only to give the appearance of cleanups.

Surface water hits again include the practically ubiquitous NDMA, NMOR and Toluene coming from the Chemtura site and discharging into Canagagigue Creek. There is more but detection capabilities and lack of testing for specific other contaminants severely limits their detection.

Tables A.3 and A.4 in Appendix A are interesting as they give us a better picture of the number of different contaminants in the natural environment ie. shallow groundwater. Table A.3 has 19 different industrial chemicals detected and Table A.4 has 13. This of course also reflects detection capabilities as well as a lck of testing for other known Chemtura chemicals.

Table D.2 in Appendix D has data reflecting on chemical detections in CH44C & D . This well is located on the neighbouring Nutrite/Yara property. There are eleven different chemicals indicated as being present. These include the two highest namely Chlorobenzene and Mercaptobenzothiazole. There are numerous other Non Detects (ND) however they have extremely high method detection limits which can and do hide positive detections. Although to date Chemtura/ M.O.E. are only giving Nutrite/Yara "credit" for putting Ammonia into the Elmira drinking water aquifers it is becoming increasingly obvious that they have numerous other chemicals that they discharged into their lagoon which have joined with other companies in Elmira to make our drinking water toxic.

All in all another feel good report to assist in the charade that Elmira's groundwater is in good hands and being properly remediated.