CHEMTURA TOLD THE TRUTH IN 1990

From time to time, here in the Advocate, I've presented facts and data which could certainly be interpreted as casting doubt on Chemtura/Uniroyal's credibility. In the spirit of Christmas as well as fair play, it would seem acceptable to advise readers when or if I find hard data which would support their view of the universe or at least Elmira. Back in 1990, Dr David Ash the manager of Uniroyal publicly and repeatedly claimed that Uniroyal would pay their fair share of the Elmira cleanup and that they were not the only source. Dr. Ash went so far as to offer $1,000,000 towards a study of ALL the sources of contamination to the Municipal drinking water Aquifers.

At the time these comments were looked upon as just a tad self serving. While initial attempts to blame either Martians or lubricating grease in the well pumps had been disproven, the Ministry of the Environment and many others were pointing fingers squarely at Uniroyal. Turns out that Uniroyal actually were telling the truth.

Recently CRA (Conestoga Rovers), long time consultants to Uniroyal/Chemtura provided a flash drive to CPAC & SWAT members as well as to the Elmira Independent who faithfully attend all meetings. While a tutorial is being set up for next month for all of us to better access the data on the flash drive; nevertheless I've been mucking about with it on my own. Do I castigate Chemtura/CRA for having kept to themselves vital information relevant to the cleanup of the Elmira Aquifers or do I thank them for finally giving up this data? Secondly do I castigate them for iterally decades of deception and misdirection around other sources or do I congratulate them for having told the truth, figuratively for five minutes twenty -three years ago?

Firstly in regards to Nutrite/Yara, our authorities knew in the early nineties at the Environmental Appeal Board hearings that they were culprits. The public however were kept in the dark about Ammonia issues on their property for more than a decade after the wellfiellds were shut down . Here's where it gets icky. It wasn't just Ammonia that they discharged into the natural environment. There are borehole logs on this flashdrive which indicate them enriching our groundwater with petroleum hydrocarbons including diesel fuel as well as various pesticides. Some of these borehole logs are only five to ten years old and others go back to the nineties.

The old Varnicolor site at 62 Union St. was an incredible coverup by the Ontario M.O.E. right from day one and it's never ended. As recently as this past summer, M.O.E. personnel have been delivering outright bullshit served up on a platter to CPAC and the public. They have of course been ably assisted by their partners in pollution, Chemtura/CRA. There was a surface removal of approximately the top four to five feet of highly contaminated soil back in the early nineties. The deep boreholes, wells and investigation, publicly promised by the M.O.E. never happened. Sure enough on the flash drive we see why. There are boreholes on the property in the name of Elmira Pump, the current business on site. These boreholes indicate staining and significant petroleum hydrocarbon odours subsurface approximately seven to eight years AFTER the "major" cleanup in the early nineties. Some of this contamination is below the level that was removed close to twenty years ago and some is actually above it indicating that areas were missed.

So in hindsight thank you Chemtura/Uniroyal for telling the truth at least once in the last twenty-three years.