CHEMTURA'S (UNIROYAL) THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL MONITORING REPORT

As the above title indicates this is Chemtura's 31st AMR. It is also known as the 2012 AMR. Forget about restoring our drinking water within thirty years. Way back in 1981 the Ontario Ministry of the Environment knew they had a problem. In fact any politician who wasn't deaf, dumb, blind, stupid and on the take knew in the mid 70's that the Canagagigue Creek was devoid of life ie. dead. This is what surprised Chemtura (Uniroyal) in November 1989. They knew that the large majority of their toxic wastes were being flushed by shallow groundwater, rainfall, snowmelt and spring floods into the Canagagigue Creek to be shared with the Grand River, Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge and everybody else downstream. How dare the Ontario M.O.E. suggest that their chemicals including NDMA had travelled via the deeper Municipal Aquifer a mile south to wells E7 and E9.

Therefore Chemtura's impossible thirty year cleanup of the Elmira Aquifers will, despite their ongoing insistence to the contrary, have to be recalculated. Not thirty years from 1989 when our drinking wells were shut down. Not thirty years from the 1993 Remedial Action Plan (RAP). Not thirty years from 1998 when the off-site municipal aquifer pumping started. Chemtura's cleanup schedule is something like their former notorious neighbour's Varnicolor Chemical. We were given a five to ten year cleanup date in the mid 90's. Guess what? Varnicolor's sucessors are still at it twenty years later. There was an excavation back in the summer of 2011 and we were advised last summer that 200 tonnes more contaminated soil was going to be removed. To date that hasn't occurred. Do we see a pattern here?

Further lack of confidence occurs when one is experienced enough to read Chemtura's consultant's reports critically. Yesterday's post here indicated a number of errors of varying magnitude in this 31st AMR. A few more hours of study and a few more weird errors are popping up. For example in their Table 6.5 titled "Summary of Potential DNAPL Areas" we are advised that their study of the RPW6 (Retention Pond West) area indicates that they have taken action by reviewing the stratigraphy of the OW10 area. This is somewhat strange and requires clarification because OW10 is not in RPW6. In fact OW10 is located south of RPW6 actually on the berm at the south end of RPW7 which is between RPW7 and RPW8. Also further down in this Table they state that their actions for studying RPW7 indicate that they have sampled well OW10.

Another anomoly has popped up in regards to a local consulting company who are working on behalf of the current owners of the former Varnicolor site. Either they are constantly changing their name or else Chemtura's consultants need to learn how to spell. To date they are referred to by CRA as Peritus Environmental, Pertitus Environmental or finally Peirtus Environmental. Yes this is pretty minor in the scheme of things although if I were the owner of Peritus, Pertitus or Peirtus I wouldn't be amused.

There are more strange things in store before I finish reading these two volumes of Chemtura's 2012 Annual Monitoring Report (AMR). Stay tuned.