"DNAPL" WELLS AT CHEMTURA IN ELMIRA, ONTARIO

Recently I've been expounding upon the blatant ridiculousness of the position that Chemtura have taken for two decades plus regarding free phase DNAPLS on their site in Elmira. That being said I am trying not to personally attribute that behaviour to the Elmira officials who represent the company at public CPAC meetings. While it is Jeff, Josef and Dwight who are the public spokespersons; all three are employees who must follow the orders coming out of corporate headquarters in Waterbury, Connecticut. My confidence in regards to this flows from the fact that every day from Monday through Friday; Chemtura U.S. (ie. Waterbury) are on this blog/website checking out every word I post. This I know courtesy of a program known as Statcounter.

After carefully checking concentrations of a half dozen DNAPL (dense non aqueous phase liquids) chemicals in the groundwater in Chemtura's south-west corner and former location of their operating ponds (RPW5-8), I can with confidence indicate that the evidence of free phase DNAPL presence is overwhelming.

For example wells OW74-6, U+500 and RPW7-1-8 show that five of six DNAPL chemicals, despite fourteen years of shallow aquifer hydraulic containment, continue to have high concentrations in the groundwater. These concentrations with the exception of Benzothiazole and Aniline generally remain above the 1% solubility benchmark indicating nearby DNAPL. The solubility of Aniline and Benzothiazole are extremely high (ie. millions of parts per billion) hence making even 1% of their labratory solubility an extremely high concentration in groundwater. Indeed Aniline concentrations in groundwater while below 1% solubility nevertheless are routinely between 2,000 and 200,000 parts per billion. Keep in mind all these DNAPL compounds plus many more are all dissolved in essentially the same shallow groundwater.

Extraction wells U+540 and U+560 show that four out of six DNAPL chemicals, despite fourteen years of shallow aquifer hydraulic containment, continue to have high concentrations in the groundwater. Three of those four chemicals also generally remain above the 1% solubility mark. Other wells in the former operating ponds have two and three DNAPL chemicals whose concentrations while rising and falling over time are not consistently decreasing.

This kind of detailed analysis of Chemtura's DNAPLS has never been done by independent, unbiased credentialed experts. That being said there have been a couple of occasions when the Ministry of the Environment have carefully and respectfully put in writing their opposing opinions to Chemtura's DNAPL propaganda. One such important letter was researched and written by Jaimie Connolly of the M.O.E. on April 3,2006. Steve Martindale of the M.O.E. is supposed to bring to CPAC tomorrow night some kind of update on Jaimie's April 2006 opinion. If history is any judge Steve will attempt to downplay Jaimie's very clear and strong written 2006 opinions.

Recently Woolwich Council have suggested that they will provide CPAC with $10,000 towards a professional peer review. Chemtura have recently again been approached unsucessfully for funding of peer reviews of Chemtura's consultants work. This is hardly surprising as the company while ostensibly in favour of public consultation are actually horrified at the thought of either the general public or CPAC being able to confront them on a level playing field. Client driven, well reimbursed consultants are their weapon of first choice against the public interest, in favour of their own.