McLENNAN PARK HAS GAS

Oh that is so much not a surprise. Last Saturday's Waterloo Region Record advises us that "Methane gas found in McLennan Park". Discolored grass tipped off authorities that there might be a little problem lurking underground. Sure enough it turns out that subsurface water drainage pipes were actually acting as conduits for methane gas. If the methane gas has been told once it's been told a hundred times to flow towards a collection system on the site's perimeter. This of course is the same methane gas which caused 80 townhouses to be abandoned in the 1980's due to gas infiltration into homes. Currently there are monitoring and venting systems in these homes. The moral here is it's easier to do it right the first time rather than attempt to engineer your way around a problem afterwards. The other moral is that pollutants whether liquid, solid or gas like to migrate and will despite human best efforts. Finally keep this in mind. Our authorities are long on claiming that this methane is all naturally produced by rotting municipal garbage. This may only be half a lie. The fact is if this site as well as most other landfills illegally permit the dumping of liquid wastes including solvents; then you don't have to wait for methane generation. Methane is CH3 which is just an everyday hydrocarbon as found in tons of industrial solvents including the ones dumped in the former Ottawa St. Landfill, now known as McLennan Park.