WOOLWICH BIO-EN

The Bio-En Citizens Liason Committee met last evening at the Elmira Library as usual. Most of the usual gang were there including Earl Brubacher, Chuck Martin (audience), Doug Musselman, Bob Gray, Marg Tassy-Keller, Michael Purvis-Smith, Vivienne Delaney (audience), myself (audience) and a new fellow from Bio-En, Paul. At the moment Woolwich Bio-En are operating at about 70-80% of their full capacity.

There was a complaint from Doug regarding the after hours outdoor lighting at the plant. It was felt that as the lighting hasn't changed it was an issue caused by the lights reflecting off the snow. Regardless both Chuck and Earl heard and understood and will make appropriate inquiries as to what if anything can be done.

Bio-En have expressed disappointment with two issues both requiring Ministry of the Environment action. Bio-En's neighbour wishes to buy excess methane gas from them in order to run a generator to produce their own electricity. The M.O.E. will not give approval for a pipeline from Bio-En to their next door neighbour. Secondly there is an issue with many very small loads of feedstocks coming into the plant. By consolidating loads into bigger trucks, fewer trucks could make the same volumes of delivery while lowering traffic volumes and exhaust volumes. Again with this issue all parties are in agreement but the problem appears to be M.O.E. intransigence in permitting truck consolidation of loads in a transfer yard.

Michael Purves-Smith drafted a letter for the Citizens' Committee to discuss. The letter was agreed to unanimously and it urges the M.O.E. to resolve those issues under their control both for the company's and the local citizens benefit.

While in the past the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee have routinely agreed to operating and monitoring changes beneficial to Chemtura, there are substantive differences. Firstly the agreed to changes promoted by Pat and Susan in the past had zero benefit to either the environment or to the local citizens. Secondly unlike Woolwich Bio-En, Chemtura were not playing ball or remotely cooperating with the citizens committee. In fact while receiving concessions of financial benefit to themselves they were seriously misleading the advisory committee on other matters.

There is a major difference between being cooperative for the benefit of all versus selling out to the company for your own personal advantage. To date I am pleased to say that I have been very impressed with the ethics and cooperation displayed by Woolwich Bio-En to the citizens committee and to the community as a whole.