Friday, April 13, 2018

TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE MESS



So yesterday after almost throwing out the baby with the bath water I went back to the 2017 Canagagigue Creek report. I slowly went through Figures 6.1 - 6.11. The FIVE locations (only) where creekbank soils and creekbottom sediments were sampled are in reverse order geographically. In other words 6.1 & 6.2 start downstream at Northfield Dr. encompassing Four sampling locations and then 6.3 & 6.4 move upstream to New Jerusalem Rd. where there are eight sampling locations. Soils are sampled and results displayed in the odd numbered Figures ie. 6.1, 6.3, 6.5, 6.7, 6.9 and Sediments are sampled and displayed in the even numbered Figures namely 6.2, 6.4, 6.6, 6.8 and 6.10.

After the New Jerusalem Rd. site we move upstream (sort of) to the next site which happens to be Station 21. Upstream is technically correct however it's "upstream" by just a tad more than the width of New Jerusalem Rd.. New Jerusalem Rd. is not an eight lane 401 type of road. It's gravel and all of twenty feet wide maybe (ie. one narrow lane each direction). So in other words this third site is merely the continuance of the New Jerusalem Rd. site. Station 21 is covered by Figures 6.5 (Soils) and 6.6 (Sediments) and consists of six individual locations.

Figures 6.7 and 6.8 are for Soils and Sediments (respectively) for Downstream of Station 20. Station 20 is an old designation for a location on the creek where it bends after leaving the Lanxess property and briefly runs sort of parallel to the most southern border of the Chemtura/Lanxess site. From there eight sample locations run downstream almost as far as the start of the Station 21
sample locations on the west side of New Jerusalem Rd..

Figures 6.9 and 6.10 are twelve locations along both sides of the creek where it runs through the Lanxess property. Unsurprisingly despite the amount of work done in the creek (west banks) between 2000 and 2005, the greatest number of exceedances for both DDT and Dioxins are still on the west side of the creek. This speaks to as usual not doing a complete job the first time around as well as the likelihood of a diversion or by-pass on the east side of the creek sending contaminated groundwater southwards and eastwards over to the Stroh farm.

Finally Figure 11 is of the four Floodplain samples (ie. away from the creek but in the floodplain designated area) as well as the one floodplain pond that was sampled in the Station 21 general area. The number of floodplain Soil locations (4) make it pretty clear that for this investigation floodplain Soils were given only token attention. Back in the mid 1990s ten floodplain Soils locations were sampled and they were contaminated from the Uniroyal property all the way down to the Grand River with DDT and Dioxins plus of course all the other Uniroyal herbicides, pesticides, solvents PAHs and more that they wish we would forget about.

By simply looking at the number of samples and their specific locations along the Canagagigue Creek it is clear that the sampling locational bias continues unabated.

Northfield - 4 locations

New Jerusalem - 8 locations

Station 21 - 6 locations

Station 20 - 8 locations

Lanxess - 12 locations


My expectation is that it is cheaper to remediate a shorter, smaller distance from the company as well as to focus on the first mile (approximate) downstream from the Uniroyal plant to just past New Jerusalem Rd. combined with again four token locations at Northfield Dr.. Also it's easier to mobilize vehicles and equipment where there is easy road access to the creek which again is New Jerusalem Rd. and Northfield Dr.. All of this is easier and cheaper than honestly admitting that the entire five miles (7+ kilometres) of Canagagigue Creek all the way to the Grand River is grossly contaminated. Most of these five miles do not have easy road access to them thus it is the usual self-serving psuedo/junk science pretending that the less accessible areas of the creek are clean. Such typical Woolwich horse manure promulgated by Chemtura/Lanxess and their fellow travellors and partners in pollution. The Ontario Ministry of Environment will go along as usual because they are so horribly compromised by their historical negligence, incompetence and let's face it, underfunding and lack of scrutiny by the province of Ontario.

3 comments:

  1. This is very interesting and for the most part not surprising. However you lost me again in the last paragraph.

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  2. New Jerusalem Rd. to Northfield Dr. is a long, inaccessible stretch of the creek with the greatest distances (following the twists and turns and loops) that is unsampled for sediments or creekbank soils. The vast majority of the length of the creek (5 miles as the crow flies, much more following the creek) is unsampled, intentionally. Therefore Lanxess &n friends are simply pretending to have tested the whole creek.

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  3. The suggestion I have is to focus on insisting in being part of the next project plan regarding sampling where and how many samples and what is to be analyzed. Access to property permission wise, is also a critical issue as it can derail the best of plans. And finally the best of plans again can be limited by the budget to complete it.

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