MAYBE IT'S JUST AN OVERSIGHT - 152 SHANLEY St. KITCHENER

Today's Waterloo Region Record carries the following article titled, "Owner's plans for Electrohome site "very close"." And no the law is not an oversight. It is riddled with favours towards developers, the real estate industry, and manufacturers, all to the detriment of neighbouring residents who only want a healthy, attractive neighbourhood to raise their families and to live in.

Electrohome originally owned the property and building and when their furniture business departed they either sold or gave away their contaminated site. Contaminated by them in order to reduce their costs of production which should have included proper waste disposal but apparently did not. Even in the 1960s there were environmental laws against improper disposal of toxic chemicals, paints and solvents. That those laws were not enforced by our provincial government seems obvious. That they were not enforced in a residential neighbourhood is just plain ridiculous as was the zoning and land use policies of the City of Kitchener back then which would permit housing immediately beside a manufacturing facility.

It gets worse. Municipal by-law standards are a joke. The City have been shoveling the sidewalks and cutting the grass for decades. The property taxes have been unpaid for decades until the owner, Andrew Spylo, paid 37 cents on the dollar recently to retain ownership. Apparently corporate taxes are also in arrears and the province had had a lien on the property since 2002. But Andrew Spylo still owns the property and presumably will pocket any profits from the alleged imminent sale of it. This folks is what comes of having money talk. This is the direct result of developers, manufacturers, and business people making donations to individual politicians and or their parties. That money adversely affects legislation whether municipal by-laws or provincial or federal laws.

Lastly are the likely unknown health effects on the neighbourhood. Are local adults or children getting sick at greater rates than the rest of the city? Are there any cancer clusters in the area? Are there neurological problems from simple insomnia to much worse in the neighbourhood? Is any government body at any level either asking these questions or better yet trying to get answers for them? If not then we are living in a third world country. Hopefully there aren't any municipal wells within a mile or two of that site. Hopefully the trichloroethylene (TCE) is at very low concentrations in the soil and groundwater because it is an absolutely horrible chemical in the natural environment. Just ask the Bishop St. community in Cambridge, Ontario. Generations there have suffered and died from the effects of the TCE released into the ground by Northstar Aerospace and Rozell (G.E.). Our governments are very good at looking out for the interests of the monied classes in our society. The rest of us, not so much.