Friday, May 3, 2019

RAMIFICATIONS OF YESTERDAY'S BOLENDER PARK LANDFILL MAP AND POSTING



Do I think that the Ontario MOE are any more competent or honest than the brain trust running Woolwich Township? Of course not. Therefore the MOE's 1979 map showing the former municipal landfill completely within the current park's borders may be 100% accurate, 50% accurate or even possibly zero % accurate. My best guess is that both parties oscillate between beyond comprehension incompetent and pathologically dishonest. That said even a broken clock is right twice a day. Hence I have learned not to automatically dismiss every word out of their mouths as being a lie. Sometimes whetehr through good luck or good management they do get it right. the trick is knowing when that is.

How can we totally dismiss the landfill being further north running parallel to the Trans Canada Trail (former train tracks) and ending eastwards somewhere near the dead end of High St.? Not only have excavations close to the wrecking yard turned up garbage but there are decades worth of methane monitoring results in this further north area. True methane can and does migrate but wouldn't that be an absolute hoot if in fact Woolwich Township have been intentionally monitoring the wrong area for methane possibly in order to continue to hide the reality of buried garbage (or worse) further south in the park itself.

How bright are Woolwich staff and council going to look if they permitted (actually insisted upon) the construction of the children's splash pad in a playground with garbage and hence methane in it? How much worse are they going to look if as yesterday's map indicates, the splashpad and other childrens' amenities are built on top of Uniroyal Chemical's toxic wastes? Hoo boy I know they can guild the lily but really this is bad.

The likelihood is that some staff and some councillors knew the truth all along and simply pretended otherwise to their colleagues. Therefore some of the councillors voted in favour of the splashpad without full knowledge. They also voted in favour of not looking deeper into the methane irregularities and blatant unprofessional studies of the methane problem that I presented to them repeatedly in 2017 and early 2018.

There is local testimony that garbage was placed in the Park. There is also a soil study prior to the splashpad construction which identified "organics" in all the boreholes. "Organics" simply means rotting or decayed foodstuffs mixed in with the soil. Other reports besides this most recent MOE report have identified the Bolender Park Landfill as being a repository of Uniroyal (and likely Varnicolor Chemical) wastes. Lastly why do you think there are groundwater monitoring wells in and around the park itself? It's because Conestoga Rovers, Uniroyal's consultants, were hired to study both the Bolender Landfill and the First St. Landfill way back in the 1980s. Of course both the MOE and the Township have never let local environmentalists and citizens see those two studies. Guess why that is folks?

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