THREE DECADES OF PROFESSIONAL DECEPTION

Sometimes I wonder why I have such disrespect for various alleged professional consultants, spokespersons, and experts who all amazingly to me, not so much to others, find ways to interpret facts favourably to their clients or even misstate facts also favourably to their clients. There is an immense advantage to being the proponent for either development proposals or remediation proposals for your own property. Firstly, generally speaking, you control the facts and hence the narrative. Also, generally speaking, there is no real government regulator in serious, open confrontation with you, unless of course you are a small fry and then things can change in a hurry. Just ask Varnicolor Chemical owner Severin Argenton about that. Some former government employed drinking buddies quickly jumped ship when the tide turned against Severin and the MOE back in the early 1990s.

Over the last two days I have posted here about the pumping of waste waters from the west side of the creek (Canagagigue) over to the east side pits on the top of the hill. I also posted here about synonyms, typos, and other misstatements and errors amazingly all being helpful to the narrative that the polluter and sometimes their guilty regulator preferred.

There are a few but very significant errors in Table 3.1 in the August 1991 Environmental Audit written by Conestoga Rovers (CRA) on behalf of Uniroyal Chemical. These include inaccurate dates of disposal as well as not clearly indicating the exact dates that various west side ponds were constructed which would then give a clearer indication of how many years they were actually in operation say compared to the east side pits. Similarly it would help if this "Waste Disposal Summary Table" more clearly indicated which pits and ponds were primarily for liquids versus solids or sludges. Also DDT is mentioned as being in the Building 8 sump but there is no indication in this Table as to the final destination for this product (it was into RPE-4).

Even the nomenclature for RPE and RPW is deceptive. RPW refers to the west side "ponds" as in Retention Pond West and RPE refers to the east side "pits" as in Retention Pit East. This certainly gave me for a very long time the false belief that the process liquids primarily were disposed into the west side "ponds" versus into the east side "pits". Uniroyal and successors had a multitude of opportunities to correct those misunderstandings at public UPAC and CPAC meetings for decades but did not.

Both the August 1991 and the January 1992 Environmental Audits are seriously convoluted and complicated in regards to explaining to citizens and lay persons exactly where solid and liquid wastes ended up. Yes they are clear that in the first few years just about everything liquid went directly or indirectly into the Canagagigue Creek. After that the company used more convoluted routes to essentially get the same result. After 1946 the Uniroyal Chemical sewer and sump systems sent the vast majority of waste waters to the east side pits which already by 1948 were causing vegetative distress to further east crops (Stroh property) as well as along the creek on the Uniroyal property. Clearly the information we received in the early 90s about Mr. Stroh senior having received compensation for crop damage makes sense.

If the guilty parties had been up front at the start of public consultation (i.e. UPAC) then citizens would have focused much more on the east side long before the discovery of the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm in May 2014.