THE THIRTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE SHUTTING DOWN OF THE ELMIRA WELLFIELDS

I was going to title this post as the 30 year anniversary of the "destruction" of the Elmira wellfields however that would be inaccurate. It's not that I believe that they will be restored, it's that I believe they were destroyed a lot longer than thirty years ago. Relatively low concentrations of common if not ubiquitous solvents had been in the Elmira Aquifers for a very long time. What we don't know is exactly how long NDMA (& more) was in the aquifers because our Ontario Ministry of Environment (now MECP) didn't get around to testing for it until September 1989. Of course this is what we were told. That does not make it so and my experience over the last thirty years is that the MOE/MECP tend to keep a very tight lid on bad news that would make themselves look bad. This is all despite the fact that NDMA was known to be in the waste waters and in the air around Uniroyal Chemical for at least a decade prior to 1989.

There was no excuse for not testing for NDMA both in the closer to Uniroyal north wellfield as well as the further away south wellfield in 1979 or earlier. It is my opinion that the reason for this expansion of the well system to the south part of Elmira in the 1970s was because our authorities already knew that the north wellfield was either already contaminated or at severe risk of becoming so. If I am correct then the Ontario government was for all intents and purposes using the citizens of Elmira as guinea pigs or lab rats if you will. How many other signature chemicals from Uniroyal Chemical are we unaware of? How many of them were in the drinking water along with NDMA long before November 1989?

Today is likely not the exact day that the MOE/MECP in 1989 announced the presence of NDMA in the south wellfield. It may not be the exact day that the Region of Waterloo shut down wells E7 and E9 in the south wellfield. This whole month for me marks the anniversary of our government's failure to do their job. Keep also in mind that while the Elmira wellfields have been shut down for thirty years, our government continues to bafflegab us. They suggest that 2028 is the thirty year anniversary of the remediation of the Elmira Aquifers to drinking water standards. That is not going to happen whether or not they call 2028 the 30 year anniversary or the 39th anniversary of the shutdown. It took them nine years to begin the second class off-site pump and treat remediation as it did not start until the summer of 1998. Just more and more delay combined with more and more horse manure.