NON-EXISTENT SECURITY AT OUR LOCAL LANDFILLS IN THE 1960s to 1990s

Varnicolor bought Lot 91 from Woolwich Township in 1972, two years after they were banned from using either the Bolender Landfill or the First St. landfill. Do you know why they were banned? They took a load of solvents and other highly flammable substances to the town dump and they caught on fire. This information is in Susan Rupert's post grad degree thesis (Environmental Studies) at the University of Waterloo. Yes Susan Rupert, Esther Thur and Sandra Bray founded APTE, not Susan Bryant. So why do you think Varnicolor bought Lot 91 located in the floodplain of both Landfill and Canagagigue Creek? Illegal dumping! Did Woolwich Township monitor or investigate this purchase? No. Thirteen years later there was a scandal exposed in the Globe and Mail by Jock Ferguson proving that General Motors paid top dollar for hazardous waste disposal of drums that ended up sitting both vertically and horizontally on the ground, exposed to the elements, on Varnicolor's Lot 91 beside the two creeks in Elmira. .......................................................................................................... In the early 1990s Varnicolor were in the midst of another environmental scandal. Their spills and intentional dumping were exposed by me to APTE and the Ontario Ministry of Environment. The MOE came publicly to Varnicolor's defence claiming that there was no contamination etc. When the smoke cleared the owner (Severin Argenton) was charged and convicted of multiple environmental offences and received the longest jail sentence for environmental crimes ever in Canada. Prior to his trial and convictions I exposed one of his scams this time with the Region of Waterloo's landfills. Apparently a skid of used and dirty liquid solvents (highly illegal) ruptured after being dumped probably at the Ottawa St. Landfill in Kitchener (approx. 1987). It took both Varnicolor foremen to clean the mess from the Region's bulldozer combined with a bottle of booze to settle ruffled feathers. No charges of course. The second scam which I personally exposed involved a document (Bill of Lading?) that Mr. Argenton simply photocopied over and over again showing the contents of his garbage to be non-hazardous thus giving him dumping priveleges. Presumably he changed the date as he went along. The Region were appropriately embarassed and the K-W Record had a few more days of highly interesting and inflammatory stories. ....................................................................................................... These events took place AFTER Elmira's landfills (M-1, M-2, Bolender, First St.) were closed in 1936, 1962, 1969, 1972). Do you think that either before or after his dumping priveleges were banned and restored that Mr. Argenton wasn't pulling the same games there? Art Gorman, General Manager of Uniroyal Chemical, was the Chair of Elmira's Sanitation Committee and decided which industries and what industrial wastes they could put into the Bolender Landfill. Also multiple Uniroyal Chemical employees served on Elmira Town Council prior to the Region being formed and the advent of Woolwich Township. No conflict of interests there ...what! Until November 1989 (Elmira Water Crisis) Elmira was a company town i.e. Uniroyal Chemical. ............................................................................................... Currently due to global warming concerns there is a focus from both Canada and Ontario to reduce the release of greenhous gases. Methane is far worse than carbon dioxide and a major contributor is from former landfills. Despite that Woolwich have happily allowed free venting of methane to the air presumably hoping that will avoid any nasty fires or explosions. Regarding the current Stantec Risk Assessment my concerns are with the lack of leachate controls from Lot 91 (Varnicolor), Bolender Landfill and the First St. Landfill. As I have previously mentioned maybe a lot of the buried drums have already ruptured and maybe not. Also solvents and petroleum hydrocarbons can be dumped as sludges, tars and semi solids. All three can be further mobilized via groundwater percolating through and all three are in all of Elmirs's landfills, legal and illegal. I suggest that TAG members do not have adequate knowledge of the history of Elmira's (& MECP) mismanagement of toxic wastes, industries and landfills to be accepting or agreeing to any claims of only acceptable risks to human beings downstream in the Canagagigue Creek. AFTER a major remediation of local landfills and soils and sediments in the Creek plus any other probable sources (Stroh & Martin farms) then go ahead or not if you wish and do an honest Risk Assessment. Perhaps this time it should be under the purvue not of the polluter (or sucessor) but of a nuetral, unbiased party.