Agenda Item 6.0 was titled "Control Order Process and Public Engagement" .Unfortunately the "process" part far outweighs the actual public engagement. In the good old days there was Intervenor funding so that groups of citizens could hire their own experts, lawyers and consultants. Those days are long gone and instead of a Tribunal of knowledgeable and expert persons with legitimate environmental knowledge now we get the much maligned OLT (Ontario Land Tribunal. Yes one can ask for Leave to Appeal their decision but again there is no Intervenor funding hence individuals or even groups of citizens are risking big money to present a case to a biased, pro government, pro business body.
Yet another consulting company has been hired by Lanxess this one called Arcadis. It's good to know that Lanxess and GHD understand that there own credibility has been damaged by their behaviour and lack of compassion for the victims of corporate negligence locally. One claim by Jesse of Arcadis I found odd was that on-site NDMA sources are mostly on the west side of the former Uniroyal site and chlorobenzene sources allegedly are on the east side. No explanation was given just as no explanation has ever been given as to why monitoring well CH38 near Industrial Dr. and Oriole Parkway has had such high concentrations of contaminants so far away from Uniroyal Chemical.
Hadley also brought up Lanxess's whine about Pump & Treat technology being hard on the environment i.e. high electricity useage likely plus discharge of only partially cleaned groundwater into the Canagagigue Creek. Gee they and their predecessors should have thought about that 36 years ago! She also suggested that goals may have changed such as the Region of Waterloo no longer being interested in using Elmira's water for drinking water. Well! Karl Belan (RMOW) quickly corrected that and suggested that at the least the Region were eyeing the most southern well (E10) as a future source of water.
Lanxess allegedly want to do a study of the groundwater in its' more natural state . In other words with the pumping wells shut down in order to get a more accurate idea as to where the higher contaminant concentrations currently are. Groundwater pumping distorts concentrations of contaminants as they are pulled towards wells etc. To me this sounds like just one more ecuse to cut back on their remediation costs.
As stated yesterday there are as yet no decisions on remediating any of the "hot spots" in the Creek. Hadley again complained that she didn't like that terminology which is too damn bad although I believe that Chemtura started it as a method of "scoping" (lessening) the amount of cleanup needed in the Creek. We were also advised that the Ministry of Expanded Corporate Pollution (MECP) sent out more (likely deceptive) letters to the local residents along the Creek last summer. Hadley stated that residents had been advised against amending their gardens using Creek sands and also not to allow fowl (chickens etc.) to run loose near the Creek. We were later advised by Jason Rice (MECP) that free range chickens were possible at farms that had not been contacted. There was also a brief discussion/confusion over dioxin/furan criteria
Most TRAC (Technical Remediation Advisory Committee) members don't know what they don't know and are easily swayed and led by the nose. I saw a little less at this meeting than usual however it was still a disgrace of self-promoting, self-justifying, lily gilding by Lanxess and politicians . The utter and complete failure to allow questions from the audience (2 whole people) denigrates the process. The refusal to ask hard questions early on about the new proposed Control Order or ECA whichever they want to call it is but one example. Lanxess and the MECP should also have to explain where the hell the last 36 years have gone with failures in all cleanup endeavours. Any other private or government initiative with such a record would be shown the door and new management/supervision brought in to do the job that should have been done in the first place. Not in this venue as Woolwich/Dogpatch just keep on repeating their failures over and over again with the same biased, self-serving idiots in charge.
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