When you are dealing with long term proven dishonest persons one becomes used to second guessing everything they say and do. Therefore even when it appears that information that should have been known and made public 36 years ago has now suddenly been made public; one tends to question it. Why was it finally released now? Who benefits? For me the answer as always is the corporate entity (Lanxess) currently on the hook to clean up the aquifers. What good does the release of information that should have been known in 1989-1990 courtesy of Minister of the Environment, Jim Bradley's five man team sent to Elmira to investigate other sources of NDMA and solvents within Elmira's groundwater. The answer is that these six to eight new potential sources of chlorobenzene provide cover for the also recently admitted chlorobenzene DNAPL found in 1998 beside the Howard St. water tower in the bottom of observation well OW57-32R . Pumping well W4 was then installed nearby in order to help pump out free phase DNAPL from the nearby area as well as the already dissolved chlorobenzene in the aquifers. It was Jesse Wright of Arcadis who announced these on site chlorobenzene sources last June at a TRAC meeting.
It's all about managing the publics' knowledge of the Elmira water crisis. It sounded so much better 36 years ago to say that nobody had ever heard of much less tested for NDMA way back then and that the Min. of Environment only missed one bad apple, namely Uniroyal Chemical, versus say Nutrite/Yara, Varnicolor Chemical and however many more are finally publicly released. Similarly it's better to say that the problem is NDMA and chlorobenzene and not mention DDT and dioxins, not to mention the other hundred or so solvents and chemicals used by Uniroyal Chemical.
No comments:
Post a Comment