THE SKIES ARE CLEARING AFTER DECADES OF UNIROYAL & FRIENDS DNAPL DENYING AND OBFUSCATION

 

DNAPLS are nasty buggers! Something like intellectual prostitutes in my mind. Since 1990 a conspiracy of polluters and politicians has been in operation in Elmira. Their goal was to keep the filthy polluter here in town, paying taxes, employing locals and shutting down legitimate opposition to the conditions under which Uniroyal and later successors operated. These conditions included serious polluter cover and protection via both the province (Min. of Environment) and from our local Woolwich councils. 

DNAPLS such as the absolutely common and iconic chlorobenzene releases do more than just contaminate groundwater with chlorobenzene. They greatly assist in mobilizing other chemicals and compounds which are much less likely to migrate on their own. This includes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) as well as DDT/DDD/DDE and numerous dioxins including the most toxic 2,3,7,8 TCDD. All of these of course are found throughout Elmira, Ontario courtesy of Uniroyal Chemical with the able ongoing assistance of our Woolwich Councils, MOE/MECP , Region of Waterloo plus a myriad of consulting companies most notably CRA/GHD.

PAHs, Dioxins and DDT compounds are common in our downstream Canagagigue Creek soils, sediments and fish. They are less well known to be in our drinking water aquifers due to a plethora of deception, manipulation and obfuscation by all the parties mentioned previously. The first and earliest lies from Uniroyal and their then consultants was the alleged lack of DNAPLS in, on and under the Uniroyal Chemical site.  Yours truly started the opposition rolling by getting one consultant "consolidated" by Uniroyal after I caught him playing fast and loose with the truth by quoting hydrogeologist Stan Feenstra out of context. The lying however has never ended.

The chlorobenzene DNAPL likely with a myriad of other toxic chemicals mixed in, flowed off-site from Uniroyal's south-west corner. Careful examinations of the subsurface shows the general slope of the stratigraphic layers to be southwards with a tad of westward included. This corresponds to the many potential chlorobenzene source spots determined last June by Arcadis Inc. in and around First St, Union St. and Howard Ave.  

Current average concentrations after almost thirty years of pumping are 123 ppb. in the Municipal Upper Aquifer and 173 ppb. in the Municipal Lower Aquifer.  These concentrations as well as past concentrations have always represented a very tiny amount of the total chlorobenzene leaked, spilled and dumped into the natural environment. Pumping increasingly smaller concentrations of chlorobenzene will simply assure that pumping off-site will continue forever as it is planned to do on site. 

Intelligent people want to clean up both the onsite and offsite contamination. Greedy and stupid people merely want to make money from the site through development etc.