How is this possible? You've heard the expression "It takes a village to raise a child". Well here's my environmental expression: "It takes a conspiracy, bribes and favours to get politicians at multiple levels to agree upon anything but especially upon self-serving, not in the public interest plans." I believe that this is how the original Elmira west side By-Pass has morphed into the east side By-Pass.
These toxic wastes were from the production of several million pounds of Agent Orange produced in the mid to late 1960s and shipped to the U.S. military for non-humanitarian use in Vietnam. Some of these wastes were buried on the west side of the Creek and others on the east side in pits and ponds. At the same time and up to the present Agent Orange and accompanying dioxin (2,3,7,8 TCDD) has been eroding from creekbanks on the former Uniroyal property. Dioxins are in downstream fish, creekbank soils, floodplain soils and sediments in the bottom of the Creek above health criteria all the way to the Grand River and beyond.
Liquid toxic wastes also flowed eastwards, southwards and westwards from the high ground on Uniroyal/Lanxess's east side. A tiny amount of these dioxins were excavated in 2019 from a strip of land on the Stroh farm nearest to Lanxess. That was but one more Mickey Mouse pretend "cleanup" done over the decades at the former Uniroyal.
Further off-site migration has been westwards and southwards through DNAPLS gravity flowing off-site decades ago. These off-site DNAPLS were totally denied for decades up until recently. Both DNAPLS as well as ordinary solvents will mobilize DDT and dioxins which have an extremely low solubility in water. These solvents include benzene, toluene, chlorobenzene and many others that have spread out underneath Elmira.
There has never been a serious, honest investigation of either the Stroh or Martin farms. Now Mayor Shantz and political friends want to cover these Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) with the Elmira By-Pass as well as with commercial development. Neither will stop the ongoing migration of Uniroyal Chemical toxins into the Canagagigue Creek and the Grand River.
At the same time DDT and Dioxins exist within the Elmira drinking water aquifers where they have been ignored while attention was deflected onto NDMA and chlorobenzene. Dioxins solubility in water exceeds its' Ontario Drinking Water Standard (ODWS). DDT has a much higher ODWS making DDT exceedances possible although less likely than dioxin's (2,3,7,8 TCDD.
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