EXACTLY HOW BLATANT WAS VARNICOLOR CHEMICAL'S POLLUTION?

 

Three incidents come to mind namely General Motors revelations about Varnicolor in the Globe & Mail written by Jock Ferguson, followed by Digger Dave Holmes discovery of solvents floating on the water table on the 62 Union St. site and lastly the panic and alarm that resulted from my opening a tupperware container filled with Lot 91 soil inside the Elmira Fire hall on Howard Ave. 

The first incident occurred in the mid to late 1980s after General Motors were tipped off that barrels with their name on the labels were sitting and rusting in an open field in Elmira which was Varnicolor's infamous Lot 91 at the east end of Oriole Parkway beside Landfill Creek and it's discharge into the Canagagigue Creek. The M.O.E. ordered Varnicolor to take those barrels up to their Union St. site (out of sight) where they then sat on the ground uncovered there as well. 

The second incident occurred in the summer of 1989 when the gentleman involved was hired to dig a trench for a minor construction project on the Varnicolor site. A few feet below ground surface he was shocked to see/smell subsurface solvents flowing into the hole .  He reported it to both Varnicolor and the M.O.E. both of whom were satisfied to simply fill in the hole and forget about it.

Thirdly in the summer 1990 or 91 we had a meeting of the Varnicolor Liason Committee at the firehall where Rich Clausi and I asked the Ministry of Environment (M.O.E.)  about dozens of barrels with lids filled with soil that they had excavated from Lot 91. They advised us that oh the soils were not a big deal and merely had minor solvent contamination in them. At that point I advised that Richard and I had taken samples from a specific marked barrel, put a specific dated coin into the barrel and resealed the lid. Ministry personnel present scoffed at that claim until I reached under the table and pulled out my tupperware container. As I lifted the lid and awful odours engulfed the room the M.O.E. folks were the first ones out the door running for their lives. They knew exactly how bad and for how long the dumping had been going on on that site.

In hindsight the only reason that Uniroyal, Varnicolor and Ministry personnel got away with as much as they did regarding the Elmira crisis was because of the two plants (i.e. helpers) they had within APT Environment pretty much from the beginning.