POLICING, JUSTICE SYSTEM & POLITICAL OVERLAP

 Exactly how much overlap is there? Way too much if there's any at all. Whatever happened to dispassionate justice when penalties can be increased because of circumstances not directly related to the severity of the crime? Three local heinous crimes come to mind. One an immigrant who fled the country after stabbing and killing his ex-girlfriend something like 47 times. His motivations appear to be jealousy as well as a third world attitude towards women as being chattels of men. The other crime was the recent engineering graduate from U. of Waterloo who clearly also had a bad attitude regarding gender discussions and or interpretations of gender. He slashed I believe a female Prof and two students, one male and one female. Possibly his foreign background may or may not have been a contributing factor in his violent response to discussions of either sexuality or gender that he deemed offensive. Third and last we learn in today's newspaper that four teenagers thought it would be funny to drop a heavy, steel railroad spike from a bridge over the Grand River onto a 51 year old man fishing in a kayak below. The man's shinbone was broken although the spike just missed his head and likely would have been fatal if it had hit his head either by brain damage or drowning after he fell out of his kayak.

Finally a fourth local crime right here in Elmira. Late night partying, lots of outdoor noise as well as racing of cars not only up and down a residential street but also up and down Church St. west. Oh and drinking also involved by these young people. What offends me the most is the repetitive nature of these late night parties when the adults are off for the weekend camping and the kid is home and invites his idiot friends over.  Their misbehaviour also includes doing doughnuts and more in the gravel parking lot beside the Living Waters retail store. That particular idiocy has been caught on camera and yet where are our local cops? Oh right they aren't here in Elmira anymore, thank you very much Regional Council. They were called by a neighbour earlier in the summer and apparently showed up the next day to talk to the homeowners. Other neighbours including myself have collected the kids garbage strewn around neighbours' houses and dumped it on the kids porch which he sure as hell cleaned up before the adults got home. The late night, loud parties continue. Are our police peace keepers or are they waiting for a neighbour to over react to these nasty, sleep reducing provocations at which point the cops will charge the neighbour for breaking some stupid kids nose before he or his buddies kill someone with their drinking and driving?

Apparently terrorism enhanced charges occur with identifiable minorities as victims. Does that mean women only? Muslims only? Senior citizens of both genders? Our authorities to date are going after the U. of Waterloo slasher but not even laying charges yet on the kids here in Elmira at least until after they've injured or killed somebody. Wouldn't a tad of prevention be more suitable to citizens paying for police protection?  

FURTHER INDICATIONS OF JUNK & PSUEDO SCIENCE FROM LANXESS & GHD

 In economics there's a saying ..."All other things being equal...". I expect that in pure science subjects there are even stronger sayings which imply that if you are testing a theory that you try to minimize the number of variables so that any changes can be attributed properly to the one factor or item that you are trying to examine. 

I suggest that economics is something like hydrogeology in that it is both an art as well as a science. That said today I'm going to be discussing fish tissue contamination with toxic chemicals. The toxic chemicals include mercury, PCBs, dioxins/furans and DDT compounds. All of these are bioaccumulative hence once ingested they move up the food chain (forage fish) to mink, raccoons, coyotes, hawks, osprey, herons etc. 

Therefore in a scientific manner a so called professional examining fish tissues for chemical contamination should do one fish species at a time, at the same location, using the same tissues (eg. liver/lean tissue/fatty tissue etc.), perhaps even at the same time each season for  one to be able to confidently suggest that toxin concentrations are rising or falling over the years.  

Also while wild fish can not likely literally have the exact same fish tested year after year in a wild habitat, at the very least fish of a similar age and size should be used consistently. This is because older and bigger (& fatter) fish tend to accumulate these particular toxins in their fatty tissues. Therefore again one should reduce the number of variables as much as possible when allegedly comparing fish accumulations of toxins over time. 

Therefore I have to ask what the hell GHD are doing with their forage fish toxin testing by mixing and matching fish species throughout. Bluntnose minnows, creek chub, common shiners, Blacknose Dace and Fathead minnows are all thrown into the mix in their 2020 Forage Fish testing. If there somehow is little or no metabolic difference in their rates of accumulation of toxins then readers of the report need to be explicitly informed and are not. 

There is also one other concern for me and that is location. Presumably each fish is caught in the specific location claimed whether upstream, downstream or even on the Uniroyal/Lanxess property. The problem of course is that fish are not immobile. Maybe these forage fish are ALL known to hang out their entire lives close to home (say a couple of hundred metres one way or the other???). Again if that is so perhaps readers should be so informed and not that I don't trust the lying buggers but a technical citation or reference would also be nice.

I see and smell way too many opportunities for gamesmanship for dishonest groups to do their self-serving thing. 

BOTH COMMUNICATIONS & JUNK SCIENCE CLARIFICATIONS

 The communications clarification between Woolwich Township and CPAC (Citizens Public Advisory Committee) is the simplest. It turns out that the Woolwich employee in charge of setting up the meeting is on vacation. Neither she nor anyone else advised the Chair of CPAC about that impending absence ahead of time leaving the CPAC Chair wondering why she was ghosting him.

Way back in the 1990s the Region of Waterloo's consultants, CH2MHILL, advised that during the DNAPL investigations that Conestoga Rovers (CRA), on behalf of Uniroyal Chemical were taking soil samples from inappropriate locations while they were allegedly searching for DNAPL (Dense Non Aqueous Phase Liquids) in the subsurface.  As DNAPL have densities greater than 1 they tend to slowly sink through soil pore spaces  and as well through water saturated soils. Hence CRA should have been looking for DNAPLS on top of dense, clay and silt aquitards rather than in the middle of highly porous aquifers.

Now the chickens come home to roost with the lack of strong and serious debate about two more favourite tricks of dishonest, dirty polluters. These occurred both during some of the Canagagigue Creek soil and sediment investigations as well as during fish tissue sampling also looking for dioxins, DDT, mercury, PCBs and more. The first was courtesy of CRA/GHD and the second courtesy of the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MECP). Nice when the regulator itself is so firmly in bed with the polluter. 

Core sampling of the bottom of a creek or river is the way to take sediment samples. The core sampler is a metal tube which is pushed downwards through the sediments on the bottom of the waterway. Now of course all GHD have to do is go out and look for parts of the Creek that are "armoured" as in they have a stony bottom versus softer sediments. Then GHD whine that the core samplers won't penetrate the "armour" so they have to use shovels instead. Then of course the fine sediments flow off the shovel as the shovel is lifted up through the water column. These fine sediments are where the majority of the toxic chemicals are bonded to rather than to the stones and rocks.

Another bit of gamesmanship is for the MECP to take fish tissue samples from the least likely areas of the fish to accumulate toxins. That would be lean dorsal fillets versus from fatty areas of the fish. Even internal organs such as the liver would greatly enhance the concentration readings of DDT, dioxins, PCBs, mercury etc. With Tissue Residue Guidelines (TRG) having a hard number, just like the sediment sampling gamesmanship, here the MECP can further assist their corporate clients against both citizens and wildlife trying to survive in and around the Creek.

How many more lies, deceptions and manipulations that we don't know about have been used to minimize the numerical extent of pollution in the Canagagigue Creek as well as the Elmira Aquifers ?

O.K. I LEFT SOMETHING OUT YESTERDAY!

 I mentioned here yesterday that at least two items needed to be discussed and clarified at the CPAC/Woolwich Council meeting. They are the Upper Aquifer Containment & Treatments System (UACTS) and secondly the gross failure to achieve drinking water standards in the Elmira Aquifers by 2028. That failure, first identified as early as June 2012 by CPAC and endorsed by Woolwich Council, has since been admitted to by all parties, particularly the guilty ones.   

The third item that needs discussion is the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm. That has been ignored and minimized by the guilty parties, since my discovery of it in May 2014, to the complete shame of Chemtura, Lanxess and the MECP.  Since that date both dioxins and I believe DDD have been found in the sediments of the Drain when Lanxess/GHD bravely (?) decided to lift just the corner of the lid and take a little peek. There is a fourth matter which should also be raised at that meeting.  That of course is the Canagagigue Creek so called "investigations". Just more junk science and manipulation of the facts and the data, again minimizing the extent of the massive contamination of the Creek with dioxins, furans, DDT compounds, mercury , PCBs and PAHs.

Woolwich Township (Rae Ann Bauman) have gone silent. She is not returning Dr. Dan Holt's phone messages which is just bizarre.

IS SCHEDULING A MEETING BETWEEN WOOLWICH COUNCIL & CPAC THE EQUIVALENT OF HERDING CATS?

It sort of seems that way. Now of course part of the problem is exacerbated by Rogers ongoing failures with their Internet and other computer  failures beyond my knowledge or understanding. Then there are the human frailties of CPAC members seemingly too busy with careers and or families to promptly respond to e-mails or phone calls. Finally there is also apparently a problem at the Woolwich Township end with the same thing as their rep has received multiple phone calls and messages from CPAC's Chair Dr. Dan Holt without feeling the need to respond in a timely fashion. There is also the problem of Woolwich Township seemingly unable to understand that a full time, day job does not mean that a CPAC member can attend from either 3:30 pm. to 5:30 pm. nor from 4 pm. to 6 pm. 

I must believe that some good can come from this meeting or I'd have walked by now. The optics and odours are not good. That said I intentionally pushed a few buttons with both councillor Nathan Cadeau and councillor Eric Schwindt. Yes I had thrown in the towel and given up on Nathan until I realized that councillor Schwindt was essentially responding and behaving in the same way and maybe it wasn;t dishonesty, or an agenda of not putting the public interest first. Maybe it was honest confusion and misunderstanding of the facts by those two councillors. The guilty parties responsible for the lack of cleanup to date have been whispering in their ears for the last ten months. I include CAO Dave Brenneman in that group and certainly mayor Shantz although I expect most understand her lack of understanding of the hydrogeological and environmental conditions on and off the Uniroyal/Lanxess site.

There are at least two issues that must be discussed in any review of RAC and TAG. The one is that which I have been trying to do for the last month namely the Upper Aquifer Containment & Treatment System (UACTS) huge pumping reductions and accompanying lack of debate and discussion for many years. The second has to be of course the failure as now recognized and admitted by all to achieve drinking water standards in the Elmira Aquifers by 2028. Public promises were made to CPAC in November 2012 that have not remotely been kept and RAC and TAG have done little or nothing to push Chemtura/Lanxess into compliance with their own promises of greatly increased Municipal Aquifer pumping & treating. Shame on them.

CPAC ARE PLAYING IT STRAIGHT TRYING TO ARRANGE A TWO HOUR GET TOGETHER WITH WOOLWICH COUNCIL

 Did I mention that I don't like Doodle Polls? Where the heck did that name come from? There is a lot regarding the makeup of the meeting that is crappy including some of the attendees from  Woolwich Township. Way too many from the dark side but also some O.K. ones I hope. We had asked for evening meetings to accommodate the CPAC (Citizens Public Advisory Committee) members who work full time. So far we've got no later than 5:30 or 6 pm. as the end time for a two hour meeting. I don't find that terribly accommodating thank you very much Woolwich. 

It seems to me that the dark side including Ramin, MECP (Jason & Lubna), Tiffany, Sandy, David B. have had their way with the new councillors. Having attended in person the most recent public RAC meeting last Thursday it was  beyond disgraceful with only TAG member Sebastian speaking truth to authority. He seriously questioned the premise that the Risk Assessment (HHERA) claims namely that all downstream toxic risks are acceptable. First of all sampling has been biased as in locational sampling biases with the three very convenient roads and bridges downstream getting 95% of all the sampling (soils and sediments). Secondly both the 2017 and 2020 Soil and Sediment Investigations of the Canagagigue Creek were a combination of amateur hour errors (lots of typos & worse) combined with extremely conveniently high Method Detection Limits (MDL) which hide a huge variety of criteria exceedances for Lindane and DDT compounds when the MDL exceeds the criteria, whether soil or sediment. 

1) More than four weeks later and no one from Woolwich Township have been able to provide me with any indication whatsoever that there has been serious debate or discussion at TAG regarding the major reductions in Upper Aquifer pumping and treating.    

2) There are unacceptable risks in the downstream Canagagigue Creek to the benthic community, fish, predators and human beings nearby. TAG need to dig in their heels on this matter and not simply beg Lanxess for a one or two "hotspot" handout.

3) Much more needs to be done to at least get our drinking water aquifers restored long before 2050 or 2060, the new dates being suggested.

A LITTLE MORE QUALITY BULL FROM LANXESS & FELLOW TRAVELLORS AT LAST THURSDAY'S RAC MEETING

 Lanxess may voluntarily do some hot spot removal in the Canagagigue Creek. Oh wow what a non surprise. I've been forecasting for the last two years that Lanxess would eventually make a big deal about being persuaded to do at least a little cleanup in one or two downstream alleged "hotspots". This would get Susan the praise she requires plus would make Lanxess look a little less like cold hearted, lying pieces of garbage. Hence a win-win.

Speaking of voluntary we were told by the Ministry of Environment that the entire study and potential tiny remediation by Lanxess is "voluntary". Go figure. Caveat emptor. Lanxess bought a known grossly contaminated site (albeit with private & public reassurances) and we citizens have been told for decades that "Polluter Pays". Now how exactly do our governments square that circle? Ahh yes THEY LIED TO US! For each and every prohibition and sanction on polluters our governments have made sure that they have a half dozen loopholes. Afterall our governments want votes (& money) from both citizens and corporate polluters and the only way to do that is to LIE LIE LIE !

Sebastian was the only RAC attendee who spoke from the heart and from his brain. Everyone else spoke from their wallet and from career aspirations. Sebastian pressed about so called "acceptable risks". He also determined that the responsible party to the pollution was not obliged to clean it up. Or at least that's what he was told. Very nice if you're a dirty polluter.

There was mention of the Review of the Terms of Reference for RAC & TAG. Generally speaking what a joke. The guilty parties have spent nearly a year lying to the new councillors about how much progress they've made and minimizing the failures in groundwater, soils , sediments and even in toxic chemicals in the fish in the Creek.. Both Sandy Shantz and Nathan Cadeau have publicly stated that there will be no restrictions on CPAC's discussions (if they go forward) with Woolwich Council. We will see.