THE BEST DECISION I EVER MADE WAS RESIGNING FROM APTE IN JANUARY 1994

 

It was also the most difficult and it was literally on  a moment's notice. I loved being a member of APT Environment. I loved both the technical reports and data that I was reading, absorbing and questioning as well as the social events they held. My wife and children were also strongly welcomed by the APTE membership and this made the decision to resign in protest on the spot excruciatingly difficult and painful. Of course the contemptible and dishonest behaviour of Sylvia Berg in hindsight was intended to produce that result. Undoubtedly she received at the minimum a Christmas card full of Xs and Os (love & kisses) from David Ash and Uniroyal Chemical. I have over the decades tended to minimize my personal negative impact on the credibility of Conestoga Rovers (CRA), Uniroyal, M.O.E. and other dishonest parties. According to Wilf Ruland (hydrogeologist & good friend of Susan Bryant) I was a quick study and absorbed more hydrogeological knowledge than any other layperson he had met. This was a direct threat to the now proven substandard and cheapest remediation method focusing on hydraulic containment or pump & treat technology. Oddly enough in the early days it was Susan Bryant of APTE who referred to pump & treat as "pump & dump". 

Susan and husband were in India in the fall of 1993. Sylvia, Glenys McMullen and I worked on responding to Conestoga Rovers latest DNAPL report. It was essentially nonsensical in light of the various professionally accepted technical criteria that had been presented such as soil and groundwater concentrations of DNAPL components. I did most of the technical stuff with Glenys and Sylvia editing and discussing specifics with me about our response. In hindsight I was much too naive and trusting and should have been forewarned when Sylvia insisted that my name alone be put on APTE's response. I later concluded she already knew that APTE would not publicly be challenging CRA's report or the December 10/93 M.O.E. (Min. of Environment) report accepting CRA's perverted conclusions in their latest DNAPL report. 

The "on the spot" resignation was due to Rich Clausi resigning after APTE coordinaters accepted Sylvia's DNAPL position that it just wasn't that big of a deal to protest and Sylvia then announced she could no longer work with me on the UPAC committee hence I was off it. Richard's resignation was a surprise but then he was fully up to date on the DNAPL specifics, the APTE co-ordinaters were not and the vote became essentially a popularity contest. Sylvia just like Susan Bryant publicly was strongly against Uniroyal Chemical at that point plus she had been with APTE longer than I.   

DNAPLS were and are the defining problem both on and off the Uniroyal Chemical site. I knew they were a big deal in the early 1990s as I'd read not only CRA and Morrison-Beatty reports on them but also gone to the University of Waterloo main library and read other professional reports describing the long term pollution issues they caused. That said, in hindsight, they have proven to be an even larger problem locally than I could have imagined. They are why chlorobenzene which if as we were falsely advised by Uniroyal and consultants were fully dissolved and no longer existed in the free phase (i.e. non-aqueous) form would have been easily reduced below drinking water standards both by pump & treat as well as by natural attenuation (sub-surface bacteria (bio-remediation)). This has not occurred and they have focused on NDMA's low drinking water standard of .009 parts per billion as the problem when they can't even get chlorobenzene down to its' drinking water standard of 80 parts per billion.

Personally I hated resigning but I knew the truth was obvious and was shocked at Sylvia's behaviour and attitude. She and her drinking buddy (coke / pepsi ?) Glenys totally reneged on their position and attitudes as shown in our joint DNAPL response under the APTE headline albeit only with my name on  the bottom. At one point I even wondered if their choice of refreshments affected their thinking/decision making. In hindsight it was only a small part of their motivation.

   

THE DIFFICULTY IN KNOWING WHO TO VOTE FOR ON OCTOBER 26/26

 

Past municipal elections I know who was good and who was bad. Who was naughty and who was nice. Who was straightforward and who was scheming and manipulative. This election for me is different because four of the current six councillors are just completing only their first terms in office. Bonnie Bryant is completing her second term as a councillor and generally speaking I'm not even sure about her. I am thrilled that our mayor Shantz is hanging up her hat and pray that she is not a good old Conservative that our Premier will anoint as the new appointed Regional Chair. That would simply be extending our environmental disaster with our groundwater and Creek ("Gig") further onto the regional stage. 

My problem is that I do not know how culpable all the councillors are with Woolwich's head in the sand, let's trust the good folks who have lied and deceived us for decades, and hold steady environmentally. Nathan Cadeau long ago exposed his biases. He got in good with mayor Sandy by accepting the Chair's position on TRAC from a position of total and complete ignorance.  I expect that when she asked for a Council volunteer everybody else wisely leapt backwards leaving Nathan front and centre. All council members were approached by CPAC (Citizens Public Advisory Committee) members very early in their start on Council and basically were ignored in the final decisions around TRAC. How much of that was the experienced mayor laying down the law I do not know. 

One proviso I have is that any council member or candidate being backed by local, powerful interests is likely no friend of the public interest. The local, powerful interests have been behind both good and bad developments in our community and their adherents would include Bill Strauss, Sandy Shantz, Mark Bauman, Pat Mclean, Bob Waters etc. If you know of any connections between them and current candidates than my recommendation is do not vote for them.

It is my understanding that Kayla Grant is not running again and if I'm wrong about that then apologies to her. Overall I have no criticisms of her efforts as a councillor.  Schwindt and Burgess also other than following suit with Sandy Shantz's willingness to support a false narrative being sold to Woolwich citizens and residents about both the overall regional water supply and about the failed "cleanup" of our groundwater and Creek, are neither in my bad books. Who is best for the public interest I honestly don't know but that is because I really don't know their backgrounds that well. 

Shantz is also no loss to a generally bad regional Council. She did nothing on the Police Board and mostly nothing for Woolwich as well. That is her legacy. One decision I applaud and that was putting the health/warning signs along the Canagagigue Creek. Other than that, good riddance. She served her local masters well, not the public.

THANK YOU LUISA D"AMATO - IT'S LIKE THE GOOD OLD DAYS AS YOU CRAP ALL OVER THE SCHOOL BOARD(S)

 

For many years I enjoyed reading Luisa D'Amato's public whipping particularly of our public Board, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB). Today's Opinion piece by Luisa titled "Waterloo Region's school board races are... wild" hammers the Catholic Board as well so kudos to Luisa for being fair. Personally I believe that over the decades the Catholic Board generally has demonstrated more honesty, sincerity and Christian behaviour than the WRDSB by far.

 Over the decades far too many stupid and perverse wanna be politicians have used the public school board as nothing more than a stepping stone into "higher" politics. We need look no further than our very own, thank God she's gone, ,mayor Sandy Shantz. Not only was she elected trustee but she extremely shortly became the Board Chair (Board as in Board of Trustees). She did nothing remarkable other than do as she was told and not make waves. At the time and despite Luisa D'Amato's fine reporting the Trustees still had some public presence and respect making the jump to municipal politics easy. It was also helpful for Sandy that Elmira was a hockey town hence her support for two ice surfaces versus Pat Mclean's support for but one got Sandy into a councillor's chair. Then after a four year hiatus for personal reasons she had a slam dunk for the Mayor's position as then mayor Todd Cowan self-destructed due to a combination of arrogance and dishonesty.   

Perhaps after the public exposure of the school board as nothing more than proxy political left versus right ideological spats mostly irrelevant to children and public education; their usefulness as political springboards to higher office will be reduced. Of course the problem is that the local powers behind picking candidates whether for Trustee positions or Councillor positions never rests. They are always looking ahead for candidates who want to advance and are willing to go along to get along. When three quarters of the candidates running are in it for the wrong motives then democracy has already been defeated before the first vote is cast.  

CAN WE EMULATE OUR SOUTHERN BROTHERS VARIOUS WARS ON (COMMUNISM, DRUGS, CRIME, QUEERS, DEVIANTS, NON REPUBLICANS/CONSERVATIVES, IMMIGRANTS, TRUMP OPPONENTS) ?

 

Maybe a better question is "Do we want to emulate our southern brothers various wars...?" My hope is that Canadians are a little too smart for that. However how about a war on contaminated drinking water? Really why not? In one sense speaking highly optimistically maybe we already have started. Is it conceivable that all the bad old days of mass industrial dumping on their own property has ended? Are the Varnicolor Chemical, Uniroyal Chemical, Breslube, Northstar Aerospace, Canadian General Tower, Ciba-Geigy, IMICO, Sunar, Canbar, Borg, Nutrite, Kaufman, Budd, tanneries, textile mills, steel producers all in the rearview mirror? That is the first step. The Ontario MECP needs to be replaced with honest, dedicated and intelligent people both on the ground doing inspections as well as at the top. Real, unscheduled industrial inspections with full cooperation legally mandated must begin if it hasn't already.

The most egregious, blatant and toxic sites must be contained and if possible remediated. This can not be done by proven client driven, friendly to industry consulting companies paid for by the owners of contaminated sites whether active or abandoned. These sites can not wait a day longer. Municipalities can no longer be allowed to let these sites sit until a developer comes along who does a cost benefit analysis and determines that a superficial, quick "cleanup" can still allow him to make millions of dollars profit by redeveloping the property.

End of the pipe solutions are not wrong or nefarious. Yes water treatment is necessary whether to remove bacteria and viruses or gasoline components from service stations and trichloroethylene (TCE) from local Waterloo Region manufacturers. They however must not replace front of the pipe solutions. Source removal methods have improved and whether paid for up front by the guilty polluters or by governments with serious financial collection efforts afterwards, long term cleanups must be a significant part of the process.

Ministry of Labour inspectors are about as credible as MOE/MECP inspectors particularly in non-union companies. There are safety committees mandated by law for both union and non-union shops however there are very few non-union shops so stupid as to put on a former employees Record of Employment that they were fired for skin colour, religion, political attitude, gender, safety concerns or ENVIRONMENTAL concerns. I believe that all industrial employers including non-union must be mandated to have a real, functioning, informed Environmental Committee and that they must not be handpicked company loyalists on the committee. This too would require an overhaul of Ministry of Labour staff who have been conditioned to be non confrontational and oblivious to obvious problems. To those who believe that employers have an unconditional right to do what they want on their own property let me say the obvious. Do they have a right to release toxins to the air to be inhaled by their meighbours? Do they have a right to dump solvents on their property that end up in aquifers below them that supply drinking water to the community? Obviously no such rights exist other than when already existing laws are ignored and not enforced.

This is just the start for a war on contaminated water. Otherwise we will continue down the current path whereby our authorities continually, falsely assure us that our water is safe when in fact it is deteriorating year after year as long ago contamination continues to dissolve and spread while we pump more and more for our expanding populations.    

 

I'VE SOLVED WATERLOO REGION'S WATER CRISIS : IT'S MEAN & CRUEL HENCE I EXPECT THEY'VE ALREADY THOUGHT OF IT

 

Yesterday's K-W Record had an article by Bill Jackson titled "Development backlog cleared in Waterloo Region". I would describe it as a puffpiece designed to get the Record back in Waterloo Region's good graces after all the Record articles this past winter and spring truthfully describing and criticizing the Region's water management. Unsurprisingly the tail of the dog, Joseph Puopolo of Urban Initiatives is praising the reopening of business as usual for builders and developers in Waterloo Region. It is normal in this Region, just like in this Township (Woolwich), for the biggest beneficiaries of government expenditures to run the show. In fact here in Woolwich Township we even have the guiltiest parties (Uniroyal/Lanxess and the MECP) running large remediation efforts of which their incompetence and negligence has been the major cause.

Now regarding builders and developers it would be a major stretch to blame them for the state of our water systems. Yes they have always demanded more and better but mostly under the guise of reducing the housing crunch via higher numbers of new homes being built. The fact that the bulk of those new homes are grossly overpriced enriching everybody along the line including those buyers who are themselves making profits by flipping those homes and artificially increasing the demand. The general public are getting frozen out of home ownership. 

It has been mostly our soulless, degenerate industrialists and manufacturers who have profited here in the last one hundred years by cheerfully dumping their toxic wastes wherever they bloody wanted to primarily at little to zero cost to themselves. They have externalized those environmental costs onto the general public, the old, the young and those in vulnerable health. They have also externalized the health costs onto wildlife and the overall environment, Government oversight by the M.O.E. or MECP has been a joke at best and that's been intentional. Governments and political parties like financial support especially around election times and it's their biggest beneficiaries who give the most. I describe them as semi legal bribes. 

This spring and summer I have written here about all the industrially contaminated wells and wellfields throughout Waterloo Region. Most of these firms have walked without ever paying their fair share. Probably they figured their government "bribes" were less expensive than proper disposal costs. 

Now for my "mean and cruel" water solution. Put the new arrivals from now on in designated second class water areas. Tell them ahead of time that if they want to live here that's how it's going to be. Older residents get the best, most expensively treated water and new ones get the less treated, more contaminated water. That way we should have lots of room for growth while slowly developing an obvious group of second class citizens who might just spark the overdue political revolution needed in this Region and country.  

PRETTY REMEDIATION NAMES DO NOT CLEAN AQUIFERS - SOURCE REMOVAL DOES

 

Bioremediation. Enhanced Bioremediation. Bioremediation with Amendments. Enhanced Bioremediation with Amendments.  Super Duper Technically Advanced Bioremediation Endorsed by Ramin Ansari, Dr. David Ash , Steve Quigley, Allan Deal, Lou Almeida plus one hundred totally groundwater ignorant Lanxess employees. There I singlehandedly have cleaned the Elmira Aquifers by the power of words. No more need to spend time, money and human effort.

Cullen Flanders of Onterris  would have us believe that chlorobenzene can be removed from groundwater via Bioremediation. Hmm. So does the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) . How strange a million years ago (it seems that long) there were discussions about using a company by the name of Grace Dearborn to spread contaminated soils on the east side surface of Uniroyal Chemical to bacterially break down the contaminants. My understanding is that this would be referred to as ex-situ Bioremediation or out of the ground Bioremediation. Cullen Flanders is suggesting in-situ Bioremediation or if you will ...in place or on site Bioremediation. UPAC was told that the ex-situ Bioremediation was unacceptable for three reasons. One it would likely stink to high heaven and two it would take far too long to break down the very difficult chlorinated solvents that were highly resistant to bacteria. Thirdly and this also speaks to timing is the fact that bacteria at the surface won't be active during cold winter months (say five months per year). 

Perhaps Cullen Flanders has a wonderful product that operates on a similar principle to skyhooks. The issue is that Bioremediation works for dissolved chlorobenzene and not NDMA or likely another hundred different contaminants beneath both the Lanxess site and other parts of Elmira. Anyone ever heard of Bioremediation working on DDT, dioxins or PCBs?  Me neither which is why those compounds and many others are referred to as POPs or PERSISTENT Organic Pollutants. Secondly if chlorobenzene can be degraded by bacteria both in shallow aerobic soils and in deeper anaerobic soils then why after literally decades in our aquifers and soils is it still there? That's because as the dissolved chlorobenzene degrades in the aquifers it is replaced by slowly dissolving chlorobenzene both on and off site by either free phase or residual DNAPL both of which have been proven to be on the Lanxess site as well as off their site underneath Elmira.

That is the nature of DNAPLS which was totally ignored by all parties including APTE in January 1994 when Rich Clausi, myself and Esther Thur (one of the three APTE founders) resigned and walked out of APTE. At the time I thought APTE leadership were merely in error when in fact it was much worse. Now decades later Woolwich Township's naive and deferential TRAC committee are holding their breaths, crossing their fingers and wishing on a star that Cullen Flanders and Onterris will be the magic cleanup bullet. If this plan was introduced by a company not being paid by Lanxess or supervised by GHD and the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MECP), it might have a smidgen of credibility. Otherwise anything introduced and endorsed by those three dishonest, manipulative and corrupt (mostly MECP) groups isn't worth squat. They and their predecessors have utterly failed and utterly lied to us the public for the last thirty-seven years. How stupid do we have to be to keep believing their shi* ?    

AI JUST LIKE CLIENT DRIVEN CONSULTANTS CAN BE DANGEROUS

 

I do not believe that 100% of consultants are disreputable, client driven liars. It would seem reasonable however to suspect that consultants working long term for proven, lying polluters may very well be so. I have a ton of respect for many credentialed professionals including Dr. Richard Jackson, Dr. Henry Regier and with much less exposure to him, Dr. Neil Thompson of the University of Waterloo. Included in my high respect list of course is both Dr. Beth Parker and Dr. John Cherry. I am well aware of some of the excellent hydrogeological work they have done in particular regarding DNAPLS.

  AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be a very helpful tool just as an encyclopedia or other published reports and data lists are. AI however does not attend meetings directly nor listen to human voices generally speaking. I do not know whether AI even has access to on-line audio/video recordings of meetings such as those of Woolwich Township's well behaved and always polite TRAC committee. The old joke/saying is that they would not say shi* if their mouth was full of it and while I commend their members for their restraint I also advise that restraint of that magnitude simply breeds arrogance and disrespect when dealing with unethical, dishonest persons and groups.

AI also can be manipulated by those very same unethical and dishonest persons and groups. AI is not the repository of all knowledge. Hence if an unethical person does not like AI's answer to a question they can respond with inaccurate, alleged facts in an attempt to sway AI's answers which is entirely possible. Also AI appears quite capable of accepting blatantly illogical and scientifically inaccurate information and repeating it just because the majority of people accept it. This includes character profiles based upon the inaccurate, published profiles of others. For example if the only published data about a former Prime Minister is positive than AI will give him/her a glowing report. Think of Sir John A. McDonald as a founder of Canada and then as a founder of the brutal, residential school systems. Two different pictures arrive.

I recently schooled AI about their mistaken interpretation of chlorobenzene concentrations off the former Uniroyal Chemical site. Their sources included shabby DNAPL reports done by CRA as well as recent pronouncements by GHD consultants. AI's logic was faulty based upon one sided positions taken by consultants paid for by Lanxess Canada. AI also quoted Dr. Neil Thompson's Conceptual Site Model (CSM) as supporting their interpretation. Now I have a copy of that CSM and my recollection is that it was generally excellent however with a couple of possible errors most likely due to bad information being supplied by Lanxess or GHD. AI's position may have been due to either bad initial information given to Dr. Thompson or it may have simply been GHD misquoting or taking one of Dr. Thompson's statements out of context. In other words AI is just as vulnerable to spreading misinformation as other sources are. Hopefully however AI's mistakes are honest mistakes not malicious, intentional ones.