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.        

THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR WOOLWICH TOWNSHIP TO IMPROVE ENVIRONMENTALLY

 

At least three things have to occur. First we need to get rid of our current Mayor. YES  that is occurring! Second whoever becomes our new mayor (Schwindt or Burgess) has to have an open mind and look carefully at the failures of the last thirty-seven years. Thirdly preferably either get rid of the CAO or at the very least stop taking his advice as always in the best interests of Woolwich Township residents and taxpayers.

O.K. there are four or five items that need attention. Our new Mayor needs to look carefully at what we the residents of Elmira and Woolwich Township were promised at the start of the recognized Elmira Water Crisis. Our drinking water aquifers would be fully restored by 2028 AND the sewer known as the Canagagigue Creek would also be cleaned up. The reality is that our groundwater is still toxic as is the Canagagigue Creek despite improvements in its' odour and appearance. Five miles (7.5 km) of Creek whose sediments and creekbank soils are filled with Dioxins, DDT, PCBs, mercury and PAHs is an offence to nature as well as the farmers and residents living along the downstream Creek.

Number five is even easier. CAO Brenneman, Shantz and Council have surrounded themselves with one side of the pollution crisis. That is the side of all the guilty parties. That is Lanxess Canada, their client driven consultants (GHD), the Ont. Min. of Environment (MECP), and an alleged "citizens" committee (TRAC) made up of deferential, out of their depth but totally acceptable to Lanxess and the MECP, folks who merely maintain the status quo. The status quo does not and has not worked! Woolwich's current trajectory will guarantee both non cleanup of our aquifers and Creek as well as Woolwich Township ending up in history as the biggest, backwards, rural hick Township in Ontario willingly run in circles for decades by Uniroyal Chemical and successors. 

Number five above requires an immense change. Why do you think that there was so very little input from the groundwater experts at the University of Waterloo over the last 37 years? Uniroyal and fellow travellors did not want them involved! A number of those very well known hydrogeologists (eg. Cherry & Parker) have moved to the University of Guelph where they continue their groundbreaking research. Dr. Richard Jackson, if we are lucky, still lives nearby in Heidelberg. He was an amazing breath of fresh air as the first TAG Chair who resigned suddenly likely due to what he referred to as public policy failures. Wrap your minds around that if you will. Finally there is the one loud and noisy local citizen and resident who has been yelling into the silence since Sandy's coup in 2015 (i.e. moi). There are still some CPAC (Citizens Public Advisory Committee) members who may be available but only if they see real change versus cosmetic change. Woolwich this is likely your last opportunity to reverse course and MAYBE actually improve the environment. What are needed are honest, unbiased environmental experts combined with hardnosed citizens backing them versus self-serving, client driven toadies, sycophants, fellow travellors and cooptees. 

DAVID SUZUKI SAYS THAT CANADA'S GOVERNMENT IS DRIVING US "INTO A DITCH"

WOOLWICH TWN., WATERLOO REGION & ONTARIO GOVERNMENT HAVE SABOTAGED THE BRAKES AND STEERING, ENSURING THE CRASH

Our federal government is currently Liberal and our provincial government is currently Conservative. Neither one is doing a thing to seriously address Climate Change other than giving lip service to it. Lip service is but one half a step better than the right wing idiot south of the border who calls Climate Change a hoax despite world wide scientific positions otherwise. David Suzuki was interviewed with The Canadian Press and the published article is on the front page of today's Waterloo Region Record as well as on page A2. The title of the article is "Climate policy driving Canada" into a ditch", says David Suzuki". 

 Mr. Suzuki states that when looking at our political, legal and economic systems we can see that the planet we live on has been left out and ignored. The main system driving us and the world to destruction is the economic system. Politicians pretend that they are doing us all a favour by always putting the economy first when in fact what they are always doing is ensuring that the already well off and entitled remain that way generally at the expense of the rest of us. The well off and entitled are putting money into the political system at all levels and they expect favourable treatment as a result. Do you really think that developers, builders, industrialists really give a hoot about the homeless, the unemployed and those living in poverty? All they care for is a compliant, non union, low wage work force willing to do what they are told. Mass immigration in this country has never been about humanitarianism and helping the already overpopulated areas of the world. It's been about labour supply and demand and employers wanting a large pool of unemployed labour to assist in keeping unionism rates low and wages down.

Here in Elmira/Woolwich Township it is absolutely breathtaking how even anti social, dirty, stinking and polluting local industries are treated as saviours. Whether it is the former Breslube (Safety-Kleen) infamous for their stench and responsible for the shutting of the downstream drinking wells along the Grand River in Breslau (particularly K70, K71) or Varnicolor Chemical and Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira responsible for foul, toxic air and ruined drinking water aquifers; they are all treated by our municipal and regional politicians as the bastions of our society. This behaviour especially by our regional government has kept criticism of our rapidly diminishing groundwater quality by literally dozens of manufacturers over the last 100 years to a bare minimum. They never want to publicly criticize even the very worst polluters of which there are many in Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo.    

ZERO GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY/ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE EXTREME

 

While I have discussed a variety of environmental and political issues here since last December; three issues have been predominate for which no apology is required based upon their significance. FIRSTLY as has been obvious literally since May 2010 when I started this Blog I have spoken to the Elmira Water Crisis from day one. SECONDLY since last December I have also focused upon the Region of Waterloo Water Crisis which I commend the K-W Record for following in detail for weeks and months after December 2025. Unfortunately despite their own research and hard work it was absolutely amazing to me as to how they dropped the issue like a hot potato literally five minutes after the Region of Waterloo self declared their victory over the water shortage. This despite my sending them (and many others) detailed and specific information as to which wells, which wellfields, dates and locations thereof as well as naming specific contaminants in those wells including the industrial sources they came from. THIRDLY  I have discussed the incredible chutzpah, arrogance and blatant contempt of citizens, residents and taxpayers by the Region of Waterloo and Wilmot Council regarding the mostly secret land acquisition of 770 acres allegedly for some out of this world, beneficial to all, industrial megagiant who is too shy to reveal their name. Please feel free to lie to us, steal our money, farmland, drinking water but peeing in our faces is too much. I am about to advise you the readers and public as to whom out of approximately 60 recipients of my close to daily Blog /e-mails have responded, commented, denied or agreed with my Blog postings.  The following groups are the near daily recipients with the number in brackets indicating how many individual recipients for each group. These have gone to the Ont. Min. of Environment (4),  a very few to Mike Harris M.P.P., Woolwich Council (6), Waterloo Region Council (16), TRAC (8), Lanxess Canada (2), GHD (1),  GREN (4),  Green Party (1), Susan Koswan, K-W Record (5), Woolwich Observer (3), CTV (1) and CPAC (9). The last one, the Citizens Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) has been the only one to comment/respond since last December. 

Please note the various government bodies municipal, regional and provincial who have NEVER so much as asked for clarification, discussion or even a meeting. I include TRAC as a government body because they are not in charge of their own Agenda, membership etc. as they are a committee of Woolwich Council totally controlled by them. While disgusted by the three tiers of government blindness and deafness I also am appalled by our local media's seeming willingness to be good little boys and girls and not rock either the government or corporate boat.  

P.S. It took decades of lying, disrespect and contempt by the polluter, regulator (MECP) and other government bodies to hone me into the chiseled, acerbic and disrespectful to authority individual I am today.