BAD TIMING FOR WOOLWICH TWN.: WATERLOO REGION STILL IN A WATER CRISIS

 

Maybe just maybe other parts of Waterloo Region may finally take a look at Woolwich Township and learn a thing or two. Lying and dissembling are not the sole prerogative of politicians anywhere. They all participate in targeted truth polishing when the occasion demands. Right now just before a municipal election that includes regional government, the occasion to lie doesn't just demand it; it screams it. Can you imagine the shock, the consternation, the relief and the sheer joy if we threw all the bums out this October?

Waterloo Region claims that the water crisis is passed. Bullfroghooey to say the least. Above and beyond all the contaminated aquifers already listed here over the last few weeks you can add St. Agatha and Wilmot Centre. I'm basing both on the permitted volumes of pumping available versus the tiny amounts of water actually pumped back in the early 2000s. Added to this is the known high concentrations of Nitrates in the Wilmot Centre Wellfield. Seriously folks anybody who thinks that Wilmot Township are going to bail out the rest of Waterloo Region waterwise, are smoking way too much wacky tobaccy. 

Getting back to Woolwich Township mostly what the rest of Waterloo Region should have learned is that talk and puffery are a poor substitute for unbiased science, action and money carefully spent. Right now the rest of Waterloo Region need water from Woolwich Township, not to be continuing to supply them water from shrinking sources. Both the three major cities and the other Townships have a right to know why the promised return to water production in Elmira less than two years away just isn't going to happen and if it does it will require mass introduction of substandard water quality. The other municipal jurisdictions kept their noses out of Woolwich's water woes only on the understanding that the 25 years of Uniroyal/Crompton/Chemtura  and the MOE/MECP promises of full remediation meant something. In hindsight they meant nothing. They were BULLS**T and the Region themselves kept awfully quiet about   the shortcomings in the remediation, public consultation, lack of cleanup on and off site etc. 

Well Woolwich you've made your bed now lie in it. You, the Region and the Province (MECP) certainly know how to lie so get to it. 

THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN: FORMAL FAILURE LOOMS. THANK YOU MAYOR SHANTZ, WOOLWICH COUNCIL, LANXESS, MECP etc. FOR REMOVING ME FROM THE FAST SINKING SHIP IN SEPT. 2015

 

Am I being too generous thanking all the twits, liars, politicians, self-serving bureaucrats and local influencers for effectively isolating my knowledge and input from the problem at hand, namely restoring both our aquifers and our Creek? Of course I am. I wonder how the long departed from active duty APTE members feel these days. They sat back and let Susan Bryant carry the torch with assistance first from Sylvia Berg and later Pat Mclean. Those two ladies were her "wingmen" and they and Susan did their  job well which was to appear to be the voice of the people while constantly greasing the skids for Uniroyal, Crompton, Chemtura, Lanxess and the corrupt Ministry of Environment. 

2028 is the mandated deadline for restoring our drinking water aquifers. While that date is only sixteen months away, of course as the MOE/MECP set it they can and will define it and or redefine it as they please. The master manipulaters have never rested. They know that public perception and opinion can be lost with but one major screwup, fire, explosion or even revelation that contradicts their carefully crafted narrative. Despite all this I would rather be at arm's length distance from the train wreck that is RAC/TAG, and TRAC. I personally want no part of a train wreck that I warned against for decades despite my confidence that those in charge are working very hard for a soft landing. Selling their lies to the public has been easy as long as all authorities were on board. Furthermore the precarious state of the media, particularly newspapers, has made their jobs much easier. The last thing newspapers want to do right now is to alienate corporate Canada or U.S.

Fantastic claims will be made by Lanxess and fellow travellers. The Region of Waterloo will go along depending upon the support they receive in kind from the other parties as the Region's water failures further are exposed. Same with the Ministry of Environment (MECP). Show them some love and they will respond in kind by agreeing with all kinds of corporate nonsense about slowing groundwater pumping to protect the environment to using the water in the Elmira Aquifers for socially positive effects. Maybe with enough treatment and dilution they can add our aquifers to the Region's overall water system, the IUS (Integrated Urban System). Rest assured the polluter, the regulator, the politicians and the media will all join in lockstep to declare victory. I declare this the reverse Richard Nixon as they snatch victory from the very jaws of grotesque failure and defeat.

EVEN MORE DNAPLS FOUND IN WATERLOO REGION DRINKING WATER WELLS

 

This would be the long contaminated Parkway Wellfield located near Fairway Rd. and Manitou Dr. There are three wells there named K31, K32 and K33. Allegedly the DNAPL chemical (TCE) is found in only one of the wells namely K32. That does not make much sense to me as they are all located close together and what is one should certainly be drawn into the others. Further examination has shed some light on this anomaly. In fact TCE (trichloroethylene) has been detected in all three wells however the text in the July 29, 2025 Grand River Source Protection Area  Assessment Report states " Trichloroethylene is generally not detected (< 0.5 ug/l) at wells K31 and K33". In fact it is detected regularly at low levels and occasionally especially in K33 at higher levels. 

Other health problems include sodium and chloride concentrations being too high. While some of this may be due to road salt it is also common for higher chloride levels in solvent contaminated groundwaters especially chlorinated solvent contaminated groundwater. 

TCE (trichloroethylene) is highly toxic. It both kills and causes extreme health effects from neurological symptoms to various cancers including leukemia. This solvent once was commonly used and abused throughout Waterloo Region industries as a degreaser for metal parts. Workers suffered the brunt of the health damages although the Bishop St. community in Cambridge suffered greatly from Northstar Aerospace mishandling of it as well as at least one other company across the road from Northstar.

Waterloo Region advises in this same Grand River Protection Area report that "...the source of the TCE to well K32 is unknown." I believe that that statement is false as my understanding for years is that there was formerly an Electrohome site also known as Deilcraft located nearby. Also oddly I recollect years after the fact a remediation attempt being done to clean up TCE from that industrial site. Obviously they didn't get all the TCE DNAPL which is unsurprising considering how DNAPL can disperse in the subsurface. The proof of course all these decades later is the dissolved TCE still in the groundwater. Take note Elmira with your ongoing chlorobenzene (DNAPL) contamination.

Happy drinking when this contaminated wellfield rejoins its' fellow retreaded wells into the drinking water regimen. Hey folks we have to keep our well healed developers, builders and politicians happy and if it requires personal sacrifice, so be it. 

WHY DO OUR GOVERNMENTS LIE TO US SO CONSTANTLY?

 

There are many reasons. Contempt and disrespect are right up there. Politicians were once ordinary people just generally a little lazier and a little more bent. This of course is a significant generalization as you will find occasional doctors and lawyers sitting in both provincial and federal governments. Both had to have money and ambition presumably along with hard work to get their degrees etc. Of course you will also get golf pros, their sons, drug dealers and all the rest sitting as M.P.s and M.P.P.s. Hence many of the lazy, unprepared for honest work politicians see others just like themselves sitting in legislatures and parliaments as well as on municipal councils and realize that citizens themselves are lazy enough and dumb enough to vote in riff raff. Hard to respect the public based upon the choices they make to represent themselves in government.

The public are occupied with keeping their jobs and hence salaries and wages. Non union work especially requires constant vigilance and watching which way the wind is blowing. More jobs are lost due to personality clashes than to inability to do the job. Citizens know that constantly toeing the line also means in non work matters and opinions that do not match your supervisor's or bosses. Political complacency by the public results from feeling detached from all decisions and having zero say in them. Again expressing strong political opinions at work can eventually lead to your head on the chopping block albeit employers are smart enough to dredge up some kind of pathetic work related excuse prior to dropping the axe. 

Politicians have learned that voters have short memories and long loyalties. Most first time voters follow their parents footsteps. Voters only vote about every four years and in between it's all about keeping their jobs , raising families and if they are fortunate at today's prices, buying homes. Then there are school issues, bills, social lives and so many important, in your face matters on a daily basis.

Politicians do learn on the job. They learn how to lie via using weasel words and phrases that allow them to backtrack when necessary.  Phrases like "when necessary" or "under the circumstances" gives them an out when their statements become ridiculous down the road. Quoting made up statistics that can never be checked such as "Canadians are fearful of gun violence" is a good example to justify whatever stupidity is the flavour of the day. Inventing crises is also a tool for ethically challenged politicians. So is using a legitimate crisis such as Tumblur Ridge in British Columbia. Odd how we learned that a disturbed individual committed firearms murders but we still have no knowledge as to why the authorities had returned those previously seized firearms to the family. Nor do we know if the "guilty" firearms used are on the government's banned list or not. All very strange how we the public are kept in the dark on important matters strongly related to current and ongoing highly criticized government initiatives and activities.     

Politicians are masters at deflecting appropriate criticism. That unfortunately is their greatest strength. 

GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS : YES WE HAVE DNAPLS IN OUR ELMIRA BEDROCK AQUIFER BUT NOT TO WORRY BECAUSE SO DOES WATERLOO AND CAMBRIDGE

Isn't that great! Here we are already having the precedent of long term DNAPLS (TCE) in our drinking water aquifers hence we should be able to live with them up here in Dogpatch (Elmira) just as folks have for many decades in Waterloo and Cambridge. The ones in Waterloo are in the William St. Wellfield located at the corner of Regina St. and William St.. The Cambridge ones are at the very well known and most expensive ground water treatment location in Waterloo Region namely the Middleton Wellfield. This is located at the south end of Cambridge literally beside the Grand River. Despite a local hydrogeological consultant advising me that the source of the TCE there is NOT Canadian General Tower (CGT) perhaps a hundred metres away I am very skeptical. Yes there are dry cleaners also in the vicinity however so maybe they contributed or not.

Other good news is this. TCE or trichloroethylene is much more toxic than the chlorobenzene that we have here in Elmira courtesy of Uniroyal Chemical and maybe others. So if the good folks in Cambridge especially can both breathe TCE in the Bishop St. community and drink a little from their taps and not die immediately then we are looking good! 

The sources in Waterloo may include Canbar and Sunar and even possibly the old Seagram's plant but keep in mind our authorities truly enjoy muddying those waters and not being forthcoming.  The proof of course is the long term and ongoing detections of TCE in those drinking wells over a period of decades. Normally dissolved TCE should have all been pumped out by now but that is the joy and excitement of DNAPLS. They can exist in the subsurface, most especially in fractured Bedrock, sometimes for centuries and only very slowly dissolve into the groundwater and get pumped to surface. Now of course our chlorobenzene has been with us here in Elmira, just like NDMA, for far more than the 36 or 37 years since it was allegedly discovered in November 1989. 

If it is still in our groundwater, even in low concentrations, in ten or twenty more years then I think even the most professional liars are going to be looking for a hole to crawl into. But hey by then the few remaining honest and knowledgeable citizens should be long gone.  Liars are mostly simply buying time for themselves.  

THE APTLY NAMED STRANGE ST. WELLFIELD

 

It's the deception that gets to me. It's the ingenuous choice of wording. It's the never ending gilding of the lily in order to hide ugly truths. That's what I don't like about our regional government. This deception may partially be in order to protect the guilty. It may be in order to protect the names and reputations of so called "captains" of industry and or persons who built factories and provided jobs in Kitchener-Waterloo. However it's also about protecting their own butts. Some of these politicians have been around for decades and they literally have blood on their hands from decisions they've made and decisions they've avoided. 

Anybody remember the Uniroyal Tire plant on Strange St. for decades? How many know the long and toxic list of airborne contaminants that employees there worked in, some for decades? How many know the battles some of those employees fought to get pis* as* compensation from our provincial government's Workman's Compensation Board (WCB) later renamed to something more politically correct?   

Toxins included benzene, toluene, xylenes, chlorinated solvents and a plethora of other petroleum and rubber related toxins. These toxins don't just exist as air borne contaminants. If they leak, if they are mishandled, if they are negligently stored and most especially if they are buried on site they can and do migrate through the subsurface. Hence a nearby wellfield is the perfect way to introduce some of those same toxins that the Uniroyal workers were breathing, into the water supply. Many decades ago some BTEX chemicals (listed above) were found in low concentrations in some of the Strange St. wells. Who was the most likely contributor, Uniroyal or a nearby day care or school?

The initial Strange St. Wellfield consisted of wells K10A, K11, K13. This is an old wellfield. Current wells are named K10A, K11A, K13B, K18 and K19.  We are advised that well K13B is a direct replacement for well K13A completed in 2023. Oddly both K13B and K11A appear on the maps provided in the Grand River Source Protection Area reports as further west than the original wellfield. We are not told that wells K10A, K11 and K13 were still pumping and producing water for consumption until the very early 2000s. K18 and K19 on the other hand did not appear to be contributing to the drinking water supply until 2006 several years later. Also oddly they are located even further away (westwards) from the original wellfield than K11A and K13B.  Now I do have a memory of reading years ago that several of the Strange St. wells had been closed down and replaced with wells either slightly north or mostly west of their original location. 

Nobody apparently wants to point fingers or besmirch corporate heroes hence it seems to me that instead citizens drank contaminated water for years (just like in Elmira) while regional bureaucrats and politicians decided how best not to identify contaminated wells while either relocating them, shutting them down, or "managing" their pumping rates so as to stop pumping as the plumes approach the wells. 

When asked why our cancer rates keep rising I advise that it is the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. As soon as you stop doing that you stop feeding your body carcinogens. 

 

THE LANCASTER ST. WELLFIELD - A HISTORY OF LOW WAGES, HIGH PROFITS AND HIGH ENVIRONMENTAL & HEALTH DAMAGES

 

Many of the longtime nearby residents don't remember the "good old days".  The stench of acrid, acidic fumes leaving the site. The generally modest albeit well built homes nearby on Edwin St., Loiusa St., St. Leger etc. A company called Pannill Veneer operated on the site for decades before it closed down. Prior to Panill Veneer however was the Breithaupt Tannery. Solvents, acids and heavy metals were common and well recognized from the tannery industry. It operated approximately from the 1880s until about 1950 before shutting down. There were other tanneries in Kitchener-Waterloo and they too made a mess and left the mess for others to clean up. These industries like so many others were protected by the politicians that they helped to get elected. These same politicians minimized the negative environmental and health effects of these companies both on employees and residents while they were operating and making money as well as after they cut and ran. This is what politicians do especially if they hope to have the funds to get re-elected.

The very same politicians and their successors allowed all the anti social aspects of these heavy, stinking and loud industries, often situated beside residential areas, without proper safeguards or even reasonable mitigating efforts. Then when they packed up and departed little to no effort was made to hold them accountable to clean up the mess they left behind. These were very unhealthy messes combined with high costs to clean them up. Politicians did what they always do. They lied like dogs and passed the costs on to the public taxpayers as much as possible. The Breithaupt Tannery $ 9 million cleanup was the most expensive in Kitchener's history. It was funded by the City of Kitchener (taxpayers), The Region of Waterloo (taxpayers) and the developer (Queensgate Dev't.) who by the way complained that the Province of Ontario (taxpayers) failed to chip in.  Three levels of taxpayers but all out of the same pockets.

Never any health studies, never any environmental studies until after a developer decided they could make money on the site. Breithaupt Tannery did not just mess up people's health through noise and air emissions. They also contaminated the nearby Lancaster Wellfield which supplied water to Kitchener citizens. How many of them died prematurely and or with compromised health issues while the bast**d politicians and industrialists laughed all the way to the bank? 

The nearby Lancaster Wellfield has been shut down now for a very long time. Do you think they shut it down the day the Tannery closed? Did they shut it down before the toxic contaminants reached the drinking wells? Meanwhile Waterloo Region are recommissioning other shut down, contaminated wells so why not these? Allegedly there has been a major cleanup. Or was it? Regardless if we are so desperate for water the Region can reopen these wells with or without an Environmental Assessment. Just like local industry in Elmira and K-W,  Waterloo Region knows that Environmental Assessments are easy to "fix". Afterall it's politicians who write the legislation, warts and loopholes and all.