END OF YEAR MUSINGS & THOUGHTS

1) You can't write a damn thing whether opinion or fact without offending someone.

Just over twenty-one years have passed since we found our drinking wells were contaminated. For years I've believed that the first major and significant error in judgement by Elmira citizens (specifically APTE of which I was a member at the time) was the refusal by the APTE coordinators to take a stand, any stand on the M.O.E.'s Dec. 10/93 letter essentially accepting Conestoga Rovers (CRA) latest DNAPL report. I was both right and wrong. This was a huge error , which I knew in my gut to be huge but I failed to convince the coordinators over the counter position of Sylvia Berg, vice-president of APTE. When I say I was wrong in fact it was the second major error. The first was much less dramatic, more of a whimper than a bang. This was the failure of Elmira citizens including myself to go to the wall on the M.O.E.'s reversal regarding deep monitoring wells at Varnicolor Chemical. Hindsight being 20/20 I now realize this was done by the M.O.E. in order to deflect and avoid further evidence that there could be multiple sources of contamination to the Elmira drinking water aquifer, exactly as Uniroyal/Chemtura claimed.

These two failures have both haunted and doomed the cleanup ever since. In my gut I do not believe that the M.O.E. had the courage in the very early 90's to unilaterally defy APT Environment. We had them on the ropes, credibility wise especially with the ongoing revelations of both incompetence and corruption surrounding Varnicolor Chemical. Yet we let it all slip away. How did this happen? Personally I believe that the M.O.E. sucessfully found two APTE members who were willing to deal with them privately as long ago as late 91 or early 1992. Since that time I have found private dealings with the M.O.E., outside of the public CPAC meetings by a different pair, who would both negotiate and finalize environmental positions and then sell them to the rest of CPAC. Or not. The three issues that mysteriously fell from the table are a) hydraulic containment in all aquifers b) removal of DNAPL as a contaminant source c) full aerial and VERTICAL investigation of the Varnicolor Chemical property.

Regardless of the motivations, good , bad or indifferent; regardless of the quality of the deal, good , bad or indifferent any and all of these "deals', written or verbal are bogus and non binding. No decisions whether unilateral or bilateral are binding on either all of APTE or most certainly on the citizens of Elmira. I challenge anyone , anywhere to produce any written agreement between the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (M.O.E.) and either APTE as a whole, Woolwich Council or any other representatives of our citizens which pertains to the alleged "cleanup" of the Elmira Aquifer.