WHY CHANGE IS NECESSARY

During the Municipal election campaign one and only one candidate said the unthinkable. "After twenty years what has CPAC accomplished?" Is the drinking water aquifer restored? Is it close to being potable? Is it as bad or worse than it was twenty years ago? What has been determined and learned, through no credit to CPAC, is that Uniroyal/Chemtura was not/is not the only cause and secondly that due to little or no source removal, while pumping deep aquifers, we have sucessfully managed to spread the contamination vertically down into the Bedrock Aquifer.

2 3/4 years ago, Woolwich Council voted to remove me from CPAC. This they did after hard core lobbying by Ron Ormson, Susan Bryant, Pat McLean and with the assistance of allegedly independent hydrogeologist, Wilf Ruland. Their weak and false claim was that they could not work with me and this was far too readily and easily accepted by the former Council. It was accepted because they wanted me off CPAC due to my increasing pressure and demands for action on the DNAPL issues. For over a year (spring 2008 to summer 2009) I reviewed the Uniroyal/Chemtura file in it's entirety. I did not understand what either CPAC or the Council had done and most importantly why. I did not begin to publicly, both verbally and in writing criticize CPAC as a whole or individual members until after the facts and data began to make sense. These conclusions regarding sweetheart agreements and individual motivations have been written about in the Elmira Advocate as well as in my "delegations" to CPAC since June 2009. Most significantly I behaved as a team player and 100% focused my criticism on Uniroyal/Chemtura and the M.O.E. while sitting as a voting CPAC member from Jan. 2000 until March 2008.

Since that time and after serious reflection and reexamination I have seriously criticized both the lack of action and followup by CPAC as well as the ongoing concessions to Chemtura that they endorse. This is the background to the upcoming new CPAC that both the public and the Ministry of the Environment and Chemtura will see in the New Year.