YES WE HAVE BEEN SOLD A BILL OF GOODS IN ELMIRA

The basic premise has been that hydraulic containment known as Pump and Treat can clean up Elmira's groundwater to drinking water standards. This idea has been promoted by Conestoga Rovers (CRA), Chemtura, Wilf Ruland (hydrogeologist) and former CPAC member, Ron Ormson. It has been accepted by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (M.O.E.) and most of the rest of the former CPAC members. That the former members accepted it privately (unlike Ron Ormson) and were unwilling to discuss or debate it publicly is to their everlasting shame.

One of the methods that CRA/Chemtura have used to promote hydraulic containment is by never ending psuedo "investigations" of source areas. Multi year, on going private DNAPL sub-committees have assisted them by white washing the truth. CRA have taken their own data, based on accepted criteria, showing easily accessible free phase DNAPL in the subsurface, and then concluded otherwise or they have minimized it's relevance.

On line research indicates that the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) concluded in both 1989 and 1992 that hydraulic containment was not a sucessful strategy to remediate most contaminated sites. The NRC (National Research Council) in 1994 published a landmark study "Alternatives for Groundwater Cleanup". It also concluded that hydraulic containment rarely was capable of remediating groundwater contamination to drinking water standards, especially when source areas were left unresolved. DNAPL experts Dr. John Cherry and Dr. Beth Parker, then of the University of Waterloo, at a meeting in January 2007 with myself, Wilf Ruland, the CPAC Chair and one other CPAC member, made it very clear that leaving DNAPL source areas unremediated in the subsurface was not the way to go. The DNAPL absolutely had to be either removed or chemically destroyed. There are numerous other scholarly studies and articles on-line which indicate the state of the art understanding that hydraulic containment at best only does what it's name implies which is "contain" the contamination. Actual permanent destruction or removal does not occur in any remotely feasible time frame. The alleged treatment is strictly of the tiny amounts of the contaminants which have dissolved into the groundwater. This excrutiatingly slow dissolution literally goes on for centuries.

Throughout the past twenty years plus, CRA/Chemtura have relied on the M.O.E.'s tacit cooperation at public Chemtura Public Advisory Committee meetings. Thay have also counted on having held captive this public consultation committee. Even in the unlikely scenario that CPAC were honestly uninformed, their coverup of the truth after January 2007 was disgraceful and reprehensible.