PRESSURE MOUNTING ON M.O.E. TO FINALLY RESPOND TO "OTHER SOURCES"

Thanks to the new CPAC and member David Marks in particular. Here in the Advocate on Friday July 29/11 I mentioned his request to the MInistry of the Environment for them to present a rationale at the next public CPAC meeting (Aug. 25/11) as to why they dismissed the possibility of other sources of contamination to the Elmira drinking water aquifer over twenty years ago.

At last month's CPAC (Chemtura Public Advisory Committee) meeting Chemtura handed out a report by their consultants CRA titled "Work Plan Groundwater Flow and Contaminant Transport Model Update". What has caught my eye is Table 2.2 "Soil Analytical Results Chemtura Canada". These are soil anaylses done of mostly off-site borings. The two most extraordinary ones are at CH47 and CH44 both on the Nutrite/Yara property. As mentioned in yesterday's Advocate posting, soil samplings have the huge advantage of being much more difficult to fudge source areas than groundwater samples. We all knew that Nutrite/Yara contributed Ammonia and Phosphorus to the drinking water aquifer. This Table however shows massive contamination in the soil of both NDMA AND CHLOROBENZENE! The public release of Nutrite in approximately 1999 as a second source (Ammonia) cracked the door to the truth open. My discovery of off-site DNAPL (Chlorobenzene) by the water tower (OW57-32) two years ago opened it wider. I believe that the Ontario M.O.E. and Chemtura have some serious explaining to do if Nutrite also contributed to the destruction of the Elmira Aquifer with NDMA and Chlorobenzene.

A local commercial excavator (Digger Dave Holmes) reported his findings to the M.O.E. after digging on the Varnicolor site in 1989. About four feet below ground surface, the hole he was digging began filling in with a combination of groundwater and free phase solvents. The odours and visuals were very bad. He first reported this to Varnicolor senior staff who immediately ordered the hole to be backfilled. Not only have we since learned that indeed there were free phase solvents floating on the water table but that the fill above the Municipal Aquifer consisted of pit run in many places. Pit run is very coarse gravel with lots of stones and rocks in it. Basically both solvents and surface water would flow vertically downwards through this fill extraordinarily quickly. One of the Varnicolor hydrogeological reports suggested that the downward vertical migration would be about seven feet per year. This would be through the "aquitard" as through the pit run would be more likely seven feet per day. Varnicolor polluted this site for thirty years.

It is long past due for the Elmira public to be told the truth .