KUDOS TO THE NEW CPAC

The new Agenda (Draft for Sept. 29/11) and the Minutes from the last public CPAC meeting of July 28/11 were made available yesterday, one week ahead of the next public CPAC meeting. This is a major improvement over the longstanding practice of the old CPAC, which was to distribute this vital information the Friday afternoon prior to the Monday 9 am. meeting. Well done Chair (& Mayor) Cowan.

The Agenda is clearly marked as Draft Agenda. There are a number of items which should be included on this Agenda. Perhaps over the next week they will be added courtesy of the CPAC members. If they aren't then under Item #3 (Approval of Agenda) on the current Draft Agenda, I will ask the Chair if CPAC would consider additions to the Agenda coming from the floor ie. the public.

These important additions include discussion of the monthly Chemtura Progress Reports. This fairly obvious Agenda item, for the August Progress Report, would then also include the excavation of 125 buried drums (pg. 5) from the south-west corner of Chemtura. Two other potential Agenda items would be the excavation and open pit, for most of the summer, at the old Varnicolor Chemical site on Union St. in Elmira. Secondly we received a report dated July 2011 titled "Work Plan Groundwater Flow and Contaminant Transport Model Update" from Conestoga Rovers (CRA). This report advises us that there is both NDMA and Chlorobenzene at major concentrations in the soil at Yara the former Nutrite plant beside Chemtura. It took a decade (2000) before the public were advised that Nutrite were a contributer to the Municipal (drinking water) Aquifer contamination with Ammonia and now I'm wondering if CRA are easing into telling us that they are also partly responsible for contributing to the NDMA and Chlorobenzene contamination. If so then this is a huge revelation and reinforces my contention of the last couple of years that there has been a coverup of the "Other Sources" here in Elmira.