Wednesday, March 7, 2012
SWEETHEART DEAL PRESENTED TO WOOLWICH COUNCIL
Very interesting. The only two Councillors who spoke in response to my Delegation last evening were the two with cards in the game. Councillor Mark Bauman as usual waited until I had sat down then he criticized my written report to Council. Councillor Bauman is the only returning Councillor to Council and he knows where the skeletons are buried. The Mayor Todd Cowan rambled on and made some ridiculous remarks about oh this document (sweetheart deal) wasn't really a secret and it probably was on-line somewhere. Give me a break! Basically Todd was trying to downplay my statements that this was a secret backroom sweetheart deal between the Ministry of the Environment and Uniroyal Chemical. That is exactly what it is and what planet is the Mayor from? As two CPAC members were sitting beside me last night including the one who discovered the document and shared it with CPAC, the Mayor's comments were unsettling. Is he already staking out a position for the Township with zero input from CPAC? Is he planning on stickhandling around his handpicked citizens committee? Even more interesting is the surprised looks on Council last night. It sure looked as if they had not been remotely briefed by the Mayor on this major, game changing development.
I have a twenty-three year history of being deceived and lied to by all levels of government involved in the Elmira "water crisis". Woolwich Township, the Region of Waterloo and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment have all deceived and manipulated the citizens of Woolwich and Elmira. Yes the M.O.E. are certainly the prizewinners but they've needed the ongoing support of the two lower tiers of government. I did get the Mayor to publicly state last night in front of both the Woolwich Observer and the Elmira Independent that negotiations with the M.O.E. would be conducted at public CPAC meetings. This is huge not because I believe it so much as because when it comes out that he and Township reps have been negotiating privately, we will have a better handle on our new Mayor's credibility. Mayor Cowan also referred to a "process" that he is going through. By implication he was criticizing my going public with the October 7, 1991 "sweetheart deal" between Uniroyal and the M.O.E.. Any "process" Mayor Cowan that excludes Council, CPAC and the public is not a process. It's simply more of what we've already had namely a litany of backroom, secret sweetheart deals that are not in the public interest.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Having lived in Elmira since the mid-80s' and being fairly close to the Uniroyal/Chemtura site, I always took a keen interest in what was being done to remediate the facility once it was discovered that our groundwater acquifers were polluted. The news this week that Uniroyal and MOE absolved themselves of any liablity or blame for the pollution via a sweetheart agreement is certainly news to me and was never in my mind "public" knowledge. Shame on those who suggest it was!
ReplyDeleteOn another front I was always amazed at the time that the MOE accepted Uniroyal's rather half-hearted attempts to clean up our groundwater acquifers; particularly as,during the same time period, Love Canal was being remediated through an agressive "pump and treat" program that saw extraction bore holes ring the entire contaminated site every twenty feet (if memory serves me correctly), to extract and then treat the toxic groundwater.
In contrast, I thought the ultra-violet light system that was implemented by Conestogo Rovers and Uniroyal to treat Elmira's contaminated groundwater was a very cheap way to try to treat Elmira's contaminated groundwater and as we find out will take decades to remediate our underground acquifers. Now it appears that this was allowed because MOE was in Uniroyal's pockets.
Finally, my thanks and that of my family to you Alan for staying on top of those that allow(ed) this to happen!
Appreciate your good wishes and maybe, just maybe we'll all live long enough to see a real cleanup occur.
ReplyDeletewhat are we even talking about?!!?!?!?!!!!!!
ReplyDeletethis dook is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooodumb like o m g!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wait what are we talking about
ReplyDeleteCheck out the archives specifically Feb 19/12 and area. That will explain what this sweetheart deal is about. ie. a secret "cooked" deal between Uniroyal and the Ontario Min. of Environment.
ReplyDelete