CHEMTURA PUBLIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE IS ONE WEEK AWAY

Next Thursday May 31/12 at 6 pm. a public CPAC meeting will be held in Woolwich Council Chambers. I urge all citizens (AND MEDIA) to attend this important public meeting. The Agenda will include important items such as a Peer Review of Chemtura's proposed plant wide Air Certificate of Approval. This proposed C. of A. absolutely has not followed any kind of proper procedure right from the beginning several years ago. My experience with long term public debate of approvals given by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to Chemtura, tells me that the M.O.E. have already, behind the public's back as well as CPAC's, given the O.K. to them. This has unfortunately been the M.O.E.'s idea of public consultation for some time and one example would be the June 21, 2000 Amended Control Order replacing the Nov. 4/91 Amended Control Order. It's bad enough that they can unilaterally change Control Orders surrepticiously, but to then have the brass to engage the public in a debate over changes that they've already made, without telling the public, is beyond contemptible.

Also on the Agenda will be discussion of a SWAT team. This stands for Soil, Water, Air Technical review team. This is an attempt by CPAC to draw not only upon their own expertise but to continue to engage other resources to assist them. Personally I see this as a good idea with the proviso that all voting CPAC members are kept in the loop and are welcome to attend all technical meetings if they so wish.

The third item that I forsee being on the Agenda will of course be CPAC's gamechanging Resolution. I have already mentioned Chemtura's first response, namely hiring a big shot Public Relations firm. I guess having the Ontario M.O.E. in their pocket is no longer adequate to ensure their control of CPAC. CPAC's Resolution dealing with Source Removal which was passed unanimously by both CPAC and Woolwich Council, changes everything. It is the debate and discussion that they have worked very hard over two decades to avoid, minimize, obfuscate, complicate and denigrate. There was a fly in the ointment regarding the July 2003 Request For Action which I, Henry Regier, Fred Hager and Susan Bryant worked diligently on and was passed unanimously by CPAC. Unknown certainly to three of us, all CPAC Motions were supposed to be ratified by Council. That was one more little tidbit that was not shared with myself and most of the CPAC members back in 2000 when we were debating CPAC becoming a committee of Council.