FURTHER TO THURSDAY EVENINGS CPAC MEETING

We all missed Dr. Henry Regier's presence although as has been recently, his grandson Nick Betts was able to attend. Henry had personal committments that evening. Rich Clausi publicly announced his retirement as Head of the Mathematics Department at Elmira District Secondary School. Chair Dan Holt congratulated him and immediately accepted Rich's (non)offer of full time unpaid dedicated volunteer work for CPAC. I had also suggested that Richard would have unlimited time on his hands to donate. Richard took the volunteering of his free time by others with good grace, however he is currently holding his cards close to his chest.

No too surprisingly Jeff Merriman and myself had a difference of opinion on a number of matters. These obviously include the need for better remediation of the Dioxins and DDT at the GP1 and GP2 area. Jeff says there are no transport mechanisms that would allow movement of these compounds off site. Chemtura's partners in pollution, the Ontario M.O.E. agree. Both are wrong and damn well know it. Dr. Gail Krantberg has said it best in the recent past. If it's in the groundwater (it is) it will eventually end up downstream in Lake Erie.

Jeff also claims , similar to Josef at a recent Woolwich Council meeting, that the only off-site chemicals in the Elmira Aquifer are NDMA, Chlorobenzene and Ammonia. Then his claim became somewhat qualified in that those three chemicals are the "bulk" of the off-site chemicals. Referring back to Dr. Gail Krantzberg, if there are 100 chemicals in their on-site groundwater, they will all end up in the off-site groundwater and or creek.

The weirdest claim by Jeff Merriman of Chemtura had to do with the long known and acknowleged LNAPL plume on their site. This plume primarily of Toluene originates from Building #15 and was discovered in the early 90's. It was acknowledged a couple of years later to much criticism from UPAC (Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee). Sylvia Berg of APTE, rather hypocritically in hindsight, lambasted Uniroyal (Chemtura) for keeping this major piece of information private from UPAC and the public for as long as they did. This LNAPL or light non aqueous phase liquid has only in very small quantities been intercepted and pumped from the subsurface. Jeff himself has indicated in the past that he was not happy with how little they had been able to remove by pumping. Then Thursday night he seemed to be suggesting that this Toluene floating on top of the water table was somehow not subsurface waste. That because they had attempted (unsucessfully) to pump it, that it was gone. Not so and their own consultants, CRA, still acknowledge in recent DNAPL reports that there is indeed still subsurface DNAPL and LNAPL on Chemtura's site. This information I will shortly be sending to the CPAC Chair, Dan Holt.