REVISED CPAC AGENDA IS OUT

The Chemtura Public Advisory Committee meeting is tonite at 6 pm. (Woolwich Council Chambers). The revised Agenda has added both some old and some new. The old includes putting the Dioxin (agent orange) and DDT excavations back on. Currently Chemtura are trying to cheap their way through this by only removing one foot of contaminated soil from only one area of their mess. The new includes adding Source Water Protection policies to the Agenda. This could be interesting as the focus may well be on Elmira and area. This is a provincially mandated program legislated as a result of the Walkerton water tragedy.

The old CPAC assiduously avoided discussion on other contaminated Elmira sites despite their mandate to restore the Elmira drinking water aquifers by 2028. The one exception would be if Chemtura wished to discuss Nutrite (Yara) and their Ammonia contributions to the aquifers. As is logical and reasonable, each and every contaminated site sitting atop the Elmira aquifers must be looked at. Some of them (gas stations ) have been remediated and some have not. Some sites around town such as the old Varnicolor site on Union St. has been partially remediated. It was much easier selling a mickey mouse cleanup twenty-two years ago when local citizens were inexperienced in these matters. The Lot 91 site at the end of Oriole Parkway had drums and small amounts of contaminated soil removed with lots left behind. Clearly the M.O.E. are satisfied with letting the rest slowly dissolve and flow into Landfill Creek and from there into the Canagagigue and five miles later the Grand River.

The premise upon which the Elmira cleanup was and is based is that all the subsurface tars, sludges and solid and liquid wastes are located on the Chemtura site. Thus there is one system of pumping wells for the purpose of on-site hydraulic containment only (currently PW4 & PW5) and another system of off-site wells for removing the dissolved contaminants from the groundwater namely wells W5A, W5B, W4, W3, and E7. Overall the volume of water being pumped off-site is far greater than that being pumped on-site as the on-site isn't for the purpose of cleanup, only for containment. In other words the theory is that we can protect forever the rest of Elmira from the still buried solid and liquid (DNAPL & LNAPL) wastes at Chemtura.

Getting back to the old Varnicolor site on Union St. there are two points of interest. Firstly I yelled long and hard that the deeper groundwater and soil contamination investigations had NOT taken place as promised. Secondly the on-site pump and treat system that is still underway has turned out to be inadequate. What a non surprise. After Rich Clausi, Ted Oldfield and I moved on to Uniroyal Chemical, a new liason committee was formed. It turns out the pump and treat system pumps 15,000 litres of contaminated water per day from the very shallow Surficial Aquifer only. This is the mathematical equivalent of .173 litres per sec. By comparison there are numerous wells in Elmira pumping between eleven and thirty litres per second. The on-site UACS (upper aquifer containment system) at Chemtura pumps between .9 and 1 liter per second and even the YARA (Nutrite) site is pumping .4 litre per second. Therefore even though the top four feet of soil was removed from Varnicolor (Union St.) and a minimal pump and treat systen installed it now seems clear that it was way too little, way too late. The M.O.E. approved a non deeper investigation at that site in 1991 for fear of what they would find. There were both free phase LNAPLS and free phase DNAPLS on site and most interestingly there is free phase DNAPLS west of their site near the Howard St. water tower. The jury may be out as to the source (Borg/Varnicolor?) but at this point it seems unlikely to be from Chemtura. These still remaining source areas need to be properly addressed if the authorities sincerely are trying to restore Elmira's drinking water aquifers. That is looking very doubtful right now.