EMERGENCY EVACUATION DRILL PLANNED FOR CHEMTURA

There will be some unusual activity tomorrow at Chemtura in Elmira and this is just a heads up for neighbours and residents not to be surprised. I will be quoting some e-mails below to clarify.

"We will be conducting our evacuation drill and we'd like to inform our nearby neighbours through the CAN system. The testing will be conducted this Friday October 12th between 10:00 and noon. "

"This is a message from Chief Kieran Kelly on behalf of Chemtura. On Friday, October 12th, Chemtura will be conducting emergency evacuation drills. The drills are scheduled to be conducted between 10:00 am and noon. Near neighbiours may hear emergency alarms and paging coming from the Erb St. plant. Employees will also be evacuated to the plant's parking lot as part of the drill. If you have any concerns please contact Chemtura directly. Thank you."


Totally irrelevant to the above Public Notices & e-mails released for the purposes of not alarming the public unduly; I too would like to alarm the public, although also not unduly.

Over a decade ago when Uniroyal were regularily fumigating the Duke St. residents it was determined that their consultants were using an outdated air modelling system which understated the extent and quantity and effects of their air emissions. Just recently despite long criticisms by myself of their trend analyses being used to allegedly indicate trends in groundwater contaminant concentrations; it has been suggested that the analysis they are using is about thirty years behind more modern and up to date methodologys. The method they use is referred to as the Mann-Kendall test and I've been advised that it is a "non-parametric test" with "reduced ability to detect trends". In other words rather than use the most current statistical methods they are relying on second best.