CHEMTURA MONTHLY PUBLIC RELATIONS REPORT

The actual title of the monthly report put out by Conestoga Rovers is "Chemtura Canada Co. Progress Report- October 2012". In the title of this post above I had considered calling it the Chemtura Monthly BS Report and while not far off the mark nevertheless "Public Relations" is probably closer.

Here is some big news. "All extraction wells met or exceeded their minimum target pumping rates.". I agree with CRA that that is indeed news. By "All" they are referring to all on-site pumping wells (PW4 & 5) and all off-site pumping wells (W5A, W5B, W3, W4 & E7). A tiny observation might include that on-site pumping wells for the Upper Aquifer (9-11 of them) do not have a minimum target pumping rate and similarily the off-site Yara (Nutrite) wells also do not. These pumping rates are extremely small and in fact declining but it is difficult to know if this is a problem or not without a target rate being included.

This big news has occurred twice this year out of ten months. That is precisely double what it accomplished last year. As has been mentioned in previous posts Chemtura and their fellow travellers have achieved their overall off-site pumping volumes for three of the past fourteen years. This makes any promises they are currently giving about tripling their off-site pumping rates; very problematic.

Table A.4 gives additional analytical results for some on-site observation wells at Chemtura. Despite significant pumping over the last twenty years; as expected the on-site concentrations of multiple groundwater contaminants are still and always will be, without source removal, ridiculously high.

Appandix B shares with us the discharges to the creek of surface water nevertheless contaminated with various Chemtura chemicals. These ongoing discharges are low in volume but the trends for the majority are neither increasing nor decreasing. Again our Ministry of the Environment while monitoring MISA (municipal Industrial Strategy for Abatement) discharges are doing nothing about them.

Table C.2 as usual indicates that according to their statistical analysis there are no significant increases in Canagagigue Creek concentrations downstream compared to upstream at Chemtura. At the same time the mean concentrations of NDMA, NMOR and Toluene are indeed higher downstream than upstream at Chemtura.

Overall it is significant that Chemtura's on and off site pumping rates are improving. If history is any indication however this will not continue.