TWO UPCOMING ENVIRONMENTAL DELEGATIONS TO COUNCIL

The first upcoming Delegation will be this Tuesday evening at Woolwich Council by Dr. Dan Holt. As Chairman of the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee (CPAC), he will be giving an update to Woolwich Council in regards to all the latest news. His Delegation to Council was announced at the last CPAC public meeting namely November 29/12. While Chemtura and their fellow travellors are thus aware of Dan's delegation, I would be surprised to see them there as one they are chicken and two they like to be frontrunners. In other words if they aren't in charge and control they usually make themselves scarce. We will see this Tuesday.

The following week yours truly has booked himself as a Delegation through Woolwich Township. I will be recommending changes to the CPAC Terms of Reference so that individual members of CPAC will need to vet their membership in other industrial or environmental bodies with both the township and CPAC. There have been CPAC members involved in dealings with industrial bodies and even with consultants to Chemtura at the same time as their duty and loyalty were ostensibly to CPAC. Keep in mind there are some excellent groups and choices out there but as well there are many problematic, essentially political bodies as well. Transparency is the issue and at a minimum, membership in other groups with either actual or perceived conflicts of interest; needs to be made clear to all parties involved. All means all of Council and ALL of CPAC.

It would not surprise me if Chemtura are offended enough by Dr. Dan and CPAC speaking the truth publicly this Tuesday that they turn around in the New Year and take a kick at the can, themselves. My expectation would be a typical CRA presentation of jibber jabber focusing on dynamic this and dynamic that interelated with the magic of three dimensional computer hydrogeologic models. In other words they will use their talents to bafflegab the audience into submission. Please keep in mind that computer models are just that, models. You figure out the answer you want and then you plug in various variables to get there. As the person in charge of the model you can weight it any way you want. In particular without telling others you can weight cost if you wish as the biggest concern. Or you can weight pump and treat technology as being inherently superior to source removal, which it isn't. The opportunities for deception are endless. No one but Chemtura's consultants will have 100% access and understanding of their model and most importantly the correct or otherwise assumptions they put into it. The most obvious source of error will be their incorrect and ridiculous insistence that there are no off-site sources of contamination. Similarily they will probably program into their model that there are no on-site sources of free phase DNAPL, which again is both incorrect and ridiculous. The expression is GIGO or garbage in, garbage out. Their models are garbage based at least partially on their inputs.