VERIFICATION TEAMS ARE STACKED BY CHEMTURA

Yesterday's Elmira Independent has a front page story which is titled "Responsible Care dispute continues at CPAC". Gail Martin has done a pretty good job in this more factual discription of last Monday evening's public CPAC meeting. This article spells out much of the details of the *Responsible Care program as well as the mechanics around appointing the verification team. Again as I had indicated here in previous days the company (Chemtura) approach the local community looking for reps to sit on this verification team. This of course is a huge failure of *Responsible Care in that how many of us ever get to pick our judges or jurors in any forum whatsoever? Apparently other companies are just as biased in that many of them do not have public advisory committees in place. Therefore the company can even more easily subject their handpicked reps to the mushroom treatment and they have no unbiased background information to overcome that. In Chemtura's case it is obvious that picking one member of CPAC out of six on the verification team is ridiculous and self-serving by Chemtura.

Just to be very clear. The young CPAC were appointed by Woolwich Council to represent Woolwich citizens for the purpose of restoring Elmira's groundwater by 2028. Woolwich Council did NOT reappoint any of the old CPAC to this committee. Yours truly who was initially appointed had advised the Township that there were two old CPAC members who I felt were appropriate candidates to the young (new) CPAC. Neither of them were named Pat or Susan. Neither of my two choices were appointed. The old CPAC after serious lobbying including private meetings with senior Township staff clearly understood that they were done on CPAC. They "resigned" and their reaction was and is one of nasty resentment, personal affront and actual personal confrontation of two young (new) CPAC members who were sincerely trying to be respectful and friendly. Make no mistake when Dwight Este of Chemtura suggested that "CPAC does not have an exclusive right " to represent the community on matters pertaining to Chemtura, he was being disingenuous. The young CPAC have one rep out of six on the verification team. The others are picked by either Chemtura or the CIAC (Chemistry Industry Assoc'n of Canada). This by anyone's definition is stacking your team to guarantee the result you want. Shame on Chemtura and especially after the vise-president of CIAC saw both CPAC members and the public's opposition to verification; there will be shame on the CIAC IF they verify Chemtura through their hand picked verification team.

A final thought on yesterday's Independent article and Editorial. The Editorial was bad and inaccurate. If you read it on-line please read my comment immediately beneath it. Gail Martin however has lifted the lid publicly on the elephant in the room. The only legitimately appointed citizens advisoy committee is being circumvented by Chemtura precisely because the young CPAC are honest and unbiased and hold Chemtura's feet to the fire. This is the proper job of CPAC. The old CPAC thought their job was to give and get. This included monitoring and testing concessions to the company in exchange for freebies, trips and appointments to national bodies for at least two of them. I've been publicly saying this for some time and now Gail Martin, Editor of the Independent has published legitimate concerns within the community about the behaviour of two former CPAC members. Thank you Gail.