ELMIRA HAS ONLY ONE MEDIA OUTLET PAYING ATTENTION

Yesterday's Elmira Independent has two stories and one Editorial in regards to the public CPAC meeting of Thursday March 28/31. The front page story is titled "CPAC narrows focus to Chemtura property". Gail Martin includes a couple of quotes that I did in previous postings but she also includes an excellent one by Steve Martindale (M.O.E.) that I missed. Steve is referring to the cost sharing agreement between the M.O.E. and Uniroyal (Chemtura) as he says "You'd never get the government to put money into industry cleanup now. It was signed by the minister (environment) at the time - that was a different time.".

Yours truly was also mentiobned by Gail Martin for mentioning that I've been pushing for on-site source removal for years and years. Jeff of Chemtura went through the typical Chemtura song and dance about they've looked and they can't find free phase DNAPL. Ron Campbell, Sebastian Seibel-Achenbach abd Councillor Mark Bauman all expressed concerns with Chemtura eventually packing their bags and leaving their on-site mess behind. This has actually just recently happened in Cambridge with Northstar Aerospace winding down operations. While there are Control Orders in place it looks as if the M.O.E. and taxpayers are currently holding the bag.

Gail's Editorial titled "A lasting lagacy" is a cautionary warning about vigilance required to prevent future environmental calamities. Unfortunately our Ontario M.O.E. has absolutely never been up to the job. At the bottom end there isn't enough supervision and accountability and at the top end the senior bureaucrats don't want to rock the boat. This may very well be due to their understanding as to where their political masters are coming from. In other words if the M.O.E. is primarily for show and appearance then you are never going to have senior management who are aggressive in protecting our natural environment.