CHILE MAKES CANADA LOOK LIKE A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY ENVIRONMENTALLY

Saturday's Waterloo Region Record carrys the following story "Chile fines Barrick $16M for "serious" violations". Barrick is a world wide player on the gold mining stage and has a $8.5 billion project on the Chile-Argentine border. It is referred to as the Pascua-Lama Project and construction work is now halted until Barrick constructs systems that were promised to control contaminated water. Apparently these containment structures were fundamental to Barrick obtaining their environmental permits in the first place.

Imagine that the nervy buggers. They actually obtained permits on promises and then went ahead without doing what they'd promised. They probably forgot they were in Chile and thought they were in Canada or the U.S.. Here in Elmira Ontario, Chemtura Canada are finishing up their stroking of the Grand River Conservation Authority with their recently released "Scoped Environmental Impact Study". This report is ostensibly to satisfy concerns the Authority has when there is construction or physical changes made in the floodplain of the Grand River or any of its' tributaries. In this case we are talking about the floodplain of the Canagagigue Creek as it flows through the Chemtura site and Elmira.

Chemtura have had Dioxins as well as DDT in the subsurface floodplain of the creek for decades. Also these same persistent and toxic substances have been found downstream both in the sediments of the creek as well as in the soils of the downstream floodplain along the creek. The GRCA in their infinite wisdom however aren't worried about that, they are worried about dogwoods, ash and willow trees in the area. I've been advised that these are very common and simple species to reintroduce.

On page 1 the authors of this EIS namely Conestoga Rovers claim that "...the analytical data demonstrates that DDT, dioxins and furans are not leaching to the groundwater.". I dispute that categorically. The analytical data is inadequate at best and inaccurate at worst. There has not been an honest, peer reviewed scientific study done either on site or downstream. In fact the latest amateur hour work done by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, if taken at face value, also does not support Chemtura's and CRA's position. Again real scientific study is rarely done while well paid, client driven, long time consultants to Chemtura make up their "science" as they go. More charitably put is that engineers are not scientists yet they think that their work is scientifically rigorous when it's not.