MORE DISGUSTING POLLUTERS WITH FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

Last Saturday's Waterloo Region Record carrys a book review written by Jim Romahn. The title of the book review is "Pollution haunted New Jersey town" and the title of the book written by Dan Fagin is "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation". Toms River is a New Jersey town that had the swiss giant Ciba decide to build a dye manufacturing plant there in 1949. A little history is in order here. This is the same Ciba referred to as Ciba-Geigy who manufactured pesticides over in Cambridge. They claimed falsely that they had had a single spill of a chemical called Dinoseb on their property. Now known as Novartis they received all the help imaginable from our municipal and local politicians. Lies such as it would take over a century for the pollution to reach the municipal aquifers were given out to the public. It took closer to two years. Lies such as these chemicals could never reach nearby drinking wells were sold to the public by company representatives , M.O.E., and consultants alike.

For those of us living in Elmira does this sound familiar? "From the beginning it (Ciba) planned to dump wastes into the Toms River. It also dumped toxic wastes, some of it in drums, into sandy-soil pits on land it owned around its plant.". This is exactly the modus operandi of Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira. Firstly the Ontario Water Resources Commission (OWRC) and secondly the Ontario Ministry of the Environment were complicit in many of their pollution activities . Eventually with the Toms River case, Ciba and one other (Union Carbide) were found culpable in civil court and paid out undisclosed sums of money to families whose children developed cancers. Here in Elmira requests/demands for a health study of residents have been denied by local authorities.

I have but one criticism of Jim Romahn's book review. Mr. Romahn states "What becomes clear as the lengthy story is told is that there are probably hundreds of other cases around the world where industrial pollution has sickened nearby residents - and nobody has called the polluters to account.". Mr. Romahn understates his case. Far more likely is there are thousands of other cases around the United States alone where people have been poisoned by industrial pollution and the guilty walked away. Look around Waterloo Region or anywhere that has had significant long term industrial activity. Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge have multiple cases of major pollution with little or no accountability. The health effects in the Bishop St. community of Cambridge are horrific and meanwhile the polluter (Northstar) has gone bankrupt while the Directors are currently trying to absolve themselves of liability.