MORE ON THURSDAY NIGHT'S CPAC MEETING

There were a number of other questions and comments raised Thursday night in Council Chambers at CPAC starting with CPAC & Council member Mark Bauman. The observation was made that Mark came up with a couple of reasonably technical questions to me about DNAPL after my 10 minute Delegation on the subject to CPAC. They included the fact that we generally think of oils as floaters not sinkers. The example is a spill of fuel oil on the ocean's surface. His other question dealt with the volume of free phase DNAPL found at TPW2 back in 1993. These were both excellent questions which I answered to the best of my ability. Coincidentally for the first time I felt compelled to hand out copies of my written Delegation ahead of time not only to CPAC & SWAT & the Township but also to the M.O.E. and Chemtura.

George Karlos of the M.O.E. advised CPAC that they the Ministry were indeed taking additional samples around a private nearby swimming pond. This is appropriate and shows some due diligence. Seabastian of CPAC also thanked George for his timely response concerning a cost-benefit analysis comparing pump & treat to serious source removal.

Sebastian also asked questions about waste disposal areas having been changed on the Chemtura site. Vivienne I believe referred to natural erosion as well as human erosion referring to Uniroyal's practice of burying, excavating and then reburying in another location. I was able to help somewhat by advising that the "consolidation" pits RPE4 &5 were filled with toxic wastes from both the east and west sides of the site.

A member of the public advised that in her opinion Dioxins and DDT were ubiquitous in the creekbanks of the Canagagigue through the Chemtura site. While this may be possible what I find illogical is Chemtura's insistence that Dioxins and DDT subsurface at GP1 &2 aren't moving into the creek or aquifers. These chemicals literally have already moved from the west side to the east side (with human help) and then gravity flowed south into GP1 &2. From there the contaminated groundwater discharges directly to the creek. We have yet to see any scientific (versus CRA) studies showing how tightly or loosely these toxic chemicals bind to soil much lesss the sand and gravel present.

All in all I found this meeting helpful and clearcut and am looking forward to the upcoming writeup in the Elmira Independent describing it further.