CHEMTURA OCTOBER 2013 PROGRESS REPORT- REMARKABLY DIFFERENT

Off-site pumping remains strong although W4 was just shy of its' greatly reduced target rate of 3.5 litres per second (l/s). It was at 11.4 l/s for many years. Both Well W5B and W3 are being pumped well in excess of their target rates hence the good overall pumping rate. It is interesting of course to note how the huge pumping reduction at W4 (behind Varnicolor & near the water tower) has permitted the significant increase at W5B east of Varnicolor and Union St.

Table A.1 shows the groundwater treatment system analytical results. Of particular interest to CPAC members should be the far right which shows the Effluent Limits and Objectives. While the Objectives are quite low and hence reasonable the Effluent Limits are far too high. This permits unacceptable discharges to the Canagagigue Creek and indeed these must be dramatically lowered before any consideration of tripling the volume of semi treated groundwater is allowed.

Appendix D is quite amazing as it gives considerable data regarding both on and off-site groundwater results. These results are from last summer and as they are part of the Routine Groundwater Monitoring Program I suspect these are the same results which will come out in next spring's Annual Monitoring Report for 2013.

Off-site monitoring has a few surprises such as Chlorobenzene at 210 ppb at CH38A. Then CH44D on the Yara site has Chlorobenzene at 1800 ppb. This is the area where Chemtura no longer wish to use chemical oxidation ie. source removal. CH70D on the old Varnicolor property line has Chlorobenzene at 1100 ppb. but that's O.K. because Jaimie Connolly of the M.O.E. says it's because their used to be acetone in RPW7 on the Chemtura site a long time ago. If this makes no sense to you, join the club. Most of the off-site groundwater is marked as clear with no odour but there are exceptions. Right down by the former south wellfield has some high conductivity readings as well as discoloured odourous water. This is very strange as we have never been advised of nearby sources. Well OW61 west of Chemtura has a Conductivity of over 4000 which is almost unheard of. Most of the Chemtura hot spots are closer to 2000 and off-site many places are only 500-700.

On-Site groundwater readings are horrible as expected. Chemtura/CRA have long admitted that on-site hydraulic containment will never clean up their site only theoreticlly contain it. Funny thing though we were supposed to believe that off-site hydraulic containment would do the job. Granted the on-site has extensive subsurface waste sources but off-site certainly isn't without some of their own. There are lots of petroleum hydrocarbons found on site including at 72,000 ppb. I believe this is contrary to what we have been told by Chemtura's environmental engineer, at CPAC meetings. Acetone generally is not tested for but when it is, it is at method detection limits (MDL) of between 5,000-100,000 ppb. This pretty much guarantees non-detects (ND). On-site groundwater colours vary from cloudy to light brown or light/dark grey with odours from none to very strong. Chlorobenzene is found just north of GP1 & 2 at 73,000 ppb. in OW42. There are extensive LNAPL and DNAPL chemicals found at high concentrations indicating either residual or free phase NAPLS or both are present.

This data and sometimes particular absences of data tell the tale as to where the "skeletons" are buried. It's always done this if you are able to locate all the wells that are tested. I mostly can do this from memory although I still often "cheat" and look them up. The rest of the citizens basically are out of luck because contrary to past promises there is no legend or key with this data to assist in finding well locations. This is quite unacceptable.