CHEMTURA NOVEMBER 2013 PROGRESS REPORT

Back in the early 90's when Uniroyal and the M.O.E. were talking Pump & Treat containment of their site, APT Environment coined the phrase Pump & Dump. It expressed their concerns that toxic Uniroyal compounds would be discharged directly into the creek albeit at lower concentrations than were already so discharging. Eventually the M.O.E. and Uniroyal came to an agreement on a Certificate of Approval allowing them to so discharge their treated on-site groundwater. Later on this C of A was expanded to include not only the Municipal Upper Aquifer and 1/4 of the shallow aquifer (UA) but also the off-site pumping wells.

In Table A.1 of the November Progress Report we can see the Discharge Limits for the off-site treatment of groundwater. These limits are way too high starting at .14 ppb for NDMA through 4, 5, 7, and 10 parts per billion (ppb) for other compounds. Keep two things in mind 1) there are way more than ten compounds shown in the groundwater and 2) the Ontario Drinking Water Standard (ODWS) for NDMA is .009 ppb. Therefore the current discharge limit is about fourteen times higher than the ODWS. Clearly our M.O.E. are all about dilution being the solution to pollution.

I wish to point out that the four compounds shown in Table A.3 at high concentrations in the shallow aquifer containment wells all have been defined as DNAPL chemicals. There are concentrations in the 5,000-8,000 ppb range and particularily as these compounds are hypothetically either non soluble or have extremely low solubility then it is probable that they are present in their free phase form as well. This is but one example of many indicating the falsehoods being sold to Elmira citizens and the M.O.E.'s enabling of it.

Table C.1 has an interesting detection of methylene chloride theoretically upstream at SS-110. It is usual for Chemtura and other polluters to write this chemical off as a laboratory artifact however they found it and in this case I believe them.

The good news continues to be the pumping rates off and on site. Chemtura are at long last on track with their Pump & treat system which seems to be operating these days with minimal breakdowns, shutdowns and unexpected maintenance. Let's see how long this continues.