FURTHER TO LAST THURSDAY EVENING'S CPAC MEETING

First huge point. Pat Mclean appeared as a Delegation to CPAC and she was treated with courtesy and respect which in my opinion she does not deserve. She has shown a politician's willingness to throw colleagues and serious environmentalists under the bus when it suits her purposes. She did this only partly by ganging up with the former CPAC on Dan and Vivienne at a meeting at the public library to which they had been invited a couple of summers back.

The CPAC Terms of Reference used to be totally ridiculous. Now they are merely hypocritical as our Woolwich Council pick and choose which items to either enforce or not. The most asinine terms deal with membership. The document states that best efforts will be made to invite and include environmental groups in Elmira/Woolwich. There are two groups which have led the aquifer cleanup charge since 1989 and they were specifically in mind when that term was included back in 2000. APTE were specifically excluded by this Council in the spring of 2011 as Mayor Todd Cowan had advice from a number of experts (myself included) that their leadership had strayed dramatically and politically from the path necessary to rehabilitate the Elmira Aquifers. The Elmira Environmental Hazards Team (EH-Team) via myself were put on CPAC in the spring of 2011 only to be removed shortly thereafter as the Mayor and Councillor Julie Ann Herteis sufferred hissy fits. This past summer Mayor Cowan reversed himself and along with Alan Poffenroth voted to put me back on CPAC, at CPAC's express wish . Councillors Bryant, Herteis and Bowman voted no. Hypocrisy, stupidity, pettiness and politics go hand in hand with this Council. The politics refers to the apparent voting block between Mark Bauman and Bonnie Bryant. This may be to counteract the Julie Ann Herteis/ Todd Cowan voting block.

Steve Quigley of Conestoga Rovers, longtime consultants to Uniroyal/Chemtura reminded me why I stay on top of things technically. I have found over two decades of dealing with polluters, the Ministry of the Environment (M.O.E.), consultants and other assorted experts that when pressed they often automatically resort to bullshit. They attempt to intellectually intimidate honest and involved citizens. Long ago I decided to even up the playing field by learning and memorizing everything I could in order to meet them head on in discussions, debates and arguments. It wasn't nearly as hard as I expected because they don't have either the truth or facts on their side. This time Steve Quigley tried to use the old excuse that there was a thick aquitard below the south-east corner of Chemtura's site which prevented deep penetration by DDT, Dioxins, solvents and other nasty toxins. I called Steve on this by pointing out that CRA's own reports showed otherwise. There is little or no aquitard between the Upper Aquifer (UA) and the Municipal Aquifer (MU) in the south-east corner. Steve was left sputtering which has happened often enough that he should no better by now than to be resorting to inaccurate technical arguments to back his client's position.