WILL THE ELMIRA AQUIFERS EVER BE RESTORED TO DRINKING WATER STANDARDS?

The short and simple answer is yes. Will they be restored by 2028? Absolutely not. That was a date thrown out there via private agreement between the polluter (Uniroyal) and the (ir)responsible governing bodies of the day. The date was picked far enough down the road to ensure that most of the living activists in Elmira were either dead or senile.

Municipal, regional and provincial governments all shared responsibility for the Elmira disaster. Unlike the Walkerton disaster, the extent of Elmira's mass poisoning of citizens via drinking water has never been properly documented or publicized. This is exactly what the (ir)responsible parties have worked hard to keep hidden. Similarily the (ir)responsible parties have never provided the financial or legal resources necessary to clean up the Elmira Aquifers in a timely fashion. At the moment Chemtura, while being enabled by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, are simply running out the clock. The credibility of both parties is exactly where they have put it, and that is in the dumpster. Current promises to triple off-site pumping rates while doing source removal via In Situ Chemical Oxidation are stalled. Over a year after tripling the pumping rates was proposed we have seen no studies showing that either the Canagagigue Creek can assimilate that volume of semi contaminated discharge or that they will have a superior treatment system to dramatically lower future discharges.

The Elmira Aquifers will either be restored when we are desperate for potable water or via fifty more years of pumping and treating off-site. The former will occur when governments realize they need the drinking water now and will spend the money for proper cleanup. The latter will occur only if there is better and more complete on-site containment and more on-site source removal occurs. Both are required. All three levels of our government lied to us one to hide their culpability in the disaster and secondly to induce Uniroyal to spend time and money even on an inadequate cleanup. The public interest has come in a long, long way behind private and government interests.