WOOLWICH COUNCIL GETS IT WRONG AGAIN

Yesterday's Elmira Independent has a story titled "Tanks Approved". This is a very disappointing and short sighted decision by our Council. Appropriate concerns were raised by resident Susan Bryant at Council which should have caused Councillors to give their heads a shake. A further reminder should have been the $30,000 in Source Water Protection money they recently received from the province. Finally here in the Advocate the reasons not to put buried tanks beside the former, and who knows absolutely, perhaps future south wellfield were posted on November 8/13 and December 24/13.

The Independent article states "Conestoga Rovers & Associates, the consulting firm that works with Chemtura indicated that any leakage, if it were to occur, would have no impact on the cleanup of Elmira's groundwater." "No impact" is unadulterated rubbish. Ask the village of Bamberg if leaking gasoline affected their groundwater. Ask the village of Heidelberg who have watched a decade of ongoing remediation trying to cleanup gasoline and diesel from our former Mayor's gas station. Ask Chemtura (& CRA) how sucessful they have been removing LNAPL ie. light non aqueous phase liquids from their groundwater. The components of gasoline namely Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl Benzene and Xylenes are known as LNAPLS as they float on the surface of the groundweater.

Kind of ironic isn't it how Chemtura advise the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) how difficult it is to remove LNAPL from their site but how there will be "no impact" if it leaks beside the former south wellfield. And our council are just plain stupid to believe CRA. My question is what did Councillor Mark Bauman advise council to do. I will see him Monday at a working session of CPAC and if he vouched for CRA's consistency or accuracy; he will hear and read about it.