HEIDELBERG MOTORS SITE BACK IN THE NEWS

It truly is astonishing how former longtime Councillor and Mayor Bill Strauss kept this severe pollution item out of the press during his political tenure. Today's Woolwich Observer carrys this front page story "No end-date for cleanup at former Heidelberg Motors site". I have posted here about this site on a number of occasions, the last one being the fifth of this month after the Waterloo Region Record published a story.

Today's Observer article refers to remediation work ongoing since 2007 but unless I've been misinformed this site has had various attempts at soil and or groundwater cleanup for closer to twenty years. Finally we have some details including the fact that it is indeed raw product otherwise known as free phase LNAPL or light non aqueous phase liquid. What this simply means is that gasoline and or diesel fuel are floating on top of the water table at and most probably off of this site. Contaminants mentioned in the article include Petroleum Hydrocarbons (PHC), BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene), PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) as well as Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs. These VOCs could possibly be Trichloroethylene (TCE) or Trichloroethane (TCA).

Finally a media outlet (Observer) have given the public some details. What is still missing is whether the Region of Waterloo and the Ontario Ministry of Environment are or have been properly protecting the health of local residents drinking from Heidelberg's two wells as well as those residents living literally twenty feet away from this mess. With VOCs involved, vapour intrusion into homes is an issue to be closely monitored. Based upon both bodies track records I would expect not.