RETIREMENT HAS HELPED RICH CLAUSI BE MORE ACTIVE AT CPAC

Last week's Elmira Independent did a story on Rich Clausi's career as a teacher at Elmira District Secondary School (EDSS). This is part of their coverage of the 75th anniversary of EDSS as they have featured a few very longtime teachers recently. Richard has been very active over the years in other areas that were not mentioned in this story. Currently and for many years he has been a participant in the Sulco (Canada Colours) Citizens Advisory Panel. Before that he was the Chair of the Varnicolor Chemical Liason Committee. Richard was front and centre during the heyday of exposing M.O.E. lies and corruption surrounding their initial refusals to admit environmental problems at Varnicolor despite M.O.E. firsthand experience with the company, otherwise.

Since retiring Richard has been able to attend CPAC meetings for the first time in years. Two reasons for this are his greater time flexibility combined with CPAC being moved from 9 am. to 6 pm.. For many years I pressed former Chair Pat Mclean and her sidekick Susan Bryant for evening meetings both to assist Rich and possibly other citizens; all to no avail. 9 am. seemed to work very well for their schedules.

Richard sent the following e-mail last Saturday to CPAC and SWAT following last Thursday's CPAC meeting and further exposure of six year old DNAPL letters only recently received by CPAC as well as by myself.

"What transpired on thursday is a sterling example of why there must always be full transparency and indeed, why there must never be private meetings and tete-a-tete with the company...we now have 3 non-trivial documents...that is, the indemnity agreement and 2 landmark letters that appear to have fallen into cracks...real or otherwise...I imagine the best we can do now is to learn from this and not let it happen again...it is 3 strikes and you are out, right....are there any other oversights out there "

I greatly missed Richard's presence, cool head and analytical thinking at CPAC for years; which most probably is why the time was never changed to accomodate him. I also miss Dr. Henry Regier's presence now due to his hearing difficulties. I will say that Woolwich Township have tried to assist Henry and others with hearing impairments via the use of headphones etc..