PRETEND "NEGOTIATIONS"

Negotiations can only be fruitful whem both parties are holding some decent cards. They can only be fruitful if each party has something to offer the other party that they don't have. Trying to "negotiate" with Uniroyal Chemical or Chemtura Canada is a frustrating waste of time. The corporate polluter only would like the talking to continue. What they secretly fear is either CPAC or Woolwich Township to tell them to f.. off and go to hell. That would be difficult to explain to the media and to the *Responsible Care program run by the Chemical Industry Assoc'n of Canada. It would convey the very accurate reality that the company are a filthy polluter who manipulated a sweetheart deal out of the so called regulatory body (M.O.E.) two decades ago plus. All they currently require is the appearance of public consultation.

A couple of days ago I received a few more six year old documents which I as an incredibly active and informed stakeholder in Elmira for twenty-five years; should have received when they were issued. The blame for that is equally shared between all the other stakeholders including the old CPAC, the M.O.E. and Chemtura. That said once I knew of the existence of these documents, primarily two sets of Minutes out of ten technical DNAPL meetings; it was only a few months wait. There was also a Summary Table which captures reasonably well the positions of Chemtura/CRA versus those of Jaimie Connelly (M.O.E.) and Wilf Ruland, hired by the Township. The words Source Removal or Source Reduction as espoused by Wilf and Jaimie however were not included as they should have been.

These Minutes are for DNAPL Technical meetings held on June 13, 2008 and either October 28 or 29, 2008 dependant on
which paper is accurate. They certainly were not the barnburner exposes presented by Jaimie on May 2/08 or Wilf on May 15/08. That's not surprising as they were produced by Jeff Merriman of Chemtura. Nevertheless there were a couple of surprises involved. Firstly my esteem and respect for Jaimie Connelly has risen again. I'm even willing to admit that while I'm less enthused with Wilf's performance as per the Minutes; even he held up considerably better than I expected. Overall these "negotiations" were CRA & Chemtura versus Wilf and Jaimie. That would be for CRA: Mark Hilverda, Alan Deal and Steve Quigley . For Chemtura it was : Jeff Merriman & Dwight Este. Therefore it was essentially five full time professionals versus two.

There were three amateurs present and quite frankly only one even had a clue what was going on. Pat Mclean and Sandy Shantz were so far over their heads it should have been embarassing except yet again token public participation is required. The one with a clue (and more) was Susan Bryant.

My congratulations to Wilf and Jaimie because despite ongoing bullshit, lying, intransigience and deception stretching over four years; right up to the end they held their ground on several DNAPL issues. This of course is 100% contrary to what Jeff Merriman of Chemtura has repeatedly, publicly told CPAC. I'm not too much of a gentleman not to call Jeff exactly what he is; but that's for another day. Between them Jaimie and Wilf held out to the end on more work and action for the M2 area (SW), the East Central area and Source Removal or Reduction in order to improve on-site groundwater and hence off-site via leakage or other future problems. Also Wilf in particular wanted action taken on the berms between RPW6, 7 & 8. Finally in the October Minutes Wilf was silent on the need for a shallow trench downgradient of the Main tank farm. This he had held steady on for a significant time period so whether his comments weren't recorded in the October Minutes, I do not know. Certainly there is no "concensus" indicated in the Minutes.

One final point is necessary here. These "negotiations" were no more than a public relations gesture from the start. The Ontario Ministry of Excuses and Corporate Collusion (MOECC) asked Chemtura to do an overall review of the DNAPL issue. They, Woolwich Township, Chemtura, Susan Bryant, CRA and Pat McLean all knew this was a sham from the start. The secret (from the public) October 7, 1991 Settlement Agreement between Uniroyal and the M.O.E. guaranteed that Uniroyal/Chemtura had no liability for known contamination on their property. This "Indemnity" was as disgusting then as it is now. Probably Sandy Shantz and myself were the only ones who didn't know about that Indemnity. Therefore once again this onerous, four year long DNAPL "investigation" was preordained from the start. Chemtura/CRA personnel simply pretended to be carefully considering all the facts. Not one nickel was ever going to be spent on known contamination at RPW5, 6, 7, 8 and M2 etc..