THE UNIROYAL TRIALS - WILL WOOLWICH BE ASKED WHY THEY CONSTANTLY HANDCUFFED CHEMTURA'S STRONGEST CRITIC ?

Despite the above title, today's posting as advertised yesterday, will focus on the line, scar or trench running north to south and then east across Chemtura's property, east of the Canagagigue Creek. The title refers to past Woolwich Councils penchant for pleasing Chemtura and the Ministry of the Environment by keeping their strongest and by far most knowledgable critic off of the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee. That said, as was posted last Wednesday (Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish), this last Council kept me off because the Mayor lied. While I know he had been under considerable pressure from both Chemtura and the M.O.E., only the M.O.E. (Bill Bardswick) have been stupid enough to admit it. Therefore Mayor Cowan may have succumbed to that pressure or else he just let his pettiness and personal intolerance of criticism have free rein .

At last Thursday's public CPAC meeting Lisa (CPAC Secretary) put up an overhead aerial view of the Chemtura site which clearly showed a huge line, scar or trench running across their property. This line etc. actually has two obvious arms which split apart south of the road that runs across the Canagagigue Creek from the west side of their site to the east side. This road ends up just below (south) the Envirodome. While these two "arms" were clearly seen by all who attended there is actually a third limb which is separate and runs parallel to the creek from above the on-site dam to below it and ends above (north) this same west to east road. Steve Quigley rather quietly and feebly suggested that these lines etc. are fences. First of all there were no "fences" in the 1955 or 1968 aerial (satellite?) photos included in their March 2012 Former Gravel Pit Investigation report. The line etc. is there in their 2010 photo. Jeff Merriman suggested that they were "farm fences". On the assumption that Chemtura have not in recent years suddenly decided to graze cattle on their contaminated property this seems unlikely. Also as there have not been livestock grazing on that land in at least 75 years it also seems unlikely. Finally there was no north-south fence running across that property back in 1991 when I, my binoculars and a bird book walked that area. If there had been I would have had to climb it and I climbed no such alleged fence.

It is possible that a "farm fence" can have a purpose other than containing livestock, groundhogs or even excluding coyotes, wolves and wild dogs. Most likely that purpose at Chemtura is to delineate exactly where constructed sub-surface works are located so as not to damage them with the occasional heavy earth moving, grading and excavating equipment used on the east side. Keep one thing clearly in mind and that is that there is good reason to suspect that these possible manmade constructed works are part and parcel of the proven Stroh Drain and the recently proven flow of groundwater and toxic liquid wastes off the eastern Chemtura border. The Peter Gray MTE Report made this off-site flow clear. Nevertheless the proven elements of leakage and overflow and then discharge into the Canagagigue Creek are not dependant upon this possible Trench etc.. It could simply be the cherry on top of the final destruction of any credibility or long claimed morals or ethics around the environment or human health the company pretend they have.

Engineered wetlands were proposed by Chemtura years ago to assist in remediating their contaminated groundwater. Similar to their ridiculous suggestion of "land farming" of toxic wastes; these engineered wetlands were given short shrift by CPAC. It is possible that Chemtura went ahead quietly without support or approval and constructed a method to deliver contaminated groundwater to their east side to be "remediated" by the combined Stroh/Chemtura wetlands. The fact that the line, scar, trench etc. encapsulates all the south and west groundwater flow from the east side pits and ponds makes me extremely suspicious. There are also other remediation technologies possible including either PRB's (permeable reactive barriers), biological barriers and even the famous Waterloo Barrier invented at the University of Waterloo.

Chemtura and the M.O.E. once again, after last May's discovery of the Stroh Drain, owe CPAC and the public an explanation. While both have publicly claimed they had no knowledge of the Drain, that seems ridiculous due to the recent verbal and written comments by the M.O.E. that they did a site tour of the property between Chemtura's south-east corner and the Martin swimming pond located in the floodplain of the "Gig" and did not find any possible contaminant pathway. Now they both claim they have no knowledge of a relatively recent line, scar or trench running two thirds of the length of Chemtura's property on the east side. Such utter rubbish.