ONTARIO MOECC SHOW THEIR CONTEMPT FOR CITIZENS AGAIN

Last evening's RAC (Remediation Advisory Committee) was a pathetic joke. Chemtura and the Ministry of Environment contemptuously wasted everybodys time and essentially served notice that they have the money and the will to continue doing so either forever or until they are stopped. Councillors Mark Bauman and Sandy Shantz allowed and enabled last night's disgrace. The first indication of trouble was the Chair (Shantz) allowing Dr. Ronald Brecher to go on and on and on. Ostensibly he was delivering a lecture on risk assessment. In actuality it was a back patting, self-serving, ego enhancement load of drivel. In thirty years of CPAC meetings plus recent TAG and RAC meetings, last nite set a new low. Councillor Bauman showed up fifty minutes late and saved himself that much sitting. He did however miss a good presentation from Dwight Boyd of the GRCA regarding flood issues in the Canagagigue Creek.

Dr. Brecher was hired by Chemtura. If mayor Shantz had bothered to attend a single CPAC meeting between 2010 and 2014 prior to being elected mayor she would have known that Chemtura were shut down from monopolizing CPAC meetigs years ago. Their consultants (CRA) used to pull the crap that Dr. Brecher did last night. Essentially it's nothing more than a filibuster.

Following Dr. Brecher we were treated to more longwinded bullshit from Terri Buhlman of the M.O.E.. How dare she treat Elmira citizens the way she did last evening. It was arrogant, uninformed crap in conflict with both the facts and the comments of Dr. Richard (Dick) Jackson, the Chair of TAG. Ms. Buhlman advised the meeting that the Canagagigue Creek has high concentrations of contaminants in sediments in localized areas. She then went on to state that there is no acute toxicity in the creek as per the 2014 M.O.E. data. Dick Jackson on the other hand chacterized the contamination as very serious regarding Dioxins & DDT and stated that we don't know how spatially extensive it is.

Dr. Jackson had very little opportunity to say much last evening. He did advise RAC as to TAG's Recommendations regarding RAC's position and followup with both Chemtura and the M.O.E.. I suspect that last night's RAC meeting was an eyeopener for Dr. Jackson. As much as it pains me to say so I will add the following. TAG did a good job last evening. Pat McLean appropriately took both the M.O.E. and Chemtura to task for their last minute delivery of documents to TAG and RAC. This is the same stunt that mayor Shantz pulled last July at the MECAC meeting. Also Susan Bryant put GHD (Chemtura's consultants) on the hot seat over their failure to sample a 175 metre long stretch along the eastern property line directly beside the Stroh Drain.

Last night was Chemtura and the M.O.E. deflating expectations of further serious cleanup. The M.O.E. especially want a years long further process prior to actually doing anything in the creek downstream of Chemtura. They are simply stalling. There has been an acknowledgement that more needs to be done on the Stroh farm due to off-site flow from Chemtura. That too will be the ultimate minimum in cleanup with the maximum in "studies" and talk. Nothing has changed and full credit goes to Mark Bauman and Sandy Shantz. If they aren't already on Chemtura's payroll then they are fools. They are assisting the company to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars of cleanup costs.