GRASSY NARROWS & ELMIRA - NON ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUPS

The Ontario Ministry of Environment(& Climate Change) are fundamentally corrupt. Their mandate is simply to reassure the public that our authorities (Provincial government) care and that our environmental problems are under control. Neither one is true. Sucessive provincial governments have placed environmental cleanups at the very bottom of a very long list of priorities. What they care about are appearances. The people at the top of the M.O.E. are not scientists or even technocrats. They are crisis managers. They are professional liars willing to go into communities and lie through their teeth in people's faces.

Most of us thought that Grassy Narrows mercury contamination had been cleaned up twenty-five years ago. No such luck. Just like here in Elmira it's all about talking, stalling and lying. There the English-Wabigoon river system had been contaminated with mercury from pulp and paper mills. Here our drinking water aquifers and the Canagagigue Creek were contaminated both by Uniroyal Chemical while Nutrite and Varnicolor Chemical (at the minimum) contributed to our drinking water aquifers' destruction.

Our authorities have stood back and enabled corporate polluters to escape full responsibility for both immoral and illegal actions. They have handed out free passes known as Indemnities to numerous local polluters including Safety-Kleen (Breslube), Varnicolor Chemical and Uniroyal Chemical. These polluters and so many others are permitted to hire consultants who prostitute their minds instead of their bodies. These consultants range from engineering firms to experts in Risk Assessments and Risk Management. Their goal is not environmental enhancement, public protection or honest research. It is to save their corporate clients money for their own self-serving ends.

This system is in full flower here in Elmira, Ontario. It is and has been enabled by all levels of government from municipal, regional, provincial and federal for decades. This Thursday come on out and watch the first three of those four levels of government do their very best to do the very least possible. They have stickhandled, lied, misdirected and deflected since the 1980s when it became obvious that Elmira's drinking water was in big trouble.