K-W RECORD WEIGHS IN ON M.O.E./CHEMTURA/CRA 2028 FAILURE

Today's Waterloo Region Record advises us similar to the Woolwich Observer and CKCO-TV (Kitchener) that the (ir)responsible parties will not achieve their long promised and mandated cleanup in Elmira, Ontario. The story is titled "Elmira cleanup won't meet 2028 deadline". Yours truly suggested as much nearly a decade ago with the statement "The Elmira cleanup is a sham". It was obvious to me then that all the bragging and puffery in the world just wasn't reducing the off-site concentrations adequately. Numerous times between 2006 and 2010 I calculated the percentages of off-site wells with reducing concentration trends, increasing trends and no trends. The no trends were by far in the majority. CPAC in 2012 hired a consultant (Dr. Gail Krantzburg) who came to the same conclusion based upon the data.

Credit goes to Dr. Dick Jackson the Chair of TAG for explaining clearly the technical reasons for this failure. The simplest is of course that pump & treat technology simply on its own isn't up to the job and never was designed to be. The various contaminants have diffused into the less permeable clays of the aquitards between the sand and gravel aquifers. These contaminants are now very slowly back diffusing into the aquifers where they are slowly pumped out (& treated). Dr. Jackson suggests thatb this process is morelikely to take fifty years than thirty as initially predicted.

The first sentence in today's story is incorrect as 2028 will be Thirty years not twenty since the off-site pumping started in 1998. Keep in mind that it took the vartious and assorted twits nearly a decade to even begin the off-site pumping after the two wellfields were shut down in 1989.

Every single error and misstep by the so called "experts" and Q.P.s (qualified persons) has been predicted and pointed out by citizens over the last twenty-seven years. We have been ignored by the other equally guilty parties, the woefully uninformed and intellectually inferior local politicians who have supported this ridiculous "process" since the beginning. Examples abound of citizens correctly pointing out cleanup directions that Conestoga Rovers and Chemtura have refused. These include reinjection of treated water into the aquifers, using In Situ Chemical Oxidation (ISCO) and increased pumping at the heart of the on-site contamination (PW4) rather than at the edges (PW1).

While Councillor Mark Bauman deplores "...that this saga continues to go on"; he personally can take significant discredit for that happening with his continued support of Chemtura/CRA and the Ministry of the Environment during his multiple terms on Council.