FORAGE FISH FIASCO IN THE CREEK

It's all about being in control of the process. It's all about never breaking your cover. The Ontario M.O.E. are formally appointed to the senior positions by the government of Ontario. No matter what they must never admit to dereliction of duty much less even to being constrained by a lack of resources or by corporate power.

The facts as well as the failures are plain to see for those both honest enough and intellectually willing to look. The Ministry admit in the text of their Biological Assessment that while all fish move to a certain extent that forage fish (shiners, chub, minnows) tend to have a much smaller range than the bigger fish such as carp and suckers. Hence when we examine the six locations up and down the Canagagigue Creek for shiners we can see the pattern clearly. The very lowest concentrations for all four contaminants tested for all five of the six locations tested is the one downstream of the Woolwich Dam. Upstream of the Woolwich Dam was not tested. Concentrations for DDT are highest at the New Jerusalem Rd. bridge albeit not much higher than the concentrations found at the Northfield Dr. bridge further downstream. Concentrations of Dioxins are third highest at the New Jerusalem Rd. bridge. This is the location that the M.O.E. have been trying to sell from the start as the "hot spot" to the exclusion of everything else downstream. The location with the second highest TEQ (Toxic Equivalency Quotient) of Dioxins is downstream of the Elmira Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). Finally the location with the very highest Dioxin TEQ is the last bridge over the Canagagigue, nearest to the Grand River, namely the Jigs Hollow Rd. bridge.

Total PCBs peak at the new Jerusalem Rd. bridge again barely. They are at 110, 98 and 96 parts per billion. The very furthest downstream location tested at the Jigs Hollow Rd. bridge has Total PCBs at 93, 95 and 71 parts per billion. Mercury is very low in shiners with the highest concentrations (.03 ppm) shared at the downstream STP, the New Jerusalem Rd. bridge and the Northfield Dr. bridge .

Finally we look at Chub and bluntnose minnows. What a disgrace this testing for two out of three of the forage fish is. Dioxin TEQs were not determined for the Chub. Furthermore all of one location out of six was tested namely downstream of the Woolwich Dam which is well upstream in the contaminated creek below Chemtura Canada. Basically this testing was nonsensical and ridiculous . While Bluntnose Minnows were tested for all four contaminants they too were only tested in one upstream location. The most upstream location that is namely above the Woolwich Dam. Of course these concentrations of all contaminants were low. Hence the M.O.E. were going through the motions in their testing of forage fish. In fact I even wonder if perhaps they did test them downstream and simply refused to share their data with us. How are we to know otherwise? Their word!!!! Ha! For all we know the concentrations of contaminants in Bluntnose Minnows and Chub downstream of Chemtura were all highest at either Northfield Dr. or Jigs Hollow Rd.. This so called Biological Assessment (fish testing) is a farce and always was meant to be exactly that. It is junk science and the only thing worse than it is the text and ridiculous assumptions and conclusions bearing little relationship to the data that is presented.