CHEMTURA/LANXESS CURRENT SCAMS = PAST SCAMS IN ELMIRA

Current ongoing scams, deflections, manipulations and delays include the alleged east side soil and groundwater investigation of the Stroh farm nearest to the Chemtura property line. Secondly is the ongoing saga of the contaminated Canagagigue Creek. The water is certainly clean enough for life to have returned even in places downstream, in abundance. It is a poisoned life however and the Dioxins, DDT, PCBs and Mercury are harming all life forms including human beings. Money however almost by definition is the corporate lifeblood and their priority.

Flash back to 1999 here in Elmira. Terry Machen one of the Duke St. residents was threatened with a Harassment charge if he phoned David Ash in the middle of the night again. Apparently David felt that a corporate noxious fumigation wake up of terry was O.K. but a personal phone call to David in the night time was not.

By mid February 1999 Uniroyal had agreed to start paying for hotel or motel accomodation for residents ousted in the middle of the night because of Uniroyal odours. Thatw as at least a minor improvement.

On February 18/99 in the K-W Record Davis Ash is quoted in a Bob Burtt article regarding CPAC that "It isn't as if we walked away from the best thing since sliced bread. We left something that didn't work." The Canadian Chemical Producers Assocn. (CCPA) got into the fray by adding "I question whose interest CPAC is serving." Classy isn't it when corporate polluters and corporate apologists ( CCPA) start lying and criticizing citizen volunteers.

Letters To The Editor were flying such as Ed and Esther Thur's letter in the K-W Record on February 8, 1999. They basically challenged Uniroyal's senior executives to live where they work. In other words live in Elmira where you are stinking the place out. Don't run and hide in Waterloo away from your own stink.

On February 20/99 Frank Etherington of the Record (later a Kitchener Councillor) wrote an article titled "Political stink in Uniroyal's ongoing saga". Shannon Purves-Smith wrote an excellent Letter To The Editor in the Woolwich Observer in regards to David Chadder of Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin (Guelph), air emissions and also David Ash's and Uniroyal's departure from UPAC (Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee).

On UPAC Gerry Heideburrt and Ron Ormson publicly supported UPAC as of course did their Chair, Pat Mclean. She stated that "We (UPAC) are not their PR firm. If Ash thinks that, we have a basic misunderstanding.". She then added "I think UPAC is starting to work as it should, and that's what he (Ash) doesn't like.".

Jon Sykes of the University of Waterloo was quoted in a K-W Record article by Bob Burtt suggesting that political will to clean up was the key. Mr. Sykes referenced problems in Woburn, Massachusetts and Toms River, New Jersey as examples of governmental ineffectiveness. Sylvia Berg and Henry Regier both made comments in the Elmira Independent (Feb. 26/99) advising Dalton McGuinty to do something to allow the Ministry of Environment to do the job they are supposed to be doing.

I wrote a Letter To The Editor for the March 5, 1999 Elmira Independent. One quote is as follows "Uniroyal and david Ash have lost their long time tame committee, and have thus picked up their marbles and left in search of a different game.". Mike Hicknell also sent in a Letter To The Editor to the Independent in which he hammered some local Woolwich Councillors and their myopic pro-business at all costs attitude.

The Uniroyal Wars raged on for many more years and decades.