FRANK ROVERS & DNAPLS ON THE UNIROYAL / LANXESS SITE

Today's Waterloo Region Record carries the obituary of Frank Rovers, the founder of the now world wide consulting firm Conestoga Rovers & Associates (CRA). That said CRA were bought out a couple of years back and are now known as GHD. GHD now represents Chemtura/Lanxess as CRA represented Uniroyal/Crompton and Chemtura.

The obituary speaks glowingly of Mr. Rovers and as well there are two current CPAC (Citizens Public Advisory Committee) members who knew him personally. Both of them worked for CRA decades ago. They described him this morning as a very interesting and driven individual.

The one and only time he showed up at a UPAC (Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee) meeting very early in the 1990s, I was absent. Years later Susan Bryant advised me that he had told UPAC that the Uniroyal site was filled with DNAPLS whether free phase or residual. Conveniently UPAC and later CPAC seemed to have great difficulty in remembering Frank's words. According to Susan, Frank's purpose was to suggest/advise that because of the quantity and wide dispersion of DNAPL; that rather than chase them down, hydraulic containment of the hence contaminated groundwater was the way to go. At the time that was the understanding and belief of academic experts as well who studied DNAPLS. We were disabused however at a January 2007 meeting at the University of Waterloo with Dr. John Cherry and Dr. Beth Parker. The we included Wilf Ruland , hydrogeologist, and Susan, Pat McLean and myself. Both Doctors advised that hydrogeologists had learned that removal, chemical breakdown or even encapsulation of DNAPLS was now recommended. Simply leaving them in the ground was far too dangerous and guaranteed decades to centuries of slow dissolution of the DNAPLS into the groundwater effectively contaminating it above drinking water standards for that time period and longer.

Again this meeting with two world preeminent DNAPL researchers went almost nowhere. Pat and Susan appeared intent on glasnost or rapprochement with Cromton/Chemtura and Wilf's continued part time work with CPAC was dependent as well upon his getting along with both Susan and Pat as well apparently with the Ministry of Environment and Crompton. I argued to no avail that a presentation needed to be made to CPAC about this meeting. Later that fall Pat and Susan started their backdoor campaign to remove me from CPAC. I do not believe the timing with the DNAPL revelations was coincidental.