2017 CANAGAGIGUE CREEK SEDIMENT AND FLOODPLAIN SOIL INVESTIGATION

A hard copy of this report was delivered to my home by Fedex the other day. That is appreciated but it is also necessary. Otherwise along with the personal cost of printing off one's own copies is the fact that the maps are all reduced in size to one page versus the fold out maps (2 pages) in the original report. Also many of us do not have colour printers only black and white. Therefore many of these Figures (maps) have colour coded lines and parameters etc. that you can't see on black and white copies. All in all if either government agencies or proponents and polluters want to suggest that they are involved in public consultation then hard copies of technical reports to the public are necessary.

First impressions only at this point in time. Afterall I haven't yet read the report in its' entirety. The Canagagigue Creek is highly and disgustingly polluted. George Karlos of the Ministry of Environment (M.O.E.) advised CPAC back in 2012 that they the M.O.E. were going to do a study of the creek to "reassure" the public. God did I laugh about that then and since.

The creek is highly polluted with Dioxins and DDT. Plus a ton of other manmade chemicals and pollutants. Those others of course I haven't found as yet in this report, only Dioxins and DDT. The others include PCBs, mercury, PAHs (Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons) and oh so much more. None of this stuff is good for either human beings, life in the creek or wildlife in and around the creek. Why has it taken six years of studies, now twenty-nine years after Elmira's drinking wells were shut down, just to get to the point of thinking about a Work Plan to actually clean up the creek not to just study it some more?

There are different criteria for dioxins in soil versus in the creek sediments. There are different criteria for soil within 30 metres of a waterway than further away. DDT criteria for both soil and sediments are measured in either parts per billion or even parts per million. They are routinely exceeded throughout the study areas in this report. Dioxin criteria are measured in parts per trillion which are between a thousand and a million times smaller than the DDT criteria. DDT is nasty especially for wildlife but Dioxins are in a whole class of nasty all by themselves for all lifeforms. How stupid are we as humans to have spread them and other toxins throughout our world?

There has been a lot of sampling in this study. Undoubtedly it was expensive. That said I am concerned at first glance in regards to spatial extents. I have criticized the past multiple studies for their blatant sampling biases. While all the studies have referenced 7.5 km (5 miles) of creek downstream of Uniroyal/Lanxess to the Grand River; they have all assiduously avoided actually sampling the entire length, somewhat unlike the 1995-96 Jaagumagi and Bedard study (M.O.E.) which did sample and analyse areas further downstream.

Up until this study the focus (and bias) was the New Jerusalem Road area and upriver. Now they seem to have added one more area around Northfield Drive. While that addition is good I as yet still don't remotely see the entire creek being carefully sampled and analysed. This I can tell you. Wherever they have sampled they seem to have found major contamination. Afterall while the creek may not be a pipe per se, in a sense it is. All the contamination originating from the Uniroyal site, after it has directly or indirectly (Stroh & Martin properties) found its' way into the creek, ends up going the full length and eventually into the Grand River, our Heritage River. Yes these contaminants get hung up both in creekbank soils and floodplain soils. Yes they get entrapped in the bottom of the creek in sediments both shallow and deep. Year in and year out floods of various strengths scour the Canagagigue Creek. The force of the water is incredible as it carries these contaminants further downstream. Yet surprisingly we still have Dioxins and DDT both beside the Lanxess property as well as in the upper reaches as well as the lower ones. It is still coming from the site as well as from neighbours' sites contaminated by Uniroyal Chemical. Containment is only a word not a reality in regards to pollution from the Uniroyal/Lanxess site.