LOVE CANAL NORTH - UNIROYAL, CROMPTON, CHEMTURA & NOW LANXESS

The K-W Record did a story in 1980, a year after the Love Canal story broke. It was a comparison between our very own Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira and the infamous Love Canal in the United States. The Ontario Ministry of Environment stated in the story that Uniroyal could never cause a similar disaster with their buried on-site wastes for two reasons. Firstly the chemicals were buried in plastic lined pits and secondly because the company and the site were under government supervision. Well how did that exactly turn out again?

To say that the M.O.E. claim was disingenuous is putting it mildly. It was their "supervision" in the first place that allowed the company to bury the most highly toxic of wastes both beside a surface water body (Canagagigue Creek) and immediately above the underground aquifer which supplied Elmira with its' drinking water. Nice job that.

As far as plastic lined pits that's a new one on me. Yes they allegedly had plastic on top of their two "consolidation" pits, RPE 4 & 5. That however was to prevent rainfall from entering the pit and like a bathtub then overflow the liquids over the top. By the way whether the plastic kept rain out I don't know but I do know that it sure didn't stop pesticide odours from exiting the pits and I've got the Trespass citation from way back in 1991 to prove it.

All the pits and ponds installed in the 1940s and 1950s were unlined and leaked like a sieve. They were then lined with CLAY in 1970 and continued leaking albeit at a slower pace. CH2MHILL, consultants to the Region of Waterloo, estimated in 1992 that after clay lining the west side operating ponds leaked about 3,400 litres per day. The likely reason that clay was used was because the toxic stew of wastes Uniroyal had would likely have quickly dissolved and gone right through any plastic sheeting on the market at the time.

The last point is this. Love Canal was horrific because people including children were living right on top of it. The actual volume of wastes was a small fraction of the volume here in Elmira. In other words Love Canal was actually small potatoes compared to our local mess. Their suffering however was not.