IN THE LAND OF WOOLWICH / OZ

Black is white. East is west. Left is right. Truth is not black or white it's grey. Many, many shades of grey in Woolwich Township.

A year ago Woolwich staff sent a pamphlet to homeowners in and around High St. and George St. in Elmira. The pamphlet was inaccurate and the map attached with it was worse. A copy of the map and reference to the pamphlet was made in the August 3, 2017 Woolwich Observer. Did Woolwich knowingly deceive the residents? That's a silly question because they've been doing that since the first politician ever got elected locally. Was the map alleging that the former Bolender Landfill was not part of the current Bolender Park, an intentional lie? Or perhaps they simply made an honest mistake. I have my opinion and you can have yours.

The proof of integrity or not, now resides in Woolwich Township to come clean with residents. Now that Woolwich are privately admitting that the landfill and its municipal refuse extends beneath the park along with likely local industrial wastes including Uniroyal's; let's see if they will now send another pamphlet to the local residents.

If so it should begin thusly:

"Oops! My bad! Sorry Elmira citizens and residents but we misinformed you last summer. It turns out that we now know that the Bolender Landfill which already has problem levels of methane gas in it, actually is located underneath Bolender Park as well. This may be of interest to those residents who live on George St. and whose backyards actually end where the garbage begins (hopefully). It may also be of interest to those citizen volunteers who donated their time, energy and money into the Splash Pad project. Yes that's the splash pad that they wanted located in Gibson Park but that Council insisted be put in Bolender Park. Well done Woolwich Council. It may also concern any residents of George St. as well as users of the Park who might be thinking of firing up the old Hibatchi barbecue. Sorry but methane explodes. Can you wait for another twenty years or more please?"

Unsurprisingly Mr. Bolender did not exactly donate pristine land to the Township for a Park named after him. Unsurprisingly Woolwich Township have been a whole lot less than forthcoming regarding food waste garbage, industrial wastes and methane in and under our local park as well as abutting up to the neighbour's backyards. NIMBY time anyone?