THE TRUTH IS THAT OUR IN-TOWN LANDFILLS CONTINUE TO POLLUTE THE CANAGAGIGUE CREEK

We have a total of four known in-town landfills namely M1, M2, First St. Landfill and the Bolender Park Landfill. Three of the four of these are located within mere metres of the Canagagigue Creek. The fourth M1 is at the intersection of Park St. and Union St. putting it at least a few hundred metres away from the creek. The problem of course as mentioned in yesterday's post is that we aren't just talking about domestic garbage including food scraps. In the infinite denseness of our previous generations of ruling politicians we allowed all our local industries, including textiles and chemical industries to dump their chemical wastes into these dumps over the decades. This included drums containing solvents, herbicides, agent orange and the accompanying dioxins. It would have included azo dyes, NDMA and much more. It doesn't get much worse. It is likely that the landfill farthest from the creek (M1) also is the least toxic based upon its very early years of operation. M2 which is right on the south-west bank of the Uniroyal site (now Lanxess) accepted everything from Uniroyal including drums as per testimony from former employees at the Environmental Appeal Board Hearings in Elmira in the very early 1990s. Some of these drums were unearthed in 1965 during the excavations for the Elmira Sewage Treatment Plant which is on the south border of the current M2 and Uniroyal/Lanxess property.

The good news is that currently M2 is somewhat hydraulically contained by both the UACTS and the CTS which are the names for the upper aquifer containment and treatment system as well as the Containment and Treatment System for the upper municipal aquifer. I say "somewhat contained" based upon both decades of reading monthly reports of the extent of containment as well as a review of the Annual Monitoring Report (AMR 2017) done very recently by the Ministry of Environment's hydrogeologist, Mr. Quyum and reported here. Over thirty years of attending UPAC, CPAC, RAC and TAG public meetings I have never been advised of any such containment systems for either the Bolender Landfill or the First St. Landfill.

Anyone who thinks that either Uniroyal or Varnicolor Chemical restrained themselves in their disposal of highly toxic wastes, both solids and liquids, anywhere at all, are dreaming in technicolor. Uniroyal buried dioxins from agent orange in M2. They buried them in uncontained pits and soils on their property including ploughing them into the ground. Varnicolor illegally sent their
liquid and solid toxic wastes to the Region of Waterloo's landfills in Kitchener-Waterloo for years. They also sent still bottoms in drums to the North Woolich Landfill just north of Elmira. Contaminant plumes from there have been reaching drinking wells in the vicinity of Sandy Hills Drive for years, requiring action by the Region of Waterloo.

There are descriptions of wastes from Uniroyal Chemical going into local landfills from MOE and other reports produced in 1985 and later suggesting that filter cloths, polyester resins and paper wastes only went into the Bolender and First St. Landfills. Please! Funny how there aren't any descriptions of the wastes from Walco, Great West Felt, Sulco, Varnicolor, Borg Textiles, McKee etc. Who do you think the source of that information about Uniroyal garbage was? Exactly, from current at the time senior Uniroyal staff to the MOE and GRCA. Do you think those senior staff were going to confirm that just as they sent all their toxic wastes to M2 and to the North Woolwich landfill north of town that they also deposited them into in-town landfills sitting beside the Canagagigue Creek? Hardly!

The other huge advantage to dumping your industrial wastes into landfills immediately beside the creek is that there are no easily defined downgradient groundwater contaminant plumes as there are at the North Woolwich Landfill. That is because the groundwater immediately discharges into the Canagagigue Creek and is quickly diluted in the much larger volume of surface water. This is why groundwater plumes have much higher concentrations of toxic contaminants than surface waters do.

This of course is the leverage that Uniroyal and all their successors have had over both the Ontario MOE and Woolwich Township for decades. This is how this town has been owned by Uniroyal. It's not just about employment, taxes and using local contractors etc.; it's about blowing the whistle on the indiscriminate disposal of toxic wastes next to and into the Canagagigue Creek for the last 73 years and the human and environmental costs still being paid.

These landfills need to have leachate controls installed. That would only put Woolwich Township about fifty years behind the environmental curve if they were to do it now. Lying of course is much easier and cheaper however.