STILL DEFINITELY IS NOT PUBLIC CONSULTATION

Today at 3 pm. the Remediation Advisory Committee (RAC) quarterly meeting will be held in Woolwich Council Chambers. I assume that our mayoralty pretender, Sandy Shantz, will be the sole chair as Mark Bauman is no longer a council member. A week ago I listed the Agenda items for today's meeting. Ramin Ansari's (Lanxess) suggestion that a further meeting will be held in the first quarter of 2019 to discuss the Interceptor Trench information presented at the last RAC meeting in September is inadequate and inappropriate. He and Lanxess have had three months to look into the matter. The first quarter of 2019 could take us to the end of March. That is six months after new and devastating information was presented in Council Chambers to Lanxess and it was done at the request of Woolwich Councillor Mark Bauman. Is it any wonder it has taken us thirty years to get to the point that ten years of serious and focused efforts could have and should have done?

No one else on TAG or RAC have been able to take the lead on the Interceptor Trench issue. Fortunately TAG member Dr. Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach with his background on the last (and best) CPAC and his ongoing membership as a CPAC member stepped up on this issue. He was present both in 2014 when I raised the matter at a public CPAC meeting and he was the recipient along with the other CPAC members of the new data (Affidavits & diagram) that I found last summer. Hence he too pushed for this matter to be discussed and gave his immediate acceptance to speak to Lanxess after the meeting along with my assistance.

The discussion with Lanxess while in a public place (council chambers) was off the books. Neither my name, Sebastian's, nor the words "Interceptor Trench" were mentioned in the Minutes although Lisa Schaefer did indicate in the Minutes that this meeting took place after the regularly scheduled RAC meeting. The three to six month wait for feedback is unconscionable. This is not public consultation. It isn't even close. Having a veto over the membership of the appointed public representatives and exercising it is abominable. Not having to respond either within a reasonable length of time or at all to any stakeholder member of the public, much less a stakeholder with a nearly thirty year history of participation and research, is also abominable. This will eventually bite all the guilty parties in the as. and that includes Sandy Shantz.