THE POWERLESS SPEAKING A LITTLE TRUTH TO THE KNOWINGLY BLIND

That is how the announcement in today's Woolwich Observer newspaper should be written. The title of the announcement is "Apply to join the Technical Advisory Group Today!" Further the ad should say "Welcome to a volunteer citizens committee where you will be constantly enthralled with professional, self-serving purveyers of factual fictions who will entertain you with a variety of sleight of hand distractions and tricks. Included will be junk science, psuedo science and cargo cult science intended to minimize your understanding of the severity of the environmental problems in our community. If all this fails then outright lying by omission or commission is most certainly on the menu which will be served to you until you choke on it. Also of great importance to those in charge is the preferred tone of deference if not outright subservience to Lanxess, their consultants GHD and finally to the Ministry of Expanded Corporate Pollution (MECP).

A couple of other points in the ad in the Observer. First off it is not "...remediation of Elmira's former municipal aquifer...." It is remediation of Elmira's former drinking water aquifers. Secondly what is this? Are Sandy and buddies setting up two classes of citizen volunteers or is this just more incompetence on display? It states that the term ends in June 2024. Everybody else's ends in approximately may/June 2023 which is six months after the current term of council ends in October/November 2022.

There is some good news. There are some decent and intelligent people on TAG. Unfortunately they will eventually either leave in frustration or disgust as they begin to better understand that this committee is set up strictly for appearances. The RAC (Remediation Advisory Committee) have limited authority but it's still ten times that of TAG. RAC unfortunately are filled with bureaucrats and government employees from the GRCA, Woolwich Township. the Region of Waterloo when they occasionally attend and the Ministry of Environment (MECP) combined with Lanxess (descendant of Uniroyal Chemical). Lanxess and the MOE are simply going through the motions in listening to RAC and RAC bureaucrats know this perfectly well. It's all about the show folks and keeping us little folk entertained with the magic. Call me if and when you really want to clean up the aquifers, the creek and the politics allowing this charade.