UNIROYAL CHEMICAL LIED TO LOCAL CITIZENS

Back in the early 1990s Uniroyal and their consultants CRA were planning how to contain the upper aquifer which discharged massive quantities and concentrations of toxic chemicals into the Canagagigue Creek on their Elmira site. As a direct result the Creek was dead. Not so much essentially dead as totally dead. There were no fish, no salamanders, no frogs and no benthic community consisting of sediment dwelling organisms upon which fish and other higher up the food chain organisms would predate on. Probably since around 1972 and most certainly after 1997 the benthic community has returned although they are mostly of the more pollution tolerant species. Fish have also returned although the vast majority are so called "coarse" fish or bottom dwellers that are also pollution tolerant. This would include carp, suckers, chub etc.

Hydraulic containment, also known as Pump & Treat was the least expensive form of remediation of a number of technologies. It required a small upfront cost for drilling pumping wells and constructing a treatment system for the contaminated water withdrawn from the ground. This method however was faster than Uniroyal's favourite which was do nothing, also called natural attenuation. Natural attenuation has long been favoured by polluters and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment as all that is required is the polluter to stop its everyday toxic discharges to the natural environment. Mild pollution can probably be remediated by bacteria in the soil as well as by groundwater dilution in fifteen to twenty-five years.

Uniroyal and CRA proposed starting in 1994 that all that was needed was hydraulic containment of one quadrant (south-west) of their site. They claimed that 97.5% of the contaminants to the Creek were coming from that south-west corner. Citizens' response was where are the discharges from the east side pits (RPE 1-5) going? The response from Uniroyal and CRA was that they were naturally attenuated by wetlands, bullrushes etc. between the east side pits and the Creek. Our retort to that was that there was indeed bull involved but it wasn't bullrushes. Being less sensitive to criticism in those days, Uniroyal ploughed on.

Some of this ploughing it turned out in hindsight was of furrows being intentionally ploughed in a north to south direction on the east side of their site. The purpose was to divert the overflowing east side pits into their south-east wetlands where they were diluted with groundwater at the surface as well as being mildly remediated by the action of some wetland plants. They then of course primarily flowed right back into the Canagagigue Creek either by ground water or surface water flow. This low-lying area was also prone to flooding each spring courtesy of the Canagagigue. Some of the more hydrophobic compounds such as dioxins/furans and DDT compounds readily attached to soil particles and were left behind for later erosion by heavy rains as well as the annual spring flooding.

These furrows have since been admitted to by Uniroyal/Chemtura personnel. They can also be seen on some older aerial photographs. There was also a major swale constructed at some point in time which ran down the immediate west side of the pits. Between the man made furrows and the swale visible on Google Earth satellite photos we now know the truth as to where the bulk of east side waste waters ended up and it was right back into the Creek albeit further downstream past the Uniroyal property lines.

Throughout all this from the 1950s or 60s, the 1990s and later where was the Ontario MOE? Oh yes, whether known as the Ontario Water Resources Commission or the Ministry of Environment, they were right there hand in hand with the polluter and destroyer of our ground and surface waters. They were protecting industry rather than citizens and the environment.