FURTHER QUESTIONS, SOME CLARIFICATIONS REGARDING SURFACE WATER RESULTS

Questions first. Why the inconsistency in format, month to month, in Table C.1 in these monthly Progress Reports? Some months five Volatile Organics (VOCs) are allegedly sampled and other months thirteen are. Similarly some months thirteen Base Nuetral Acid Extractables (BNAs) are sampled and other months only seven. Pesticides and herbicides the same thing. One month it`s only Lindane and the next month supposedly eight pesticides are sampled although as with the VOCs and BNAs the specific compounds names are not listed. That`s a little bizarre. Also why are the detection limits (RDL) and provincial water quality objectives (PWQO) listed in some months and not in others. Is there actually a rationale for these ongoing changes in format or is it simply to keep citizen readers confused and unable to understand what is going on in surface water. The last question I have is why does the January 2019 Lanxess Progress Report refer to Table C.2 in the text but in fact it isn`t included in Appendix 2. In fact it`s nowhere to be found.

A possible clarification. It would be nice if each and every month at the bottom of Table C.2 if the authors would advise how Non Detects are calculated as numerical concentrations. I suspect that this may be part of the reason that some of the numbers stay the same over long periods of time as well as having identical concentrations with other compounds. In other words if the detection limits are identical and two different compounds are both non-detect then possibly their published concentrations in Table C.2 could end up being the same. Quoting Cochran`s statistical test or the Behrens-Fisher test isn`t that helpful to ordinary citizens.

One item that readers need to understand and that is that surface water can and does hide a number of contaminants simply by the volume of flowing water involved. It`s also important to understand that that volume of water can and does change dramatically directly related to recent precipitation. Therefore all non-detects at a flow rate of 2000 litres per second as during spring runoff really doesn`t tell us much as `dilution is the soultion to pollution` still in Ontario. Even at 400 litres per second flow a small amount of contaminant released into the Canagagigue Creek is unlikely to be measured unless the timing and location of the release and subsequent measurement are equisitely in tune. Measuring surface water but once a month allows an awful lot of water to flow downstream unmeasured (i.e. 400 litres per second X 60 seconds per minute X 60 minutes per hour X 24 hours per day X 30 days per month). Sometimes we get lucky and catch the contaminants, most times not.