NON-COMMUNICATION

Chemtura and CRA made their brag at CPAC in November 2012. They were going to TRIPLE the volume of off-site pumping and treating of the municipal aquifers. Now they did suggest that further study of matters such as ground subsidence and depletion of the aquifers was necessary. To date I can advise that in the last seven years not one public word of either matter has ever been brought forward to CPAC, RAC, or TAG by Chemtura/Lanxess or Conestoga Rovers. It's as if those particular matters/concerns have simply dropped off the face of the earth.

Months to a year or two later Jeff Merriman of Chemtura began talking about DOUBLING the amount of pumping and treating of the municipal aquifers underneath Elmira. As stated, there was still zero mention of ground subsidence or depletion of the aquifers due to greatly increased groundwater pumping. Mr. Merriman also failed to clarify why the promised tripling of pumping had suddenly become a mere doubling. You know it's almost as if Chemtura had been speaking privately to somebody outside of the purview of public CPAC meetings. Somebody perhaps who was no longer a formal representative of Woolwich citizens but whom Chemtura and the MOE still relied on to make deals. Somebody or bodies who set up a group outside of the formal CPAC to talk to Chemtura, CRA, and the MOE. A shadow committee if you will. This sounds an awful lot like the ACC which stands for APT Chemtura Committee which was set up after the new Todd Cowan council bounced Susan Bryant and Pat McLean from CPAC in 2011. The ACC met on the Chemtura site and discussed environmental and cleanup issues in Elmira.

Whether it was the CPAC Chair Pat McLean not passing on all information she received to voting CPAC members such as myself from 2000 to 2008 or her and Susan making deals on their own with Crompton/Chemtura/MOE behind CPAC's back during the same time period, it was counter productive. From the lack of communication from the company and MOE to CPAC members also between late 2010 to September 2015, it has since become clearer that communications with the public were being sidelined and sidetracked. This example regarding pump and treat promises falling into the void never to be heard from again is but one such item.

This is why all UPAC and CPAC meetings were to be held in public. These public meetings were also attended by the media (Elmira Independent) from 1992 until July 2015. This is exactly why individuals allegedly representing UPAC or CPAC should never have been communicating privately outside the UPAC/CPAC forum with Uniroyal/Crompton/Chemtura or Lanxess. Finally this is why the company and the Ministry of Environment should never have been sitting down publicly with CPAC from 2011 to late 2014 while also holding private, by invitation meetings only, on their property with the ACC. This gave our local polluter and their lapdog regulator far too much wiggle room on issues. On each matter they and they alone chose which citizens they wanted to go along with. This was an intentional undermining of formal, public consultation. In fact it made a mockery of true public consultation and at the end of the 2010-2014 term of Council (and CPAC), our world class polluter chose which type of "public consultation" they preferred. Obviously they preferred the Mclean/Bryant version where everything is done in private and even small corporate or government tokens of appreciation to the deal makers are acceptable.