LANXESS AUGUST 2019 PROGRESS REPORT

I'm only going to speak to two issues today in this latest report from Lanxess Canada (i.e. formerly Uniroyal). Firstly new pumping well W9 is back to pumping an average volume of contaminated groundwater through August of zero litres per second. This of course is the well that was supposed to be on-line and pumping 13.6 litres per second about TWO YEARS ago. This is also one of a series of "new" wells that were supposed to either DOUBLE or TRIPLE the volume of off-site (i.e. from Uniroyal/Lanxess) groundwater underneath Elmira being pumped and treated. The reason for this dramatic increase was Conestoga Rovers' and Chemtura's (also formerly Uniroyal) admissions back in November 2012 that the only way for them to successfully clean the Elmira drinking water aquifers by 2028 was by TRIPLING the volume of off-site groundwater being pumped and treated as well as source removal via In Situ Chemical Oxidation (ISCO) at hot spots. Later they informally amended that to a mere DOUBLING of the pump and treat plus they dropped the plans for ISCO after an incompetent and unsuccessful testing of the process.

For the last couple of years the pumping rates have been approximately 20% higher than they were in 2012 and earlier. That is a very long way from tripling (i.e.300%) or doubling (200%) the pumping. A skeptic would call the guilty parties liars. A kinder, gentler person would call them merely ridiculous. There has been no shortage of reasons/excuses for the failures of pumping well W9 to be able to effectively treat the contaminated groundwater that it pumps. The obvious reason to me is that well W9 has its own treatment system rather than being part of the overall treatment system in use since 1992. Oh and that treatment system doesn't appear to be either working or reliable.

The second issue, once again, is Table C.2 in the August Progress Report. All of the Acid Extractable chemicals have lower average (arithmetic mean) contaminant concentrations downstream than upstream. That is just plain weird unless the upstream sources including an industry perhaps as well as the Bolender Landfill are discharging these contaminants into the Canagagigue Creek. These Acid Extractables include chemicals such as various chlorophenols, cresol, and phenol.

The group known as Base/Nuetral Extractables are all over the map. Four of them have higher downstream contaminant concentrations and three have higher upstream concentrations. The norm is for all the downstream concentrations to be higher based upon the effect of leakage to the creek from the Uniroyal/Lanxess site.

Volatile Organic Compounds are also all over the place with four higher concentrations upstream and three higher downstream. It would be nice for Lanxess to address this situation but to date not a peep from them. They can claim that they have had no questions from either RAC or TAG about this and that would likely be accurate. At least publicly they have had no questions. Lanxess however do keep an eye on this Blog and they certainly haven't given me their interpretation as to what is going on nor have they disputed what I am seeing and posting here.