OFF-SITE PUMPING IN ELMIRA BACK IN THE CRAPPER AGAIN

Really is it any surprise that we are not going to achieve the mandated (at least until the MOE/MECP rewrite the rules) 2028 deadline for restoration of the Elmira Aquifers to drinking water standards? Speaking of rewriting the rules the polite term for that is an Amendment. Perhaps an Amended Control Order. Perhaps nothing more than an informal, by the way if it pleases you Lanxess, would you be O.K. with moving your legally mandated (i.e. written in very soluble stone) 2028 deadline for restoration of the Elmira drinking water aquifers to say 2048? That unlikely date for success would however make myself and a few other still concerned citizens within a whisker of a century old. Surely by then we will no longer still be poking, prodding and making pests of ourselves as a few of us have for the last thirty plus years.

On June 5 here in the Elmira Advocate I posted about the March and April Progress Reports (or at least their groundwater pumping rates). Eight days later I'm posting about the May Progress Report received yesterday. On-site pumping is O.K. I guess although it's never really achieved Jeff Merriman's (Chemtura) verbal promise of 6 litres per second. Off-site pumping however, as the title above indicates, is back in the crapper. As you may recall February 2020 was completely in the crapper, March was back to the old Target Rate (close to 53 l/sec) and April was at the current off-site Target Rate for all off-site wells namely 65 l/sec. Well guess where May is? You got it... back around 52 l/sec still shy of the wholly discredited 53.5 l/sec Target Rate way back in November 2012 going on eight years ago. What the bloody hell?

Lanxess Canada (former Uniroyal Chemical) for every excuse in the book really in my opinion aren't even trying. Have they already privately negotiated the new agreement with the Ontario Ministry of Corporate Pollution (MECP) also known as the Ministry of Environment, Conservation & Parks (MECP)? Do they have guarantees from their so called "regulator" that they will not be charged for their environmental failures? How can anyone justify such totally crappy results over such an incredibly long time period? It makes the MOE/MECP look like nothing more than corporate shills.