FORMER ELECTROHOME SITE STILL CONTAMINATED - APARTMENT BUILDING PLANNED

We are talking about the decades long contaminated site at Duke and Shanley St. in Kitchener. The contamination is from a former owner dumping chemical solvents on the site. Both my expectation and recollection is that these solvents include DNAPLS or Dense Non Aqueous Phase Liquids. One example would be Trichloroethylene (TCE) which is the solvent that was either dumped or spilled by Northstar Aerospace in the Bishop St. community in Cambridge and which resuled in mass indoor air poisonings of residents there. ........................................................................................................................ We are advised in the article in today's Waterloo Region Record titled "8-storey apartment building planned for the former Electrohome site" that "The environmental contamination on the property is extensive...". That first of all is shameful. This is a residential neighbourhood in which both children and vulnerable adults have been living for decades. Secondly it tells me that most likely these dumped solvents are indeed DNAPL chemicals which include chlorinated solvents such as TCE. These DNAPLS will have been slowly dissolving into the groundwater for decades contaminating it. Do we really think that we have such a surplus of potable water that we can frivolously permit continued industrial destruction of our groundwater? I think not. Secondly TCE in particular can enter homes via soil vapour intrusion. This is exactly what happened in Cambridge and numerous other towns and cities across North America with lethal results including various cancers. ................................................................................................................... Our esteemed authorities, both municipal and provincial, have determined that it is cheaper to ignore soil and groundwater contamination even in residential areas than to proactively remediate it before residents and citizens suffer the health consequences. Afterall I expect that they and their children and families will be advised privately not to live in specific contaminated areas throughout Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. Yet one more perk of being a politician.