FAMILY COMMITMENT TWO DAYS AGO HENCE NO POST THEN (Sat.) - EXERPTS FROM MY RAC DELEGATION

 

My RAC Delegation was two pages long and I read it to RAC last Thursday evening and after the meeting was over I e-mailed it to Lisa Schaefer, Support Person, for RAC and TAG. I might add that although there were some fairly strong comments in it, I actually self-edited at least a few gratuitous comments out of it during my reading of it and then immediately prior to e-mailing it off.

Oh heck I'm going to publish my RAC Delegation in its' entirety. Here goes!  

September 29, 2022

MECP Sediment and Fish monitoring Results

Good evening RAC and TAG members. The report I am about to comment on is dated September 1, 2022 and describes monitoring results from two years ago done by the Environmental Monitoring and Reporting Branch (EMRB) of the MECP. It is titled “Sediment and forage fish monitoring results from September 2020 in Canagagigue Creek”.

Over the past 32 years I have read literally many hundreds of so called “technical” reports from Uniroyal Chemical, Conestoga Rovers, Morrison & Beatty, RMOW, Lanxess, GHD, MOE/MECP etc. I am confident in saying that this report is NOT the absolute worst of the bunch. Various legitimate scientists, unaffiliated with Elmira, Ontario's biggest polluter, have referred to some of these reports as junk science and psuedo science. I prefer to generally think of them as quasi legal documents being presented to mostly appreciative “fellow travellers” by friendly defence lawyers. Hence they are often more subjective than objective which kind of does pervert science if you think about it.

The MECP i.e. Ontario Ministry of Environment appear to be somewhat urgently selling two narratives in this report. The first narrative is what I call the real estate theorem. That would be the well known “Location, Location, Location” theorem. They are suggesting that most or all contaminant concentrations are highest at the Uniroyal/Lanxess site and nearby while decreasing as sampling occurs further downstream all the way to the Grand River. This narrative appeals to Lanxess because it lowers their cleanup costs in the Creek as they focus solely on their site and at most a few hundred metres downstream in a five mile long creek. It also appeals to busy citizens, uninformed or otherwise, who find it intuitively logical that just as in groundwater, the highest concentrations are nearest the source and the contaminant plume diminishes with distance from the dumping source. We will get back to this.

The second narrative of the Ministry of Environment really surprised me. Since my personal discovery of the Stroh Drain in 2014 running for approximately 125 metres parallel and only thirty feet away from the Lanxess property line, all friendly parties to Chemtura/Lanxess have done their best to ignore it. Absolute refusals to test soils around the 450 metre waterway to the Canagagigue Creek as well as three to four only sediment sample locations from the bottom of the Stroh Drain over the course of this 450 metre long waterway diverting groundwater from Uniroyal/Lanxess onto the Stroh and Martin properties has been blatant behaviour. Hence my surprise that the MECP have jumped in where angels fear to tread. They have categorically and repeatedly stated that the Stroh Drain is NOT a source of contamination to the Creek. Well now!

I'm going back now to the MECP's narrative about contaminant concentrations being a function of Location, Location, Location. The simplest explanation as to why this is wrong is that their own data, Figures and Tables contradict that story! Yes there are instances in sediments where this does appear to be so. Unfortunately there are just as many or more where contaminant concentrations in sediment are HIGHER downstream than either at the Lanxess site or the next closest downstream sampling location.

I was initially reluctant to give any credence to the MECP's apparent belief that fish swimming in the Creek could somehow be indicators of where the contaminants are highest. A biologist mentioned in a following paragraph suggested that for certain species, minimal travel could be possible. Also the MECP clearly believe it to be so based upon their comparison of fish tissue contaminant residues with location in the Creek. Unfortunately the only way their bar graphs support this is when they are not consistent in comparing tissue contaminants upstream and downstream in the SAME SPECIES! In other words contaminant results for example of common shiners increase with distance downstream but by putting creek chub or bluntnose minnows into the sampling mix at the Lanxess site and just below the Sewage Treatment Plant, the bar graphs appear to show higher concentrations upstream. This is visually misleading. I am not quoting specific Figures and Tables here due to a lack of time allotted to me. Feel free to read and see it for yourselves.

There are other factors at work here regarding any contaminant pattern in the Creek and the MECP know perfectly well what they are. These other factors are well known and understood by biologists and other scientists. Distance can be a factor but it clearly is NOT either the biggest or only factor. Particle size distribution as in sediment fines also determines TOC or Total Organic Carbon. In other words locations with more clay and silt versus sand and coarse sand will generally have higher TOCS. Similarly these higher TOC values also correspond with higher organic chemical contamination in these sediments. The MECP in this report (pg. 6) blessed us with all of ten lines of text explaining TOC and somehow they failed to mention its' significance to contaminant concentrations being of greater importance than distance from the site.

The second narrative of the MECP regarding the Stroh Drain is also problematic. The MECP are clearly backing Lanxess's fear and refusal to honestly sample the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm (SDDB). Indeed technically speaking the Stroh Drain is Not the “source” of anything. It is a partially man made pathway and drain however. It is also NOT an “agricultural” drain. Yes the Stroh property further north grows crops as well as to the east but the man made drain which joins a natural creek, sometimes

referred to as Martin's Creek, is well treed at the north end and does not run through tilled fields on either property. It is also partially diverted into the Martin's swimming pond and perhaps the MECP and Lanxess fear liability issues. The minimal sediment sampling in the Drain has revealed DDD and dioxins/furans in excess of formal criteria. Dioxins/furans far in excess of formal sediment criteria. Apparently minimal sediment sampling at a much shallower depth than where GHD found 24.4 ppt dioxin/furans, combined with wishful thinking and poor scientific methodology has informed the MECP's opinion on the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm.

I have also had a University level biologist advise me that there are several issues with the methodology in this report. It includes inappropriate bar graphs versus point graphs, over interpreting of the data, opportunistic sampling and inconsistencies in comparing contaminant concentrations to location while using different species of fish simultaneously. There are many other problems including misstated road names, phantom creek chub being missing in the text listing species but then appearing in graphs, references to upstream and downstream locations in the Stroh Drain when in fact the MECP only sampled in two downstream locations both beside the Martin pond and likely not more than 75-100 feet apart and both very close to the Canagagigue Creek.

In hindsight this report is likely on a par with CRA and GHD past poor reports. I have seen some good reports from the MECP specifically from Jaimie Connelly, Bob Hillier and Cynthia Doughty regarding groundwater issues. This MECP report appears to be unsigned which I understand.

Alan Marshall CPAC & EH-Team member