DID SANDY & MARK EVER SCREW UP WITH DR. RICHARD JACKSON'S APPOINTMENT TO TAG (Sept. 2015)

 I mean mostly the TAG members consisted of Sandy's curling buddies from the Elmira Curling Club plus citizen members on TAG were designed to be second fiddle to RAC which is the government bureaucrats and politicians who know little or nothing. Talk about the perfect pretend "public consultation". A funny thing happened however. Technically and environmentally Dr. Jackson was miles ahead of everybody else on Council, RAC, TAG, Chemtura, CRA and the Ont. Min. of Environment (M.O.E.). He was what could only terrorize Chemtura and the M.O.E. namely an honest, highly credentialed expert and highly experienced environmental professional. And he couldn't be bought or intimidated by those @#$%^&*(.

For sixteen months Dr. Jackson as Chair of TAG made Chemtura, Conestoga Rovers (CRA) and the Ont. M.O.E. cringe and cower. He called them out bluntly and incessantly. Why did he do that? Probably because he knew that they had hijacked the cleanup of Elmira's soils, ground and surface water and talked world class cleanup while delivering third class or worse results. Frankly he made it clear that he was appalled by their version of an environmental cleanup.

Following is a short list of his serious criticisms of their cleanup:

Suspended Sediments in the Canagagigue Creek. For decades they were throwing out the baby with the bath water. In other words they tested and sampled the water for everything AFTER filtering out the really harmful suspended sediments transporting Uniroyal Chemical's toxins downstream to local neighbours and the rest of Waterloo Region.

Dioxins in and around the Creek. Dr. Jackson wanted a truly independent company to test for dioxin contamination in soils and sediments downstream from Uniroyal/Chemtura. He even suggested that he had zero confidence in the M.O.E. doing it but would have confidence if Hatfield Consultants with their extensive expertise did the work.

In Situ Chemical Oxidation (ISCO) pilot program attempts. He referred to them as amateurish among other things. According to Dr. Jackson the attempt at off-site contaminant source removal was set up to fail. Readers keep in mind that yours truly made a Delegation/Presentation to CPAC back about 2009 extolling not only the virtues of ISCO but also the fact that it was used to remove Trichloroethylene (TCE) from groundwater in Cambridge from the Northstar Aerospace Co. and another. 

Chemtura/CRA failure to recognize a major basal gravel unit at the bottom of the Municpal Aquifer that was a strong preferential pathway for contaminated groundwater flow . As I recall targeting this pathway for pump & treat wells or other remediation would/could have cut many years off of cleanup times.

Back Diffusion from soils back into groundwater was not properly understood nor planned for. Personally I'm thinking that this is where the DNAPL coverups and intentional DNAPL investigation failures contributed to the failure to achieve drinking water standards by 2028. Uniroyal contaminants migrate through both aquifers and into aquitards and other less permeable underground stratigraphy. After decades of pumping aquifers to reduce their contaminant concentrations, the contaminants back diffuse from aquitards etc. into the aquifers. This back diffusion based upon the quantity of contamination bound to the soils results in slow increases in groundwater contamination again (i.e. "Rebound"). 

There is more. I am currently reading through my Elmira Advocate postings of TAG meetings between September 2015 and December 2016. The majority of these postings occurred the next day after the public TAG meetings which I attended and took notes at.