Lying, deception, obfuscation, deceit, delay, deflection, avoidance...O.K. you get the picture. They will also pull in all outstanding favours, IOUs and political debts in order to make things go as smoothly as possible. Smoothly for them does not equate with smoothly for the rest of us. I very much doubt that avoiding jail is even on their radar although it should be. I also doubt that as of yet their public liability insurance companies have noticed a change in the wind direction. Yes bought and paid for politicians will always run interference for chemical companies at least until the bodies are lying in the streets. Even the Bhopal disaster was handled and managed in order to mitigate personal responsibility and liability. Think about car accidents in North America. Your insurance company are on the hook for medical costs and damages (health & property) done by the poorest of drivers and then the state steps in and can lay either traffic or even criminal charges for negligence etc. When was the last time that you heard of any corporate executive charged and convicted on criminal charges for negligent on the job injuries and deaths much less for neighbours injured and dying from toxic fumes or drinking water? It just doesn't happen.
Lanxess and the MECP will ignore the blatant failure to clean our poisoned groundwater within thirty years as both promised and mandated. By the way notice how that thirty years managed to get stretched out to 39 years (1989-2028). Typical. They will wax poetic about unknown hydrogeological factors such as diffusion and how surprised they are that aquitards are now back diffusing contaminants adsorbed to them, back into the aquifers as the concentrations in the aquuifers slowly decrease. They will also whine about the extraordinarily low drinking water standard for NDMA ( 9 ppt.) being so difficult to achieve. That is because NDMA is so toxic yet they released it into the natural environment for decades. The MECP will support Lanxess's excuses not because they are accurate as much as they can neither afford nor win a pitched legal battle with the multi national, multi billion dollar corporation. Financial might is usually right in our legal system.
If the MECP lay yet another Control Order on Lanxess (Uniroyal) it will be reinterpreted at Lanxess's will just like the first ones. There will also be private "gentlemens" HA! agreements between Lanxess and the MECP to avoid certain difficult requirements. Uniroyal Chemical were ordered to contain all groundwater on their site and have never done so (UA, ML, BR aquifers at the minimum not done). They were also ordered to remove all DNAPL below the west side ponds and never did so. They did a tiny amount in RPW-5 and TPW-2 and later a bit from RPE-3 and that was it.
In other words the same as 39 years ago the "Orders" will all be for show. We may or may not ever have a clean aquifer again under Elmira.
No comments:
Post a Comment