THANK YOU MECP, FIVE YEARS TOO LATE AS ALWAYS

 So many tricks, so many deceptions, so many lies and corporate polluters have mastered them all. What really stings however is when our authorities are in bed with these professional liars as the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MECP) seem determined to prove.  They have belatedly released their latest critiques of the Lanxess/Stantec draft HHERA or Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment for the Canagagigue Creek.  The bottom line is Lanxess/Stantec's claim that all downstream risks for more than five miles "are acceptable". Well we've known by their lack of cleanup over the last fourty years that the suffering,  ill health or deaths of either wildlife or human beings "are acceptable" to them. This is precisely why Dr. Richard Jackson as well as TAG way back in 2016 expressed skepticism that any Risk Assessment under the control of Chemtura/Lanxess would result in appropriate Creek cleanup.

I give credit to Joe Kelly (TAG member at the time) for first raising the alarm about poor sediment sampling techniques in the Creek by GHD on behalf of Chemtura/Lanxess. I also got on the bandwagon and repeatedly have also tried to pound home the point that improper sampling using shovels instead of proper core samplers reduces the amount of fines captured. Both dioxins/furans and DDT adhere to the sediment fines at the bottom of the Creek. Hence when you attempt to sample in the wrong location where there is alleged "armouring" (stones, cobbles, rocks) on the bottom of the Creek, the core samplers can not penetrate through the armouring. Then GHD, instead of moving fifty metres one direction or the other, instead use a shovel to get through the "armouring" and then when drawing the shovel upwards through the water column lose most of the fines and most of the DDT and dioxins in the sample. It's just one more scam as I've written about here before in which polluters in charge of their own cleanup can fudge the numbers in their favour.

The report is oddly organized such that advising you that the details of the previous paragraph are on page 3 of the report dated December 20, 2023 is not perfectly clear. However by referencing page 3 of the eleven page report dated December 20, 2023 should narrow things down. The MECP go even further and advise us that their 2014/15 sampling of sediments have resulted in sediment samples dominated by silt, clay and small to medium sands VERSUS Lanxess/GHD/Stantec (2017) sediment samples that are dominated by COARSE SANDS and GRAVEL . 

Beyond contempt.