WOOLWICH OBSERVER'S TAKE ON THE LAST RAC MEETING

 Leah Gerber wrote the story and as usual she did a good job. Unfortunately of course there was a ton of nonsense, stupidity and historical revisionism from both Ramin Ansari and Jason Rice at that meeting. When you have successfully captured the local political structure it's pretty easy to be confident in selling even the most outrageous crap as being factual.

 Oh and here by the way is a plug for the Observer. Despite Ms. Gerber's being constrained to reporting upon what only hand selected and pre-verified spokespersons have to say, her efforts should get citizens doing some thinking on the subject. Right now the Observer and other newspapers are hurting financially. The Observer are looking to sell subscriptions annually or even for as long as five years. Our family subscribed and paid for one year and fully expect to renew that each year. 

The Ministry of Environment are hoping to build support for a new Control Order. Why? The last two (1991, 2000) have done little or nothing other than to reveal the impotency of the MECP and their stupid, non-binding Control Orders that don't even have consequences when the polluter fails to achieve what was ordered.  These Control Orders are clearly for public relations purposes and it seems obvious that privately the MECP (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) advise the polluter what they really would like accomplished (mostly visual public relations efforts) versus some more onerous, expensive and substantial remediation. 

Ramin also has been trying to sell the idea of oh gosh how wasteful it is to pump contaminated groundwater, treat it allegedly to drinking water standards (it isn't) and then pump it into the Canagagigue Creek. He is bleating about sustainability, unnecessary electricity useage and carbon footprints. Give me a break! He is a master at selling self-serving (Lanxess) ideas to lessen their financial liability. If it also reduces their public culpability, well then that's a bonus. 

Both parties as well as Woolwich Township are also looking for public support by talking up some limited public consultation regarding these future self-serving plans of both Lanxess and the MECP. To date all three parties have shown a breathtaking contempt for real public consultation by keen, enthusiastic and knowledgeable local citizens. They hand picked their citizen rep decades ago and are sticking with her despite her not being either a Canadian citizen nor even a resident of Woolwich Township any more. She is however very amenable to private meetings with them as well as private deals, only allegedly in the public interest. That and worse is their idea of "public consultation".