SURPRISE SURPRISE GUELPH INDUSTRIALISTS WERE NO MORE INTERESTED IN PUBLIC SAFETY & HEALTH THAN THOSE IN KICHENER-WATERLOO, CAMBRIDGE & ELMIRA

 

What do I base that statement upon? It is based upon a 2018 Master's Thesis submitted to the University of Guelph . The specific quote is on page 2 of the Introduction.  That quote is "In the City of Guelph, TCE and in some instances other chemicals have been detected at six urban water supply wells including Smallfield, Sacco, Carter, Emma, Membro and Edinburgh wells (Aquaresource Inc. and Stantec 2010). Two of the wells, Sacco and Smallfield, were taken offline in the early 1990s as a result of detection of low level Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) contamination (Kennel 2008)." My title above is further based upon  the fact that two of the advisers to the Masters student are Dr. Beth Parker and Dr. John Cherry, two preeminent groundwater researchers and two of my favourite hydrogeologists having met both personally in January 2007 and discussed DNAPLS at Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira with them.

Now I might add that the "other chemicals" above likely included breakdown products of Trichloroethene (TCE) such as cisDCE, trans DCE, vinyl chloride and maybe even a dash of tetrachloroethene (PCE). Of the six wells with TCE detections four of them are quite close to the former IMICO site. Talk about slamming the gate decades after the horses (TCE) has bolted! These four wellfields are the Edinburgh, Membro, Carter and Emma wellfields.

Here is a further peculiarity /coincidence between Elmira (Uniroyal) and Guelph (IMICO & others). Both are located extremely close to world class institutions studying groundwater contamination particularly including chlorinated solvents known as DNAPL chemicals such as chlorobenzene, TCE, chlorophenols etc. Despite this both cities seem wholly uninterested in getting world class UNBIASED information from these two world class institutions (U. of Waterloo, U. of Guelph). Are we to believe that both our provincial authorities (MECP) and municipal mayors and councillors are not looking out for the public interest but simply for their own?