Probably due to the postal strike my monthly (November) Progress Report just showed up yesterday. What a relief. I checked and sure enough they are pumping the off-site wells lickety-split. Well at lest lickety-split when compared historically with 1) the last 26 1/2 years and 2) when compared to the first five months of this year. You see if there is one thing that Uniroyal and successors have been reliable about it is their inconsistent pumping compared to their stated and written Target Averages. Those Target Averages by the way have the following footnote every month namely: "GHD recommends that LANXESS maintain the target pumping rates greater than or equal to these rates." That of course they simply have not done albeit the excuses are always windy, lengthy and obtuse.
In November 2012 Chemtura publicly promised CPAC that they Chemtura would TRIPLE the amount of water pumped and treated off-site. At the time about 53 litres per second was the amount that ALL the off-site pumping wells seemed capable of maintaining. Later Chemtyra verbally at least talked about Doubling the pumping rate. It never happened or even close. The last five months (July-Nov.) have been between a low of 59.05 l/sec. to a high of 68.8 l/sec. well above historic averages. Here's the kicker though. For decades we the citizens at UPAC, CPAC etc. were advised that there is a balance between on and off site pumping.
Too much off-site pumping while pulling contaminated groundwater out of the subsurface (good) must be matched with also high Lanxess on-site pumping otherwise the off-site pumping will overpower the on-site resulting in a loss of on-site hydraulic containment. This means that the more grossly contaminated property (Lanxess) will be leaking/spewing contaminated groundwater off-site which will undo or reverse that extra off-site pumping. The idea of course is to pump like mad off-site while still maintaining hydraulic containment on-site.
For years the balance was 4.7 litres per second on-site pumping to 53 l/sec off-site. The 4.7 l/sec consisted of both PW4 and PW5 together. Well guess what the geniuses in charge of our Elmira mess have been doing since ? ONE MONTH out of the last THREE YEARS has actually reached 4.7 l/sec monthly average. All the rest are lower, often much lower. This has been going on all the while that the off-site pumping has been either in the high 5o litres per second or the 6os or even a few 70 + litres per second off-site.
My interpretation based upon Lanxess/GHD data and decades of past pumping observations is that the guilty parties including the MECP have given up and are throwing in the towel. They are intentionally dragging contamination off the former Uniroyal site in order to send it eventually downstream.
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