THE STROH PROPERTY & THE HEALTH BATTLE AT UNIROYAL/LANXESS

 

The first I estimate as 99.5% a proven issue based upon facts, documentation, maps and long accepted scientific protocols and methodologies. The recently publicly stated (K-W Record May 1/25) battle over compensation to Uniroyal Chemical workers due to cancer diagnoses after exposure to Agent Orange I am less certain of due to less evidence to date. While it certainly makes sense to me that a unionized environment would hold the employer accountable for premature deaths and excess cancers contracted on the job; nevertheless both parties kept it very quiet. That said our (dishonest and corrupt?) authorities will certainly have all the facts available to them. However just like the bogus and failed Elmira cleanup over the last 35 years that could prove of little use to the public interest. Our politicians are securely nestled between the sheets with every level of government and view that as long term in their best interests and the public interest be damned.

Both issues strike to the heart of the failed cleanup. How can Lanxess and the Min. of Environment (MECP) claim that the downstream Canagagigue Creek with Agent Orange (dioxin) in excess of health criteria in soils, sediments and fish tissues  is "acceptable" AFTER they've paid compensation to their own badly affected employees? Similarly how can Lanxess and the MECP claim that they've stopped the discharge of dioxins (& so much more) to the Creek when they refuse to seriously examine publicly the topographical maps that both their consultants (CRA) and the MOE/MECP, Region of Waterloo, GRCA have produced?

Those topographical contour lines absolutely prove that contaminated surface waters from Uniroyal Chemical's east side pits (RPE 1-5 etc.) overflowed and ran onto the Stroh property and we know exactly where. According to one source they discharged into a deep, pre-dug pit and soaked into the ground from there. Those dioxins, DDT and more have adhered to soils for the last half century plus but can and will be mobilized over decades of erosion and both natural and man made actions such as road building, excavations and construction. Some of these toxins have been leaking for decades and the rest simply await their day to move downstream including into the Grand River and through Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge eventually ending up in Lake Erie where citizens will eventually be forced to recycle them back here for drinking water.