LICKSPITTLES, YES MEN & WOMEN, COOPTEES, CLIENT DRIVEN CONSULTANTS ARE ALL WELCOME IN ELMIRA, ONTARIO

 

Maybe I've approached this the wrong way. Yes I tried with this new Council to get them on the right track early. We had a group meeting at Dr. Dan Holt's the first January after they were elected in October 2022. I held a Hydrogeology 101 course for them at the Township offices back in 2023 and I did see some genuine interest and willingness to learn from a couple of councillors. Since then however it's clear to me that they've been shown a path to avoid trouble, discord, dissent and frankly massive work. 

I was speaking with an educated individual recently who described a work situation in which incompetence and getting along to go along were the norm.  The leaders and bosses were out of their depth and totally reliant upon others to do the actual work. These bosses then attended meetings and patted each other on the backs for alleged good work and improvements. Meanwhile those in the trenches could clearly see gaps in programs and procedures but could not convince their "superiors" to make the necessary changes. Routines and practices while not well understood by the bosses were however entrenched.  If there had not been a disaster or crisis so far then their attitude was don't make any significant changes. 

Is this the same mentality as is prevalent in Elmira around the groundwater cleanup? Here it's even worse as the so called bosses have financial skin in the game. Until or unless there is massive unrest by local citizens then Lanxess Canada are going to stick to the tried ,true and failed cleanup that's been ongoing for almost thirty years. The failures are not only from making bad cleanup decisions thirty plus years ago but also from poor implementation of those decisions. In other words the corporate successors to Uniroyal Chemical have never maintained the pumping regimens that they sold to the other stakeholders as adequate to do the job. Hence failure was obvious to those of us who weren't playing the game just to get along and go along.

Unfortunately the mantra here by local politicians is that magically speaking nicely and being nice will make up for obvious remediation flaws and failures. It has not and never will. But everyone involved are friends and getting along well don't you know. People continue getting cancers and other ailments exacerbated by local toxins but heaven forbid any harsh words are thrown at anybody no matter how egregious the lack of cleanup provocation.