Why would they do that? Money obviously is the most likely culprit. Have they figured out that if they can't reach the 2028 Elmira groundwater cleanup deadline then they may as well cut back on pumping and treating in order to save themselves money? But wait a minute! Their off-site (i.e. beneath Elmira vs. beneath their site) pumping figures don't reflect that. In fact they are pumping as much or more off-site than they've ever pumped. Ahh! The dirty, slimy, rotten so and so's! Notice here that I have not named Hadley, Lou, Jason or Lubna or anybody else from Lanxess/GHD/MECP as specifically being the "...dirty, slimy, rotten so and so's." That could be construed as either rude or disrespectful and heaven forbid I'd never want anybody to suspect that I have zero respect for professional liars, especially those on the taxpayers' payroll, who would dissemble or deceive their true employers.
So what are the poor, misguided, obviously soul and ethics damaged folks at Lanxess doing? Well simply by looking backwards, something I challenge TRAC to do now and then, one can learn the answer. Since 2019 Lanxess, right in front of the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MECP), are significantly cutting back on their on-site Municipal Upper Aquifer pumping. Now keep in mind they've already achieved permission not to have to maintain 100% hydraulic containment on their site as they were originally ordered to do. The sad theory is that contaminants that escape from their north-west property boundary allegedly are recaptured by either on-site PW4 or off-site W5 A/B. This scheme supported by CPAC, APTE and the MECP at the time appears not to worry that they (Uniroyal/Crompton) have increased contamination for private property owners along the west side of their industrial site. This concession saved the company money just as their unilateral/bilateral decision starting in 2019 to cut back on pumping the most heavily contaminated and hence most expensive pump & treat on-site area did so.
Way back in time, before RAC/TAG & later TRAC came along, one Jeff Merriman from Chemtura promised CPAC that on-site pumping (PW4 & PW5 at the time) would average 6.0 litres per second in order to assure full on-site hydraulic containment. Averages probably for a while were closer to 5.8 or 5.9 litres/sec but they were at least close. Then under Lanxess Canada they started to fall and continued to do so. Now certain honest, albeit softly misguided individuals currently on TRAC such as Sebastian do not have the full past pumping regimens of all pumping wells at their fingertips as I do. Most certainly neither does Susan Bryant who does not share Sebastian's attributes of honesty and being only softly misguided. Hence TRAC mostly composed of citizen members with less than five years experience have simply ignored both on and off site pumping rates because they have nothing to compare them to despite 34 1/2 years of on-site pumping and more than 28 years of off-site pumping. All the data are in the monthly Progress Reports although that's too onerous for volunteers to dig through as I have.
So in the short term Lanxess cut back on their most expensive pumping and treatment costs AND guess what? By pumping less on-site and more off-site they are intentionally losing on-site hydraulic containment. This means that they are purposefully drawing contaminants off their site where they Lanxess only pay 50% of those cleanup costs versus 100% of all on-site treatment costs. We the taxpayers pay the other 50% of the off-site costs. This of course also lengthens and stretches out the time needed to fully and properly remediate the (off-site) Elmira Aquifers.
I call this at the least gamesmanship and at the worst fraud. Certainly it also shows gross disrespect of Elmira citizens and all citizen taxpayers. Not a peep out of RAC/TAG or TRAC because mayor Sandy Shantz intentionally eliminated those of us on CPAC in late 2015 with the knowledge and honesty to oppose this deception and gamesmanship.
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