LESS CORRUPT (?) BUT A LOT MORE DECEITFUL - VARNICOLOR CHEMICAL CONTRIBUTED BOTH NDMA & CHLOROBENZENE TO OUR DRINKING WATER AQUIFERS

 

ONLY BY MASS POLITICAL AGREEMENT & COLLUSION WAS IT POSSIBLE

This of course entailed lying to citizens, residents, voters, men, women and children for the last thirty-seven years. It required gross contempt by every single municipal and regional councillor in the know as well as by provincial Ministry of Environment officials and likely provincial politicians. Is it even possible that our federal government kept a hands off attitude towards the Elmira Water Crisis all these decades because they didn't want to get their hands dirty? Hmm that seems unlikely doesn't it?

The coverup of Varnicolor Chemical's environmental disaster started early with local Min. of Environment (M.O.E.) officials lying to local media and citizens and even going so far as to claim regular passed inspections by the company. This was despite by that time four years of hydrogeological reports (Canviro Inc.) showing significant groundwater contamination with numerous solvents. Further lying and coverups regarding Varnicolor have never really stopped as a sweetheart deal between the M.O.E. and Uniroyal Chemical required Uniroyal to accept full responsibility for all NDMA and chlorobenzene in the Municipal drinking water aquifers in exchange for a very quiet free pass saving them potentially millions of dollars in removing or encapsulating the known free phase DNAPLS on their site which included numerous chlorinated solvents along with chlorobenzene. While denied at the time DNAPLS have also been found off-site in the Elmira Aquifers which source may also be shared between the two companies (Uniroyal/Varnicolor) or not. What the Ontario M.O.E. received out of this deal was less humiliation and loss of face and credibility as despite the severity of the water crisis the M.O.E. might not have survived if it had become public knowledge that there were actually multiple gross polluters operating in Elmira under their noses (i.e. Nutrite/Yara, Uniroyal , Varnicolor). 

The coverup has never ended as evidenced by the September 12, 2024 TRAC meeting in which Allan Deal of GHD Inc. on behalf of Lanxess Canada presented a report titled "Chlorobenzene Source Evaluation". He claimed that despite a report written a few years earlier by Dr. Neil Thompson (U. of Waterloo) that advised that two or three thousand kilograms of "excess" chlorobenzene had somehow entered into the groundwater regime above and beyond Uniroyal Chemical's contribution, that in fact there was no second source. Furthermore isotopic analysis done later also concluded that in most likelihood the chlorobenzene in our drinking aquifers came from different sources. Well!

Not to be deterred Mr. Deal entered his own "evidence". It consisted of analytical data showing chlorobenzene concentration results in a few different wells nearby to Varnicolor Chemical. Out of five different wells presented, three of them had nothing but Non Detects and two had these low concentrations in their Upper Aquifer. Wells CH-43 B/C both were Non Detect as was CH 68-C/D. Then CH-69 C/D had 1.42 and .67 presumably parts per billion. Well OW56-16 presented with .72  (ppb.) and finally a well on Varnicolor Chemical which allegedly is screened in the Upper Aquifer namely MW45 had a Non Detect reading for chlorobenzene.       

This is all very strange for various reasons. First of all while chlorobenzene and all contaminants in the deeper Municipal Aquifers travel horizontally for a considerable distance the same is not true for shallow groundwater especially when its' discharge point is a very nearby Creek. The norm is for little to no shallow soils or aquifers to indicate contamination away from the source. Normally pollution starts at the surface and descends downwards into the deeper soils and aquifers. From there usually the further away from the source the lower the concentration of contaminants in the deeper aquifers. At nearby surface without a source directly above we expect nothing. Hence the whole premise of looking at Upper Aquifer results off the Varnicolor (& Uniroyal ) sites is more than a little weird.

The next problem is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who have indicated that chlorobenzene usually has a very fast degradation time in air, surface waters and shallow soils that are well aerated. Deeper soils and aquifers are a different matter with sometimes incredibly long degradation times depending upon anaerobic conditions. Of course chlorobenzene in DNAPL form can be centuries and longer breaking down on its' own. What this means is that this particular compound can not be easily found via shallow soils or surficial aquifer sampling because unless there is an ongoing fresh source, the old discharges are likely long degraded.

So yours truly has been doing some digging this past weekend as well as this morning. Guess what? Nary a shallow soils or surficial aquifer or even much available in the deeper Upper Aquifer that exists in some locations below Varnicolor's Surficial Aquifer and Surficial Aquitard (and Uniroyal's on the east side). Yes of course the deeper yet aquifers and aquitards have lots of chlorobenzene but not the well aerated much shallower soils and aquifers. This explains why all the very shallow wells (Surficial Aquifer) on the Varnicolor site had Non Detect results for chlorobenzene way back in 1990. Yes one well did have a ridiculous Method Detection Limit of 100 ppb. which may have hidden some chlorobenzene detection at Varnicolor but we'll never know. I had actually begun to think that the M.O.E. had grossly fudged/corrupted the lab results back then. This explains why in the title above I wrote "LESS CORRUPT (?)".  

Mr. Deal, MECP and local politicians are all full of it. Always have been, always will be. Re-elect as many of these politicians this October at your peril.