Isn't it just a son of a gun when you learn basic facts and knowledge about your contaminated water supply 36 years after the event? Only in the town of Elmira in Woolwich Township where municipal and regional politicians instead of standing up for their citizens and constituents would rather back a provincial coverup between the Ministry of Environment, Liberal and Conservative governments and Uniroyal Chemical and successors. If as I've just learned that NDMA does degrade in a reasonable time frame in aerobic environments such as shallow soils and at a slower rate in anaerobic soils then how is it possible to still have it so far above drinking water standards 36 years later? Well!
First of all let me say this: going on 29 years of pump and treat maybe hasn't been doing all the heavy lifting. Likely natural attenuation via biodegradation in the sub-surface has done a lot of that and CRA/GHD/Lanxess are just taking the credit. Not that they would ever deceive us. Hell no!
There are a number of possible reasons why their efforts have been so ineffective despite a quarter century of false promises claiming guaranteed success by 2028. There are most likely other sources of NDMA besides Uniroyal Chemical. The two most likely are Varnicolor Chemical and Borg Textile conveniently right in the middle of the damn plume leaving the Uniroyal site. Sanyo Canada has also been on my radar for a long while albeit with less evidence than the other two long shut down companies. Also interference from the hundred or hundreds of other solvents and chemical compounds both Uniroyal and Varnicolor dumped, spilled and leaked into the natural environment may have slowed the biodegradation of NDMA.
Dissolved chlorobenzene degradation has been slowed down not only due to an excess of nearly 2,000 kg. of it above and beyond allegedly what Uniroyal contributed but also by the fact that being a DNAPL chemical, it dissolves into the groundwater very slowly. Despite that Lanxess are looking at a bioremediation method for chlorobenzene which may or may not produce results. One question I have is whether their recently proposed amendments to stimulate bacterial degradation will work for any other compounds in the groundwater. It does nothing for NDMA however there is an emerging technology that promotes a particular sub-surface bacteria that breaks down NDMA. This emerging technology uses a compound that most likely will not assist bacteria to break down other sub-surface toxic compounds.
My understanding is that the emerging NDMA technology needs to be used with caution. It can produce by-products for example such as ammonia which in aquifers already contaminated by ammonia is hardly ideal. Other problems include that its' efficacy can be reduced if the corporate jerks who contaminated the aquifers in the first place were so antisocial and environmentally unwise that they dumped/spilled/buried any and all types and kinds of toxins. In other words because of the variety and sheer volumes of so many contaminants this emerging technology might not work here in Elmira.
Frankly I still think that Lanxess won't throw good money after bad and actually seriously look at all the poisons in our drinking water courtesy of our local corporate twits and decide to actually go after all of them including dioxins and DDT. It is so much simpler and easier to go through the motions and keep mostly local people attending meetings four or five times a year, chasing shadows.
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