THE "CLEANUP" MARCHES INEXORABLY ALONG TO THE BEAT OF THE POLLUTER

Here we are still discussing CSMs and COPCs (Conceptual Site Model, Contaminants of Potential Concern) along with additional minor sampling in the Canagagigue Creek and on the Stroh property in September 2020. Our authorities have known that the "Gig" was grossly contaminated since the 1950s and while the ongoing onslaught of solvents has long ago ended, the less dissolvable (hydrophobic) compounds remain. These include PCBs, DDT, other pesticides and dioxins/furans plus more. .................................................................................................... The problem is that we are working on a foundation of nonsense, psuedo science and horse manure. By allowing the polluter to control the investigation, sampling, timing, and overall agenda we the public and the environment have been manipulated beyond belief. This has all been done with the quiet (sometimes) acquiesence of our authorities, municipal, regional, provincial and even federal. ............................................................................................................ Back on October 30, 2019 I sent an e-mail document to the TAG Chair and members. It advised that multiple issues and concerns had been raised by TAG, myself and others that had yet to be fully and properly addressed. Despite that the Site Specific Risk Assessment (SSRA) process was marching inexorably along. I mentioned issues in my e-mail including inappropriately high Method Detection Limits for chemicals which was diminishing the number of formal exceedances found in creek sediments as well as the "shovel" sampling method used versus proper core sampling that had initially been raised by TAG member, Joe Kelly. Other issues included so called Background" concentrations in the creek which actually included Uniroyal Chemical compounds dumped upstream in landfills such as the Bolender Park Landfill as well as the First St. Landfill. Let's also add in here Varnicolor Chemical upstream dumping in the infamous Lot 91 which also abuts Landfill Creek in Elmira. Of course with or without mention there is the issue of other industrial contaminant sources in Elmira which has been fully ignored by the guilty parties. Most of these industrial sources all eventually end up in the creek and they have NEVER been even lightly examined or investigated. Potential, likely or known sources include Borg, Thur, Varnicolor, Sanyo, Walco, Elmira Coverall, and multiple gas stations. .................................................................................................................... Following are four posts I did in April 2018 in regards to the 2017 Canagagigue Creek Sediment and Floodplain Soil Investigation. They are dated April 12, 14, 17 and 18. The titles of the posts in order are "Are you kidding me? This is disgraceful even by their standards", "2017 Canagagigue Creek Report is even more Precious", "Deeper analysis of Canagaigue Creek Toxic Results", and "Deeper yet Analysis of Toxic Results in Canagagigue Creek". These posts specifically state exactly what is so bad, amateurish, and biased in this foundational document being used by Lanxess Canada in their SSRA of the Canagagigue Creek. These four posts are all available in the Archives section (right side) of this Blog. None of these issues have been properly addressed much less fixed. The company, their consultants and the Ontario Ministry of Environment simply stagger on ignoring serious concerns while mumbling about future fixes and corrections that do not happen. The Canagagigue and downstream users (human & wildlife) will continue to suffer at the hands of polluters and their alleged regulators while the politicians involved will continue to look the other way.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST UPDATE

Last Thursday I posted here that it would be interesting if reports on consulting services between Blumetric Engineering Inc. and either Lanxess Canada or Woolwich Township were accurate. Well I've been looking on-line and to date here is what I've found. Woolwich Township have had consulting services from a company called GM Blue Plan in regards to the bridge just off of Middlebrook Rd. (near West Montrose) that crosses the Grand River. Close but no cigar. ................................................................................................................ Blumetric do consulting work regarding landfills and gravel pits among other environmental issues. They have done such work in Wilmot Township as well as in North Dumfries Township. The company also consults on municipal wellfields and has been contracted to the Region of Waterloo for wellfields in Cambridge. There are numerous other contracts awarded to the company by the Region of Waterloo including their work on behalf of the Region in regards to Source Water Protection Plans. ................................................................................................... Sandy Shantz (mayor of Woolwich Township-sort of) is a Waterloo Region councillor and hence involved with any regional water or well studies in and around Woolwich Township. After the Dr. Richard Jackson tenure as TAG Chair (Technical Advisory Group - i.e. Uniroyal Chemical), a new Chair, likely far more amenable to either Lanxess or municipal control was required. Dr. Jackson, unfortunately for Uniroyal/Chemtura/Lanxess and the MOE/MECP was more amenable to the truth. It is reasonable to assume that Sandy went for an employee of a company already doing substantive business in Waterloo Region. Some of the contracts between the Region of Waterloo and Blumetric are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars area. Could this be construed as "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours"?

GROUP MANIPULATION - ARE THERE UNIVERSITY COURSES ON THE HOW AND WHY?

This is not a treatise against groups, committees or clubs. There are immense advantages, economic and social in joining a group of like minded individuals. It can be for a hobby such as tennis, golf, squash etc. or it can be for a social cause such as Black Lives Matter, environmental groups (Greenpeace, David Suzuki, Ecojustice etc.), Democracy Watch and on and on. Fitness clubs bring state of the art equipment within everyone's reach while requiring relatively small monthly payments. .................................................................................................... The flip side is that large groups can be easily and readily manipulated by such minded individuals. Even huge, internationally known groups such as the NRA (National Rifle Association) in the U.S. who have vast membership numbers across the States are currently alleged by a number of their members as well as by at least one state government to be corrupt. Corrupt not so much in their mandate and ideals as in the top very few individuals milking the coffers for their personal benefit. That has likely been a shock to millions while less so to higher up insiders. ............................................................................................................ Small volunteer groups are also routinely manipulated by those put in charge. What I have seen personally leads me to believe that volunteer groups can be totally corrupted from within simply because of human nature wanting to trust those that we have given some authority to. Briefly swinging to professional politicians why do you think that they are not routinely tarred and feathered, beaten and assaulted? It's because sometimes even with overwhelming evidence against them, we really want to believe that they are there for our benefit and the benefit of our friends, family and neighbours. We are too busy with jobs, family and friendships to be able to spend the time (much less the money) to absolutely and unequivocally nail every last fact down. They look us in the eyes and say "trust me". I'm the person you voted for despite what so and so says about me. It becomes almost a cult of the personality and boy has that happened in Elmira, Ontario as well. ................................................................................................ APT, UPAC, CPAC, and TAG may all be perfect examples of good people being led astray. Good people have lives outside of the environmental crisis that first was acknowledged in November 1989. I was and am proud to have met and get to know several members of APT Environment back in the very early days. I too was totally trusting of each and every APT member when they professed their shock and horror regarding the grossly damaged state of Elmira's environment. It never even crossed my mind that two or three of them were acting and good at it. However great time spent listening. learning and observing eventually pays off. Watching good members fall by the wayside as they were squeezed out of APT, either quietly or otherwise, and you see the pattern. ............................................................................................................... Two or three very strong and clever personalities within an organization can, if they are ruthless enough, between internal politicking and lobbying manipulate the less dominant personalities to their will. Within bounds of course. You can't be handed the reins of authority by a membership vote and then turn around the next day and profess an unbiding love for the local polluter. Nor can you immediately embark on self-serving purges to rid the group of any members that you view as potential rivals to your longterm dominance of the group. I think of people with these characteristics as sociopaths. The smarter they are the more corrupt they may eventually become. Corrupt as in diverging from both the public interest and hopefully the same interests that the group has. ................................................................................................................... If only what you saw is what you got. It isn't. People need to spend more time asking questions, demanding transparency and regularly holding their leaders, whether professional or volunteer, to account.

I HOPE THAT COVID-19 MEETING PROTOCOLS DO NOT BECOME THE NORM i.e. (TAG Meeting Thursday September 10/20 at 6:30 pm.)

The TAG (Technical Advisory Group) meeting is a zoom meeting. In other words there will not be people sitting in Woolwich Council Chambers along with a live gallery of spectators. Folks will be at home on their computers for an on-line meeting only. Anyone who wishes to be allowed into the Zoom meeting (TAG meeting) needs to contact Lisa Schaefer (lschaefer@woolich.ca) by this Tuesday in order to receive an invitation to attend, albeit remotely. Lisa will e-mail you the link to attend as well as a password, I believe. Under Covid protocols this may be necessary or not but it would be difficult to sincerely criticize an abundance of caution right now. That said I am concerned that those manipulators among us (politicians especially) will abuse the situation because it certainly affords them much more control of so called "public meetings". ................................................................................................... Under New Business (3.1.1) it seems that both my e-mails to the TAG Chair (Tiffany) and TAG members will be discussed. Also interestingly so will the Toxic Time Bomb Documentary (3.3.3.). Along with the Record newspaper article about the film I also included a very funny cartoon poking fun at guilty parties who attempt to diminish their critics by referring to them as "conspiracy theorists". ................................................................................................... It would seem to me that in order to give TAG members the full picture, that Tiffany Svensson's self-admitted "...not as a robust response as you would like..." comment in her August 10, 2020 e-mail to me might have also been included for TAG members. Possibly I'm overreacting. Possibly they already have it. I don't know. Also I would suggest that any other recent e-mails on the topic would have been relevant to include if indeed there is going to be any discussion of my two e-mails. For example this might include Tiffany's e-mail chain (if it was an e-mail versus a phone or in person conversation) back and forth with Ramin Ansari (Lanxess) and his requesting and receiving a blank cheque agreement that TAG will no longer pursue investigation of the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm (SDDB) in exchange for a token couple (?) of sediment samples taken somewhere in the bottom of the SDDB. ................................................................................................. The devil is in the details and it is NOT up to Tiffany or any other single self-appointed individual to be negotiating or agreeing to anything regarding the cleanup of the Elmira Aquifers, the Uniroyal site or the Canagagigue Creek. That this has been going on behind the scenes for the last thirty years is exactly why I wrote my book and named names. All interested stakeholders, whether appointed by a corrupt municipal council or not, need to be at the table. Otherwise your precious "public consultation" will continue to be a sham and a facade giving credibility to professional liars. In the beginning all stakeholders were present albeit the powers to be assurred that they had lots of "friends" at that table in 1992.

TAG & LANXESS CAUGHT RED HANDED - WHAT A WAY TO RUN AN ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP

It's been confirmed. Private, behind closed doors and well out of the public view, negotiations and deals continue to be how Lanxess Canada (sucessor to Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira, Ontario) conduct the monkey business required to do the very least possible to clean up the environmental messes of their predecessors. Ramin Ansari, on behalf of Lanxess Canada has massaged, manipulated, coerced or perhaps merely cajoled Tiffany Svensson, TAG Chair, into a non-transparent, unaccountable to the public and not in their best interests, agreement. This is an agreement that TAG will NOT push for soil testing in an area on the Stroh property that has been proven by formal tests, maps, ground surface contours and more to be the likely repository of Persistent Organic Pollutants such as DDT, dioxins/furans, PCBs and other pesticides and chemicals. Tiffany then using likely only partial recollection and discussion of that meeting has managed to achieve deference to her position from the TAG members. ............................................................................................ And that's why she has refused to date to advise the citizen (me), who made a detailed, specific written Delegation to TAG (Technical Advisory Group) which included maps, data and text from sources which included Conestoga Rovers & Assoc., GRCA, MOE etc., as to what possible rationale or reason for TAG to reject the conclusion of my Delegation in its' entirety. It turns out that Tiffany does not have any such rationale. There is no valid or scientific reason to reject the results of my Delegation. Oh other than, gosh privately I (Tiffany) gave a free pass to Ramin to help him and Lanxess out. WHY did she do this? ......................................................................................................................... With an alleged public consultation process that is such a sham it's really difficult to see any honest reason for these kinds of private deals being made. Obviously conflict of interest concerns are valid. Is it Woolwich Township or Lanxess directly who are paying her generous per meeting salary? Also it would be interesting if stories I've heard about her full-time employer (Blu-Metric) receiving contracts either from Woolwich Township or Lanxess and their consultants (GHD) are correct. That certainly would be an obvious breach of conflict of interest principles although Woolwich Township have had an uncanny knack for avoiding those principles in the past. ............................................................................................ Maybe there is still hope. Next Thursday's TAG meeting will include in its' package two e-mails (Aug. 8 & 11) that I sent Tiffany Svensson, TAG Chair. Unfortunately her very brief response after my first August 8/20 e-mail does not seem to be included. My August 11/20 e-mail to her is though as well. Tiffany and TAG still have a chance to make this right. Yes the disrespectful and undemocratic process of deciding to reject the content of my Delegation via private, non-public discussion with Lanxess Canada is an abomination. That's going to be hard to get past. The second issue of course is the fact that there was absolutely zero transparent and public discussion of my public Delegation to TAG. At no time was I given either the courtesy or rerspect of a reasoned response to it. Personally I doubt very much that such a reasoned or intelligent response is possible. The facts are obvious. Maybe they can come up with something but under the circumstances the evidence had better be solid because frankly their word has for me, recently become tenuous.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Inconsistent and contradictory evidence appears from time to time. Of course asking Lanxess or GHD which is correct has been out of the question for the last five years. First of all neither I nor the public nor past CPAC members are permitted to ask questions. Let me clarify that. We can ask questions in an oral or written Delegation to RAC but they are highly unlikely to respond to either. Secondly we can ask in a written Delegation to TAG but has recently been proven they have also no imperative forcing them to respond. A shameless and contemptible joke of public consultation. Also Lanxess and the MECP show up only occasionally to TAG meetings while RAC sometimes meets four times a year and sometimes less with their presence. ........................................................................................................... The issue at the moment is sampling soils, sediments, ground and surface water on the Stroh property further south than they have to date (i.e. in and around the Stroh Drain, Ditch & Berm (SDDB)). Of course this really wouldn't be an issue for either an honest Ministry of Environment (MECP) or an even half honest Lanxess Canada and their consultants GHD. The fact that it has been a battle speaks very loudly to the raw and basic corruption of the entire process. This process includes the polluting company being in charge of the entire "cleanup". They are in charge of "public consultation" and who can and who can't participate. They are in charge of hiring their own (client driven) consultants to produce the science and the evidence that they want. They have long ago taught the MECP to be very circumspect and careful lest the MECP find themselves burning through their annual budget in fruitless and repeated environmental hearings and or judicial courts. ..................................................................................................... It is a case of fighting the very same battle over and over again. You can win on one occasion only to have the polluter simply bring the same issue up yet again a year or two later as they see fit. Hence it seems that one never gets a definitive achievement because if Lanxess (or Chemtura, Crompton, Uniroyal) don't like it then it continues on literally for decades. The DNAPL coverup on the Uniroyal site is a perfect example of that as well. The company and supporters just keep on denying, denying and denying despite their own reports saying otherwise. There is and always has been a huge disconnect between much of the written reports and the company's interpretation of them. It's like Alice in Wonderland sometimes. ............................................................................................................ Maybe before today is over I will have garnered some additional strong support to attempt to keep on pushing all the guilty parties and their fellow travellors to do more and better regarding the SDDB and nearby area.

GRAND RIVER LIFE CONTINUES TO PAY THE PRICE OF OVERABUNDANCE OF HUMANITY

The article in yesterday's Waterloo Region Record titled "Will Grand River's "dead zone" revive?" written by Leah Gerber, was excellent. The "dead zone" is in specific reference to freshwater mussels, not to all life in the river. It turns out from recent firsthand eyewitness accounts that there actually was even some life in the Canagagigue Creek (Elmira) in the 1950s and 60s, contrary to my understanding for many years. That being said I already knew that that particular stretch of the Grand River, immediately below the Kitchener Sewage Treatment Plant (aka wastewater treatment plant), was in bad shape. This was due to my son's fieldwork while studying biology (Master's degree) at Wilfred Laurier University just a few years ago. I mean seriously most if not all STPs have a so called "mixing zone" immediately downstream of their outlet into whatever surface water body they discharge into. In theory the "mixing zone" does not extend the entire width of the river and in theory it does not extend for kilometres downstream. In theory. You will also find that government sampling of the STPs discharged effluent is often past the mixing zone. Who says that our authorities still don't believe that "Dilution Is The Solution To Pollution". Ha! They are just smart enough not to tell us. .................................................................................................. There is no doubt that the $250 million spent on the Kitchener STP was money well spent. There is also no doubt that as the population continues to grow, even more money will be required to keep pace with treatment of increased human waste. Of course politicians are constantly on the outlook for legacy projects to hang their hats and reputations on. Afterall how many politicians that you know want a Sewage Treatment Plant named after them? It is a constant source of amusement to me up here in the wilds of Elmira when I drive past Seiling Drive just outside of Elmira (north) knowing that the former Woolich dump is located on a road named after our long time regional chair. I think you get my point. It is far easier for local/regional politicians to spend money on ION trains than on say state of the art sewage treatment PRIOR to "dead zones" appearing in our heritage Grand River. ................................................................................................................ Besides "dead zones" for mussels there was the huge issue of feminization of fish. This was due to human birth control pills and other pharmeceuticals getting flushed down toilets. Guess what? Neither Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) nor drinking water treatment plants can remove all chemicals from the water. Just look at the Annual Water (drinking) Report issued each spring from the Region of Waterloo. There are maybe 40 to 50 common chemicals, pesticides etc. listed that have been tested. That's it, out of literally hundreds of known chemical contaminants in our air, soils and water (ground & surface water). Libraries, arts and culture expenditures, high tech mass transit and so much more are "sexy". Water treatment whether drinking water or sewage is not "sexy" and regional councillors whose only talent is getting elected are not the best arbiters of which budget items require trimming and which require expansion. Here's a currently much less controversial suggestion: Let's take $25 million each year away from the Waterloo Regional Police budget and stipulate that it goes towards increasing the water treatment budget here in Waterloo Region. I believe that would help both the health of human beings and the health of the environment.