WIMPS ONLY NEED APPLY - THE REALITY OF MUNICIPAL "GOVERNANCE"

 Wow does Luisa D'Amato ever give it to municipal and regional councillors in her article in today's Waterloo Region Record titled "The Region has lots of land. Why is it looking for more?" .  She makes it clear that there is lots of land available and preplanned for on the east side of Kitchener and Cambridge. It's actually referred to as the "East Side Lands Employment Area ". She also spells out that this whole planning and democracy disgrace is controlled by Doug Ford and the province of Ontario. Lest we forget that Doug Ford likes to throw his ample weight around and the only difference between him and a schoolyard bully is that he is an elected bully.

Not only have our local municipal and regional politicians rolled over to Non-Disclosure threats but Luisa suggests that the ultimate threat from the provincial government is well within Doug Ford's wheelhouse namely "Do as I say or I'll remove your regional government in it's entirety." Cowards and self-serving politicians will never buck the provincial (or federal?) government. Tell me what exactly are we paying our municipal councillors and mayors for when they roll over every time the provincial government says "Boo"?  Where is the leadership to push back against outside threats to our environment, our planning processes and the protection of our farmland? Simple, it's in the hands of private citizens who are pushing back hard in Wilmot. 

Woolwich Township also abdicated their moral authority decades ago and continue to do so as they coddle Uniroyal Chemical (Lanxess) and cower to the Ontario government (MECP-Min. of Environment).  Nothing new for them at all.    

MORE 2023 ANNUAL MONITORING REPORT NONSENSE

 Wow.. allegedly 97% of the NDMA has been removed from one aquifer or another in the off-site Elmira Aquifers. But... the concentration of NDMA still exceeds the Ontario Drinking Water Standards (ODWS) in all aquifers. That's the first problem. 

The second problem is that the entire former Uniroyal Chemical site is still a hazardous waste site. A semi-contained only, hazardous waste site.  Why do you think that dioxins ,DDT and so much more are still being found year after year downstream despite annual spring floods flushing and often scouring the creekbanks and creek bottom ? Again it is because they are being constantly renewed from the former Uniroyal site via erosion, groundwater flow and other migration processes. 

So knowing how much mass has been removed from off-site isn't even half of what is needed. How much mass is still left on the Uniroyal site awaiting its' turn to be mobilized? When will it be mobilized and how long will it be before the site has mostly stopped discharging contaminants? 100 years, 200 or more? That would be very good to know as well as strategies to clean it up. 

Sweetheart deals and Non-Disclosure Agreements are the bread and butter of dishonest and corrupt organizations. Just ask the RMOW and Wilmot Township as well as Woolwich Township.

BETS ARE THAT WOOLWICH READY TO FOLLOW WILMOT'S LEAD

 Today's Waterloo Region Record has another front page  story about Wilmot Township rolling over and being willing to sacrifice prime farmland for industrial development. What is interesting to me is which cities and townships are so pro growth and pro development that they are willing to circumvent planning processes, protected greenspace and their own commitments. Indeed this includes Cambridge, Kitchener, North Dumfries and Woolwich Township. No surprise there for me.

Woolwich have always played fast and loose with the rules. All rules. Look at the east side of Elmira. A few years back they switched the proposed Elmira By-Pass from the west side of town to the east side. The west side was cheaper and easier to build on as the ground is higher and requires fewer and smaller bridges than the east side.  The east side has to cross over the Canagagigue Creek and it's extensive low lying floodplain requiring extensive and expensive bridges and higher elevated roadways.  More importantly while they will be burying current farmland they will also be burying decades of Uniroyal Chemical contaminated lands and waters that have never been remediated.  This includes parts of both the Stroh and Martin farms. 

Our powers that be care not a whit for you or I. It's all about self-serving actions that will benefit them and theirs down the road and the public interest be damned.  This will include more farmland being sacrificed on the alter of development, growth, greed and helping the rich get richer at the expense of the public interest. Yet again. 

WOOLWICH HAVE NO INTELLIGENT ANSWERS - LIKELY NEITHER DOES LANXESS/GHD/MECP

 

Public consultation my butkus. I sent three serious and reasonably detailed critiques to Woolwich, the Observer and a number of dedicated environmentalists. So far exactly zero response from Woolwich Township. Now the unfortunate fact is that there isn't a single councillor with a clue as to what is going on remediation and cleanup wise. Hence councillor Cadeau had been leaning on most likely Woolwich CAO Dave Brenneman who may have more knowledge but in my opinion less of other necessary attributes.

The three critiques were regarding the on and off-site pump & treat system, the pretend cleanup (Risk Assessment) of the Canagagigue Creek and finally the nonsensical, intentionally myopic refusal to do proper soil testing on the Stroh property next door. All of these involve intentional ignorance and stupidity by our politicians, bureaucrats and authority figures. Self-serving deals were made by the guilty parties decades ago and those privately negotiated deals included massive deception and lying to the public. They will continue to lie and deceive until or unless the public loudly say enough of your bullsh*t. 

GLASS HALF EMPTY...OUR POLICE & JUSTICE SYSTEM STINKS VS. GLASS HALF FULL...THE COURT OF APPEAL CAUGHT THE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

The victim who had no previous criminal record or history served a year in jail after his entrapment by the RCMP and a career criminal/paid RCMP informant. Incredibly the RCMP paid this professional, convicted career criminal $300,000 prior to the trial of his selected "accomplice" and then another $100,000 after the informant testified and the victim was convicted. Oh and less we understate, the career criminal was also on a monthly "maintenance" schedule which paid him $3,000 per month. Hmm just a wee bit more (HA!) than my monthly C.P.P. and O.A.S. retirement benefits 

News flash folks. Several of our social benefits such as prisons, courts, schools, hospitals, police have all been monetized to the benefit of those working in them versus for the benefit of the public. In other words management and unions have used the public need to both entrench themselves and to enrich themselves. In fact I think it's obvious that any lessening of demand for these services would reflect negatively upon the status, income and authority of those in charge. This actually gives an incentive for these various services to drum up more business including apparently through the use of illegal entrapment by the police.

This front page article in today's Waterloo Region Record is both a shocking example of the administration of justice being put into disrepute as well as the eventual "save" by the Ontario Court of Appeal. Kudos to the latter and shame on those including the RCMP, prosecutors and  courts who went along with the initial scam. 

ONLY FELLOW TRAVELLORS & RELATIVES SHOULD TRUST LANXESS PLUME MAPS ?

 

I mean my first doubts probably occurred twenty-five years ago or more. Groundwater plume maps looked great but I picked up a few discrepancies that concerned me. For example a groundwater elevation line that was on the wrong side of a specific concentration was a red flag. Basically groundwater flows from higher elevations to lower and contaminant concentrations generally decrease with distance from their source. Therefore if you have a contour line of say 341 metres above sea level then you expect higher concentrations of contaminants upgradient of it and lower downgradient (i.e. farther away) .  

Also I noticed then that some of the groundwater elevation readings were both self-serving and sketchy at the same time. Off-site well CH44 is a good example. Somehow it maintained a higher elevation than several observation wells much closer to the Uniroyal property which was very convenient for CRA and Uniroyal because it "proved" hydraulic containment on site (i.e. lower groundwater elevations on site implied an inward flow versus an outward flow of contaminants). It turned out that well CH44 had a direct connection between the Upper Aquifer and the Municipal Upper Aquifer which artificially raised the groundwater elevation readings thus supposedly showing hydraulic containment. It was all bullsh*t. 

Today's plume maps concern me for a number of reasons including the alleged great containment even when they are pumping significantly less than they have in years and decades past. It is counter intuitive and again awfully self-serving. I believe that their decreased pumping both on and off-site has decreased hydraulic containment AND reduced the number of litres of contaminated groundwater being treated and then discharged to the Canagagigue Creek. Please explain to me how long term less volume of pump & treat  in both shallow and deep aquifers is allegedly maintaining containment on site and supposed to decrease contaminant concentrations off-site to drinking water standards. It isn't working and all parties after decades of lying now so admit that.

ALLEGEDLY CHLOROBENZENE IS NOT IN THE BEDROCK AQUIFER YET CONCENTRATIONS ARE HIGHER IN THE MUNICIPAL LOWER AQUIFER THAN IN THE MUNICIPAL UPPER

 

NDMA concentrations are also higher in the Municipal Lower (ML) aquifer than in the Municipal Upper (MU) aquifer.  And...wait for it indeed NDMA is present above drinking water standards in the Bedrock Aquifer. 

Chlorobenzene is also denser than NDMA and to my mind should have entered the Bedrock Aquifer after going from the surface through the Upper Aquifer, through the Upper Aquitard, through the Municipal Aquifer, through the Municipal Aquitard and then into the Municipal Lower Aquifer. Why stop there? The volumes of chlorobenzene also greatly exceed the volumes of NDMA that entered the subsurface below Uniroyal Chemical and migrated downwards through all the aquifers and aquitards.

They wouldn't lie to us would they?

As mentioned here on Saturday a close examination of the chlorobenzene plumes in the MU and ML (2023 AMR ) sure indicate a second source of chlorobenzene in the Elmira Aquifers. Indeed an examination of the NDMA plumes actually indicate the possibility of two or more other sources within the town of Elmira. 

They wouldn't lie to us would they? These are rhetorical questions.