Wednesday, May 9, 2018

NINETY-SEVEN AND A HALF PERCENT BULLSHIT



Only a very few veterans of the Uniroyal wars will recognize the 97.5% figure above and then possibly coordinate it with the word "Bullshit". 97.5% is the figure given to UPAC (Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee) by Conestoga Rovers (CRA), likely by Steve Quigley. 97.5% is the magical number apparently pulled out of thin air by CRA to indicate how much of the contamination flowing into the Canagagigue Creek comes from the south-west corner of their property. That's right, CRA told UPAC, the media and the general public that 97.5% of the toxic contamination flowing into the creek where it flows through Uniroyal's property comes from but one quarter of their creekbanks, namely the south-west corner.

No one disputed that the south-west corner was a cesspool. Many of the unlined (originally) ponds and pits were in the south-west corner of their site. This included RPW 3,4,5,6,7,8. RPW stands for Retention Pond West. It also included TPW2 (Tar Pit West) and M2, the former municipal/industrial landfill for Elmira.

The thing is that these pits and ponds have that little designation "west". Therefore one could conclude that there are likely pits and ponds with an "east" designation. Indeed there are namely RPE (Retention Pit East) 1,2,3,4,5 as well as TPE1 (Tar Pit East), along with BAE1 (Burial Area East) and RB1 & 2 (Reburied area). It even turns out that Uniroyal Chemical played mix and match. They had two pipelines across the Canagagigue Creek running their toxic liquid wastes from their west side production facilities over the creek and into two of the east side ponds. They also cleaned out sludges from some of the west side ponds and reburied them into the two east side "Consolidation Pits", RPE 4 & 5. The entire site is a toxic disaster.

Simply put none of us believed for a second that 97.5% was an accurate figure. It made exactly zero sense. The Elmira Environmental Hazards Team (EH-Team) left UPAC in disgust in January 1994 over their failure to protest the DNAPL (Dense Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids) coverup. Susan and Sylvia cut a private deal, outside APTE, with Uniroyal regarding DNAPLS. They then got screwed by Uniroyal in return with the 1/4 of the upper aquifer hydraulic containment only . APT Environment left UPAC in disgust six months later due to this 97.5% lie that was used to justify only hydraulically containing 1/4 of the upper aquifer entering the Canagagigue Creek. The 1/4 being of course the south-west corner of their site.

Enter 2014 and my and CPAC's discovery of the Stroh Drain running for a couple of hundred metres parallel to Uniroyal/Chemtura's east side property line. Then we had the discovery of the land surface contour lines. Thank You CRA for not completely hiding the contour lines along the Chemtura/Stroh property line. Holy crap everything runs downhill from Uniroyal's east side. Downhill meant not only west and south but eastwards onto the Stroh farm. We also found evidence via satellite photos of what might very well be an Interceptor Trench diverting the grossly contaminated east side groundwater. The groundwater was heading south and west towards the creek but this likely diversion sent it due south and then eastwards over to the Stroh farm and into the Stroh Drain where it discharged several hundred metres further downstream.

We were pleasantly astounded when with only 1/4 of the creek hydraulically contained, it appeared to be cleaning up so well on the Uniroyal site. It was too good to be true yet the concentrations of solvents in the creek plummeted. Hindsight being 20/20 now we believe that both the Ministry of Environment as well as Uniroyal were in on the scam. The Stroh Drain was likely built around 1985 as part of the cleanup prior to admitting that our drinking wells were irrevocably contaminated (Nov. 1989). Both Uniroyal and the M.O.E. knew that the bulk of the east side contamination was not entering the creek on the Uniroyal property but much further downstream on the Martin property where the Stroh Drain discharged back into the creek.

97.5% was a lie. It was however likely not as big a lie as we believed in 1994 because it was the result of a highly immoral and likely highly illegal diversion of contamination through two private properties to the east. CRA and Uniroyal claimed that they could back up 97.5% contamination removal with mathematics and hydrogeology. They never did that with UPAC or the public. The M.O.E. however had to be in on the scam in order to agree to only containing 1/4 of the upper aquifer where it discharged to the creek. With these kinds of folks in charge of environmental cleanups it becomes obvious as to how much trouble our environment/earth really are in.

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