THE SHAM OF PUBLIC CONSULTATION

I've personally been involved with public consulation here in Elmira, Ontario for twenty-three years. What a disgusting eyeopener. Uniroyal Chemical shut down all our drinking wells back in 1989-1990 due to their disposal of toxic wastes on their site. They did all of this in plain sight of the Ontario Water Resources Commission and then the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. The M.O.E.'s reputation and credibility were in tatters and then along came Varnicolor Chemical, also in Elmira. Things went from bad to worse with M.O.E. employees getting caught tipping off polluters about secret raids as well as other reprehensible behaviour. It took many years before we figured out that the Ministry didn't want to find any other guilty parties in Elmira because they had concluded a secret sweetheart deal with Uniroyal that let both of them off the hook. The M.O.E. didn't get dragged through the rest of the Environmental Appeal Board hearings and in exchange Uniroyal saved hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs. The Ontario M.O.E. indemnified them against unknown contamination (at that time) allegedly undiscovered on their site.

So how else does the M.O.E. gain back public relations ground? Well they promote the formation of both the Varnicolor Liason Committee and the Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee (UPAC). The M.O.E. even went so far as to put their cleanup promises in writing in Control Orders. In the Varnicolor case they then unilaterally amended the Control Order to suit themselves. With Uniroyal they had already privately concluded their October 7, 1991 Settlement agreement aka "sweetheart deal". Unknown to us it superceded the public Control Order issued a month later on November 4, 1991. This was a classic bait and switch. This contemptible behaviour continues even unto the present. Just recently it has become apparent that the M.O.E. and Chemtura (formerly Uniroyal) are circumventing the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) and holding private, confidential talks. The cleanup scheduled for this summer on their south-east corner at GP1 & 2 was negotiated in secret while leaving CPAC completely out of the picture. Clearly Chemtura in exchange for spending money are being given the face saving "voluntary" designation for this cleanup. We are of course talking about the most toxic substances known to mankind, namely dioxins. Also the M.O.E. as part of the bargain are pretending that there no longer are either dioxins or DDT leaving the Chemtura site and moving downstream. Unfortunately the science does not back up either Chemtura or the M.O.E..

Therefore the Ontario M.O.E. use public consultation more as public relations. Thay have no real intent to actually listen to and change environmental cleanups no matter how well informed the local citizens are. It's all a game to them and the only real players are the polluter and the Ministry.