Seong, M., Kim, H. G., Yun, B., Kim, M., Kim, J.-W., Jeong, H., Kim, S., Kim, J. H., & Cho, K. H. (2026). Hybrid deep learning-numerical modeling framework for long-term prediction of groundwater discharge and radionuclide transport. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 504, 141346. doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2026.141346

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE.

“The model was trained to predict monthly groundwater discharge (GWD) and radionuclide transport (RNT), and its performance was evaluated against the results from HGS, which serves as a physically rigorous reference model.”

“Because real-world data for the hypothetical ADioS watershed were unavailable, the HGS model, which is a fully distributed, physically based, integrated surface–subsurface hydrological model, was used to simulate groundwater flow and radionuclide transport for target feature extraction.”

Graphical Abstract

We're pleased to highlight this publication by Minkyeong Seong and colleagues, which presents a hybrid deep learning–numerical modelling framework for improving long-term predictions of groundwater discharge and radionuclide transport. Using HydroGeoSphere (HGS) as the physics-based reference model, the researchers combined process-based numerical modelling with a graph convolutional long short-term memory (GC-LSTM) deep learning model to produce long-term predictions while dramatically reducing computational costs.

Long-term prediction of groundwater flow and radionuclide transport is essential for evaluating the safety of deep geological repositories used to store radioactive waste. While fully integrated numerical models such as HydroGeoSphere provide highly accurate simulations of coupled surface water, groundwater, and contaminant transport processes, these simulations can become computationally demanding for assessments spanning decades, centuries, millenia or even millions of years. Simpler models offer faster runtimes but often sacrifice accuracy by neglecting important processes such as unsaturated flow. This study addresses that challenge by combining the strengths of physics-based modelling with artificial intelligence to improve both efficiency and predictive performance.

Fig 1. Overview of the hybrid modeling framework: (1) data preprocessing from two numerical models: adaptive process-based total system performance assessment framework (APro-BIO) and HydroGeoSphere (HGS); (2) graph construction for the graph construction for the graph convolutional long short-term memory (GC-LSTM) model; (3) model development for predicting groundwater discharge (GWD) and radionuclide transport (RNT); (4) model training and eval uation; and (5) model interpretation using GNNExplainer.

The researchers developed a hybrid modelling framework using outputs from the Adaptive Process-Based Total System Performance Assessment Framework (APro-BIO), together with HydroGeoSphere simulations, to train a graph convolutional long short-term memory (GC-LSTM) model. HydroGeoSphere served as the benchmark model by generating groundwater discharge and radionuclide transport data that the deep learning model learned to reproduce. By incorporating hydrologic variables alongside key unsaturated soil properties, including van Genuchten parameters, the GC-LSTM captured the complex spatial and temporal interactions governing groundwater flow and contaminant transport throughout a hypothetical watershed representing a deep geological disposal system.

The hybrid framework demonstrated strong predictive performance, achieving Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) values ranging from 0.67–0.85 for groundwater discharge and 0.60–0.81 for radionuclide transport. Compared to the simplified APro-BIO model, the GC-LSTM reduced discrepancies with HydroGeoSphere by up to 99%, closely reproducing both the timing and magnitude of groundwater discharge and radionuclide transport across the watershed. Once trained, the deep learning model generated predictions in less than one minute, providing more than a 3,000-fold improvement in inference speed compared to running new HydroGeoSphere simulations while maintaining excellent agreement with the physics-based model.

HydroGeoSphere played a central role in this research by providing the physically rigorous benchmark required to train and validate the hybrid modelling framework. Its fully integrated simulation of saturated and unsaturated groundwater flow, surface water interactions, and radionuclide transport enabled the researchers to accurately represent complex hydrologic processes that simplified models cannot capture. HydroGeoSphere also demonstrated the importance of unsaturated zone processes, showing that accounting for soil hydraulic properties significantly improves predictions of groundwater recharge, groundwater discharge, and radionuclide migration.

This research demonstrates how HydroGeoSphere can serve as the foundation for next-generation hybrid modelling approaches that combine physics-based simulations with artificial intelligence. By leveraging HGS to generate high-quality training data, the researchers developed a framework capable of maintaining the accuracy of fully integrated hydrologic modelling while dramatically reducing computational costs. The approach offers significant potential for long-term groundwater safety assessments, radionuclide transport studies, and other computationally intensive environmental modelling applications where both speed and reliability are essential.

Abstract:

Accurate long-term prediction of groundwater flow and radionuclide transport is critical for assessing the safety of deep geological disposal systems. This study proposes a hybrid modeling framework that integrates a numerical model with a deep learning approach to improve the predictive accuracy and computational efficiency. Outputs from the adaptive process-based total system performance assessment framework (APro-BIO) model, including water level, surface water flow, groundwater recharge, groundwater discharge (GWD), groundwater flow velocity, groundwater level, and radionuclide transport (RNT), together with van Genuchten parameters, were used as input features. Monthly groundwater discharge and radionuclide transport simulated by HydroGeoSphere (HGS) served as target variables, and a graph convolutional long short-term memory (GC-LSTM) model was trained to capture spatial and temporal dependencies. Model performance was evaluated against that of HGS, representing coupled saturated–unsaturated flow. The GC-LSTM achieved Kling–Gupta Efficiency values of 0.67–0.85 for GWD and 0.60–0.81 for RNT and reduced discrepancies relative to that of APro-BIO by up to 99 %. The model effectively reproduced temporal variability while reducing computational cost. Explainable AI analysis identified the van Genuchten β parameter as the most influential feature. These results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides an efficient and reliable alternative for long-term GWD and RNT prediction under computational constraints.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE.

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First of all is it fair to call a compulsive, pathological thief by any such name each and every time they walk into a store? Is it fair to call CRA/GHD intellectual prostitutes each and every time they write an alleged scientific report. I described here a little bit about their latest (Sept. 3, 2026) effort titled "Bench Scale Study for Biodegradation of Chlorobenzene and NDMA" yesterday.  

I have confirmed with a past APTE coordinator that we had all been told decades ago by Uniroyal Chemical and their consultants that chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethylene, chloroform, chlorobenzene etc. do not easily degrade or break down on their own in soils. It turns out however that chlorobenzene is the exception to that rule. Now according to this latest report by GHD, chlorobenzene actually degrades very well on its' own in shallower, aerated soils and less so in deeper anaerobic soils as per pages 7 & 8. The Figures section, particularly Figures 1 and 5 also confirms this. This of course speaks very badly of Uniroyal and CRA because the inaccurate information was used to deny chlorobenzene's presence on the Varnicolor Chemical site when zero chlorobenzene was found in Varnicolor's shallow aquifer also known as the Surficial Aquifer (SA).  

Other problems exist including the premature thawing of frozen groundwater samples meant to be used in the Bench Scale Biodegradation Study. While I appreciate the admission of this unfortunate incident that occurred at U.S. customs I am less comfortable with GHD proceeding with their experiments using compromised groundwater samples rather than starting over. Another problem might be GHD's repeatedly advising that their Biodegradation Rates may very well be biased on the high side due to possible volatilization of compounds from the groundwater samples. I wonder if this so called volatilization didn't occur and they spiked the samples according to page 3 with 150 ppb. chlorobenzene and 2.4 ppb. NDMA, if their Biodegradation rates might actually be biased on the high side. Either way again I find their protocols surprising and disturbing. It seems to be a vey peculiar way to be conducting scientific experiments. It's almost seems to be a "seat of the pants" scientific protocol. Something goes wrong so instead of really fixing it or starting over they just make a change and continue on.

Assuming for the moment that their experiments have some validity what I conclude is that dissolved chlorobenzene degrades in both aerobic (oxygen) and anaerobic (low oxygen) environments. NDMA on the other hand seems much less capable of degrading via human intervention such as amendments and nutrients both in shallow and deeper soils. Of course as mentioned yesterday chlorobenzene has other characteristics and the issue is not what the dissolved chlorobenzene will do as much as what the Dense Non Aqueous Phase Liquid (DNAPL) chlorobenzene will do. The "Non Aqueous Phase" part of that acronym makes it clear that DNAPLS are NOT dissolved in water chlorobenzene but thicker, heavier pools or puddles probably residing in depressions of lesser permeable soils such as silts and clays. Likely some of these have dissolved over the last thirty years but any claims by Lanxess and fellow travellors that they are fully dissolved is nonsense, wishful thinking and maybe even intellectual prostitution. 

It allegedly took GHD a year from sampling groundwater to releasing their modest 34 page report titled "Bench Scale Study for Biodegradation of Chlorobenzene and NDMA". Actually from when the project was first proposed to TRAC (Sept. 2024) it took two years although of course our beloved and  besmirched MECP had to take a look at it first. What shocked me the most was the somewhat belated 37 YEARS that it took GHD or the MECP to advise citizens that chlorobenzene degrades so rapidly in shallow soils and at ground surface. I knew that it would volatolize (evaporate sort of) in the air as so many solvents do but it was only a week ago that I understood why chlorobenzene had allegedly never been found on the Varnicolor Chemical site in their Surficial Aquifer (SA) wells. It was not as I've long suspected that the Ontario Ministry of Environment actually fudged the results either by switching samples or by ordering their labs to improperly mark the results as Non Detect. It was due to the very rapid degradation of chlorobenzene by shallow soil bacteria in a well oxygenated (aerated) environment. This by the way is unusual and we were long told by Uniroyal/Crompton/Chemtura/CRA that chlorinated solvents do not degrade well by soil bacteria due to the tight chlorine bond combined with chlorine being a known bactericide (antiseptic if you will)   Now as we all know here in Elmira chlorobenzene has persisted for a very long time in our deeper aquifers and continues to do so well in excess of the Ontario Drinking Water Standards (ODWS).

 There likely is something else going on however as this study also claims on page 8 that chlorobenzene degrades under anaerobic (low oxygen) conditions. Indeed their Figures section seems to confirm that. If chlorobenzene degrades naturally on its own then why has nearly thirty years of pumping and treating not done the job? The answer is simple and this Susan Bryant is for you. It's called DNAPLS as I and Rich Clausi told  Sylvia Berg and the APTE co-ordinators in January 1994. Esther Thur, one of the three founders of APTE (Sandra Bray, Susan RUPERT, Esther Thur), knew the truth when she heard it but the others unfortunately relied on Sylvia. Chlorobenzene DNAPLS both on and off the former Uniroyal Chemical site are doing what DNAPLS do which is slowly dissolve into groundwater at greater than the ODWS and will continue to do so likely for decades and maybe much longer. 

This past Monday and Tuesday (Aug. 31 & Sept. 1/26)  I informed this Blog's readers plus about sixty other authorities (MECP, TRAC, Lanxess, Woolwich Twn., RMOW etc.)  and citizens that chlorobenzene   rapidly degraded in shallow soils. Lo and behold TWO DAYS LATER (last evening) I get the e-mail report from GHD explaining attempts to enhance degradation of NDMA and chlorobenzene combined with the data all citizens should have had decades ago about chlorobenzenes rapid natural degradation. Coincidence? If so an absolutely amazing one.  

September 15th kicks off National Hispanic Heritage Month in the U.S., a time to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

It’s also a good opportunity to reflect on how to be better allies for our Hispanic coworkers.

Rocio Medina van Nierop, the co-founder and CEO of Latinas in Tech, offers this powerful suggestion: Practice everyday acts of sponsorship.

What does that look like?

• Advocate for someone to lead a project.
• Recommend them for a promotion.
• Give them a public shoutout or glowing review.
• Put in a good word when they’re not in the room.

In other words, when an opportunity comes up, say their name.

As Medina van Nierop notes, anyone can do this if you’re present when opportunities are being discussed. “Having our name floated at a table that we are not part of can make a HUGE difference in our life and career.”

Let’s be that person. Not just during Hispanic Heritage Month, but year-round.

Share this action on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Sponsor 5 Ally Actions and put your brand or business in front of 40,000 caring individuals in business, healthcare, education, and non-profits.

Or, say thanks to Karen and buy her a coffee ☕.

Speaking of Hispanic Heritage Month…

What if someone’s accent makes you see them as less capable?

That happens more than we might think.

A few years ago, IBM surveyed 1,000 Hispanic leaders and found that 87% had experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity. And 63% cited specific discrimination based on their accent, language, or speech pattern.

Of course, not everyone who is Hispanic has an accent. And accent discrimination isn’t limited to Hispanic people. It can happen any time someone speaks with a non-native linguistic intonation.

The impact is appalling. As Janice Gassam Asare explained in an article for Forbes, people might view someone as less trustworthy, truthful, intelligent, or capable of doing their job simply because of their accent.

If we witness someone making discriminatory comments or exhibiting bias based on an accent, let’s address it. For example, “I don’t think someone’s accent tells us anything about their ability to do the job. Let’s focus on their skills and contributions instead.”

In honor of Gloria Steinem who passed away this week, here’s a story from my archives.

Back in 2023, I listened to Gloria Steinem on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. She shared a story that is particularly relevant for all of us striving to be better allies.

During a field trip for a college geology class, she noticed a huge snapping turtle making its way up a road. Thinking it might be lost, she picked it up and slowly carried it back to the river. She then explained,

“Just as I had slipped it into the water and was watching it swim away, my geology professor came up behind me. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘that turtle has probably spent a month crawling up the dirt path to lay its eggs in the mud on the side of the road — you have just put it back in the river.’”

Steinem felt terrible. She couldn’t believe what she had done, but it was too late.

Years later, she realized this story was a perfect parable for organizing social justice initiatives.

Always ask the turtle.

Similarly, allyship isn’t about being a savior or thinking we know what’s best for someone else.

Instead of guessing what coworkers might need and making decisions based on conjecture, let’s ask them.

Taking time off for religious observance shouldn’t feel like asking for special treatment.

Nate Shalev recently shared a reminder about the upcoming Jewish holidays, explaining that work is prohibited during them.

“Asking for time off isn’t a nice to have, it’s a necessity for observance.”

Yet Shalev also described how stressful it can feel to ask for that time off. Will coworkers think you’re less committed? Will your manager judge you?

No one should feel like their identity is a liability at work.

And making religious observance easier for our coworkers doesn’t take much. For religious holidays that aren’t part of the standard company calendar, we can:

• Avoid scheduling major deadlines, meetings, or events during religious holidays.
• Proactively remind your team that it’s okay to shift schedules or take time off to observe.
• Advocate for floating holidays so everyone can take time for what matters to them.

Shalev also pointed out the upcoming Jewish holidays to keep in mind:

• Rosh Hashanah: September 11–13, 2026.
• Yom Kippur: September 20–21, 2026.
• Sukkot: September 25–26, 2026. (This is a week-long holiday that prohibits work on the first two days.)

Tatum at CBRE in Denver told me that my newsletter has given her the confidence to speak up and shared this story:

“When my parents sold one of their cars, my dad told me that the sale had gone smoothly and he was happy the car was going to ‘a nice Hispanic family.’ I explained to him that, while I’m sure the remark was well-intentioned, he likely wouldn’t have commented on the family’s race or ethnicity if they were white.”

Her dad was grateful for the callout, and it led to some important reflection. He shared this story and his mistake in a team meeting at work to call attention to othering (where we signal someone is different from us and doesn’t belong) and its impact.

Tatum wrote,

“It can be intimidating to speak up, and I’m so glad I did. It’s helped me a great deal to remember that most people mean well and truly do want to be better.”

Thank you, Tatum!

If you’ve taken a step towards being a better ally, please reply to this email and tell me about it. And mention if I can quote you by name or credit you anonymously in an upcoming newsletter.

That’s all for this week. I’m glad you’re on this journey with me,

Karen Catlin (she/her), Author of the Better Allies® book series

100% written by me. I use AI for researching a personal archive of my books and past newsletters, and for light editing.

Copyright © 2026 Karen Catlin. All rights reserved.

Together, we can make a difference with the Better Allies® approach.

• Say thanks to Karen and buy her a coffee ☕ (Need a receipt for educational reimbursement? Reply to this email, and we’ll take care of it.)
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Say Their Name, and Other Actions for Allies was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last year, I joined Oxford’s Women’s Leadership Programme, and one of the reasons I wanted to do it was that, after more than a decade in technology, I had accumulated far more questions about leadership than answers.

I had already experienced leadership from several different angles. I had been the engineer who wanted to stay close to the code, the technical lead trying to make architecture decisions that other teams could actually live with, the manager responsible for developing people, and the person in the room who had to translate a technically correct answer into something a client or senior stakeholder could understand. More recently, building a startup added another version of leadership altogether, where a “strategic decision” can mean discussing product direction in the morning and worrying about manufacturing details by lunchtime.

What I had not expected was how often the hardest decisions had very little to do with whether I was capable of doing something. They were usually decisions about what I was willing to give up in order to do it.

• Should I remain deeply technical or spend more time developing leadership skills?
• If I become a manager, how much technical depth will I lose?
• If I stay on the technical path, will my leadership be as visible?
• How much time should I spend mentoring other people when I am also expected to demonstrate my own impact?
• Should I keep building expertise in an area where I am already strong, or deliberately move into something new and temporarily become a beginner again?
• Is choosing stability sensible, or am I simply becoming very sophisticated at avoiding risk?

These are also the kinds of questions I hear from women I mentor, many of whom are early in their careers or have just graduated. They often ask me what the “right” decision is, and I increasingly find myself giving them a slightly inconvenient answer: there usually isn’t one.

There is a trade-off.

And then there are the contradictions that become particularly entertaining when you are a woman in technology.

You are encouraged to speak up, although preferably without appearing too confident. You should become visible, but nobody wants someone who is “self-promotional.”

You should be collaborative, supportive and generous with your time, while also making sure you own sufficiently strategic work for your next promotion.

You should become a leader, but remain technical enough that nobody questions whether you still understand the technology.

You should negotiate for yourself, mentor others, develop executive presence, stay current with AI, understand the business, contribute to the community and, according to most leadership advice, establish healthy boundaries somewhere between all of that.

Apparently, we are expected to achieve high availability with no redundancy cost.

The engineer in me has some objections.

In architecture, nobody seriously expects a system to maximize everything. We cannot simultaneously optimize cost, latency, consistency, availability, security, operational simplicity and speed of delivery without eventually discovering that physics, budgets, or both have opinions.

We start with constraints instead.

What actually matters? What are we optimizing for? What risk are we willing to accept? What becomes more complicated if we choose this option? What are we deliberately not optimizing right now?

And most importantly, what does this decision make possible that another decision would not?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that careers work in much the same way. There is no architecture in which you can maximize technical depth, organizational influence, leadership, compensation, learning, stability, flexibility, visibility and personal time indefinitely. Something eventually competes with something else.

Yet a lot of career advice aimed at women still sounds as though we should.

That is why I have become much more interested in the trade-offs behind successful careers than in the usual list of things women should supposedly do more of. “Be more confident” is easy advice to give. It is much more interesting to ask what happens when becoming more visible takes time away from technical depth, when helping everyone else makes your own contribution harder to see, or when moving into management gives you more organizational influence while quietly taking you further away from the technical work that built your identity in the first place.

The trade-offs themselves are not uniquely female, of course. Men also decide whether to move into management, specialize, take a risky opportunity or prioritize stability.

What can differ is the environment in which those choices are made.

McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report shows that women make up 49 percent of entry-level employees but only 29 percent of C-suite roles. Representation narrows gradually as careers progress, which I find interesting because careers rarely change because of one enormous decision. They are shaped by many smaller opportunities, relationships, choices and trade-offs accumulating over time.

That does not mean every woman will face the same barriers, or that every career decision is harder for women. I also do not want younger women to begin their careers believing they are entering a twenty-year obstacle course.

Quite the opposite.

I think understanding the environment gives you more agency inside it. If visibility matters, you can learn to communicate your technical impact without turning yourself into a personal-branding department. If you want leadership, you can actively seek sponsorship and stretch opportunities. If you want to remain technical, you can look for organizations where senior technical leadership is genuinely valued.

That is why I prefer talking about trade-offs rather than limitations.

A limitation says, “This path is difficult.”

A trade-off asks, “What matters enough to me that I am willing to choose it anyway?”

That is a much more useful question.

Some of the biggest career decisions are really risk-management exercises wearing business-casual clothing.

Do you stay at the established company where the salary is predictable, the benefits are good and there is probably an internal wiki containing seventeen career frameworks?

Or do you join the startup where the job description is technically three jobs and someone says, “We move fast here,” which may mean exciting ownership or that nobody has configured backups?

Neither option is inherently smarter.

Large organizations can offer structure, strong peers, resources and predictable progression. Smaller organizations can offer disproportionate ownership, rapid learning, direct customer exposure and the opportunity to make decisions far beyond your title.

The same question appears when deciding whether to stay in an area where you already have expertise or move into something new. Specialization can build authority, while breadth can create adaptability. Going deeper can make you exceptional at something; moving sideways can expose you to problems you would never have encountered otherwise.

Instead of asking whether a move is simply safe or risky, I find another question much more useful:

What am I buying with the risk I am taking?

Learning? Ownership? A new industry? A stronger network? Access to a technology that may shape the next decade? A chance to operate at a larger scope?

If the upside is vague and the risk is concrete, that is probably not a particularly attractive trade.

If the upside meaningfully changes your future options, the calculation becomes much more interesting.

And choosing stability can be an intentional decision too. Not every ambitious career has to involve disruption, reinvention and dramatic announcements on LinkedIn.

Sometimes stability is exactly what allows you to do your best work.

The important thing is knowing that you chose it, rather than simply drifting into it.

There is a very specific form of career paralysis that appears when you read an interesting job description.

You meet seven of the ten requirements, and naturally your brain ignores those seven and becomes emotionally attached to the remaining three.

Within minutes, you have convinced yourself that every other applicant has spent the previous decade mastering exactly those technologies and probably configures distributed systems recreationally on Sundays.

Many roles are learned while doing them.

Nobody starts their first staff engineering position already knowing how to be a staff engineer. Nobody becomes a manager with complete confidence on day one. Nobody becomes an architect having already designed every conceivable system.

At some point, growth requires accepting an opportunity where the requirements are slightly ahead of your current experience.

This is something I especially want early-career women to hear, because “I have never done this before” and “I am not capable of doing this” are very different statements.

You are allowed to learn the next job while doing the next job.

You are allowed to become a beginner again after being an expert.

You are allowed to apply before you have collected every possible qualification.

And sometimes the most useful trade-off you can make is giving up a little certainty in exchange for a much larger learning curve.

When younger women ask me what the right career choice is, I increasingly resist giving them a formula.

Instead, I ask what they want to optimize for right now.

Learning? Technical depth? Leadership? Ownership? Flexibility? Stability? Impact? Something completely different?

Then we talk about the trade, not because I want them to become cautious, but because I want them to become intentional.

Understanding trade-offs does not make your career smaller. In many ways, it gives you permission to make bolder decisions because you stop waiting for the imaginary option where everything is perfect.

You can choose technical depth knowing that visibility may require additional effort. You can choose leadership knowing that you may spend less time coding. You can join something risky because the learning is worth it. You can choose stability because stability is genuinely what you value at that stage of your life, rather than because somebody told you ambition always has to look like disruption.

And you can change your mind later.

That may be the message I most want early-career women to hear.

You do not need to design your entire career at twenty-two, twenty-five or thirty. You only need to understand what you are optimizing for in the next version.

Requirements change. Priorities change. Technologies change. You change.

There will be imperfect choices, and there will probably be a few decisions you look back on and wonder what exactly you were thinking.

That is normal.

No good system reaches its final architecture in version one.

Neither do we.

Women in Tech: Choosing What to Optimize For was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The post Labour Day Hours appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

The post Labour Day Hours appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

A small business entity likely was given inaccurate information prior to purchasing the former Varnicolor Chemical site and embarking on an alleged ten year pump & treat cleanup. The public were misled into believing that the sole guilty party to the loss of our drinking water aquifers was Uniroyal Chemical and that they could fully remediate it within thirty years. This misconception was only exacerbated by the M.O.E.'s knowingly allowing Uniroyal to pretend that there were no accessible DNAPLS on their site that could and should have been removed, encapsulated or somehow properly remediated. This misconception was magnified by the discovery of off-site DNAPLS both at Nutrite/Yara and beside the Howard St. (Elmira) Water Tower that the M.O.E. further denied  and failed to ensure were again properly remediated. These DNAPL failures combined with other remediation failures ensured that full remediation of the Elmira drinking water aquifers by 2028, as mandated, wasn't happening.  

A deeper, likely low volume pump & treat system could also have been installed in the Municipal Aquifer beneath Varnicolor Chemical. Furthermore efforts to specifically remove the DNAPL that likely was situated either on top of the Surficial Aquitard (SAT) or on top of the Upper Aquitard (UAT) would have greatly reduced remediation time for both the Varnicolor site as well as the Elmira drinking water aquifers. Similar efforts could and should have been done on the Nutrite/Yara property to remove its' DNAPL for similar purposes. The known DNAPL at the Howard St. Water Tower was much deeper (OW57-32R) and may have required more extensive and expensive remediation. Allegedly the pumping at W4 beside it for a period of years greatly reduced it in size although that is unproven to date. 

Other ramifications concern Varnicolor's second site at the extreme east end of Oriole Parkway. The "cleanup" there was a sham and with the extent of intentional dumping there as well, DNAPLS and LNAPLS may have been an issue. PCBs were found and excavated from a drum although most of the cleanup was a superficial effort at removing surface tanks, tankers and drums. Once again both human health and the environment continue to be impacted by the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) perversion of their mandate.       

♦“I had stopped believing that help would come.” – Freddy

Freddy became homeless in 2021, a year after his brother Max lost his battle with depression.

“My brother was very broken and I had always taken care of him my whole adult life,” said Freddy. “And then suddenly Max was gone, and then I couldn’t pay rent anymore. I was homeless.”

Freddy first ended up at a shelter in Cambridge, but quickly decided he needed to move on. He struggled with crystal meth and fentanyl, and wanted to find a fresh start.

“Cambridge was the place where it all went wrong,” said Freddy. “I was an addict at the time, and I was struggling to stay clean. After my brother died, there were two things I wanted – to heal and to grow in my relationship with God.”

He found himself moving from shelter to shelter during this time before eventually creating his own home in the woods.

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought being homeless in a tent would be,” said Freddy. “It was actually really peaceful for me, because I would spend my days just reading my Bible.”

Unfortunately for Freddy, he was soon told by city officials that he couldn’t stay in the woods anymore.

“I had lost my apartment, and I had been kicked out of some shelters. And now I couldn’t stay in the forest,” said Freddy. “It’s like, ‘where do you want me to go?’”

When he had finally lost all hope, he found a bed at House of Friendship’s ShelterCare program.

“I had stopped believing that help would come,” said Freddy. “When I moved to House of Friendship, that’s when I found optimism for the future.”

Caring team members helped Freddy as he began to heal from the trauma of homelessness, and the grief he still felt at losing his brother.

Last fall, Freddy moved into his own apartment in Charles Village, one of House of Friendship’s Supportive Housing communities.

“It’s so peaceful having my own space,” said Freddy. “It’s a very positive change for me.”

“For a long time, I didn’t think I would make it,” said Freddy. “I thought I would end up tapping out – everything was just too hard. But now it feels like I finally have hope.”

“I don’t know what comes next,” added Freddy. “I just trust that it’ll be good.”

The post You Helped Freddy Find Hope Again appeared first on House Of Friendship.

♦

We'd been warned that severe thunderstorms -- even a possible tornado -- were in the offing later in the day. But at around 4:30 p.m., the sun was still shining, so I decided to nip out two blocks to my local Sobeys to pick up some items for dinner. I usually drive this route when collecting a large number of groceries, but I didn't need much this time, and I felt virtuous using my own two feet. There were some mounded clouds on the horizon, but I thought I'd have no trouble getting back home.

Shopping took me a half hour, and the moment I paid for my purchases was when the sky opened.

This was no ordinary rainstorm, for Kitchener. The sky went very dark, and the rain became torrential. The large roof that covered our big box store rattled with it. Then everybody's cellphone blared out an emergency alert: our area was under a tornado warning. We needed to take cover immediately.

The storm with the dangerous rotation turned out to be outside Mitchell, Ontario, but that front was moving fast. We all needed to take it seriously. And as I'd walked to the store, I had no transportation home, so I decided to shelter in place. I sat down in a seating area that Sobey's provided, with an eye on the door, places where I could duck and cover, and the path to the nearest windowless interior room (the store's public bathroom) that I could run to if needed.

Things got intense out of doors. The rain fell so hard, we lost cellular reception. That means it blocked the line of sight between my cellphone and the nearest cell towers, even though cellphones can find a signal through most walls. Visually, we couldn't see across the parking lot. Then the wind hit. I was told that someone struggling to get through the parking lot was blown back three steps for every forward step taken. Our cellphones blared multiple times, for updates to the tornado worning, for dangerous wind warnings; this wasn't to be taken lightly.

And when the employees mentioned that the windows at the front of the store were vibrating from the storm, I stood up, announced I was heading for an interior room, and strongly suggested that others follow. A store manager also mentioned that Sobeys had a basement. Who knew?

By this point, the store was mostly empty. I'd been waiting for at least a half-hour. Nobody was coming in to shop, and shoppers were gradually leaving, to try and chance things in their cars. The upside of this was that many store employees decided to walk back to the store's break rooms, which were also interior and away from the windows. A reasonably safe spot.

Things eased up after that point. We could see across the street at last. The wind died down. There was at least six inches of standing water throughout the large parking lot, rising up to Sobeys' doors, but that started to recede. My family, who had taken cover in their basement, hauling in a contractor who was working on our property to share our shelter, ventured out. Erin got the car and came to get me. I returned to a flooded driveway (which I cleared by finding and clearing the blocked drain), a partially flooded garage (with two drains that took care of the problem) and wet feet. There were some branches knocked down in our street, but there was no serious damage to our property or ourselves.

It's important to note that I respected the weather and stayed indoors, eyeing all the paths to proper shelter, because I married a Midwesterner. Erin, born in Iowa and raised in Nebraska, knows and respects severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. She knows what a bad sky looks like, and it looked like home out there today. I've never been through such a storm, though. My respect comes entirely from her hear-say, and I suspect I didn't treat this storm with the full respect it deserved (I should have been in the interior windowless room the whole time, rather than watching the waves of rain through the doors, taking the pictures you see).

But that's nothing compared to most people around me, who stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows in awe, who waded out into six inches of water to get to their cars, who ploughed through flood zones on the street raising a wake taller than their own vehicles. If things had gotten worse -- if a tornado had shoved itself through, if devastating winds or baseball-sized hail took aim at our big box roof, or if the rain had continued in its intensity for another half hour, flooding into stores and homes and floating cars into one another on the streets, we would have seen a true disaster.

Earlier today, my old friend, political jockey Warren Kinsella fired a cheap political salvo at Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow over the concerns she raised about the storm that was coming. In his words, "The sun is out and its lovely in Toronto. Good thing Olivia Chow practically declared a state of emergency and said that we were going to be facing a torrent of rain, hail and tornadoes."

Warren. I love you, but when you try to score cheap political points off of something that many meteorologists warned was coming, you're going to get soaked, and not just literally. Maybe respect the experts? Maybe, just maybe, don't go for the cheap political jab every chance you get?

But Warren's blazé attitude isn't unusual. It comes naturally to most of us without the political sidebars involved, because Ontarians don't understand how bad things can get when you get the weather that they get out in the American midwest. We've never faced the storms they've faced. We don't understand what living in Tornado Alley truly means. We gawk out of floor-to-ceiling windows vibrating in the wind.

Thanks to climate change. Tornado Alley is shifting east, and possibly north. These storms are going to happen more often, and right now, we're not prepared for them.

Unless we treat stormy weather with the respect it deserves, it's going to kill us someday.

♦

So let's get real here. Thirty-seven years have passed since the south wellfield in Elmira, Ontario was suddenly shut down allegedly due to NDMA contamination. There were already solvents in the groundwater at those two wells (E7, E9) at low concentrations, courtesy of both Uniroyal and Varnicolor, as per the M.O.E.'s 1989 Elmira drinking water report. Since that time a total of three companies have been proven to be environmental pigs namely Nutrite/Yara (ammonia), Uniroyal Chemical (NDMA, chlorobenzene & hundreds of others plus DDT, dioxins) and Varnicolor Chemical (NDMA, chlorobenzene, & dozens to hundreds of other solvents plus PCBs). Leaking gas stations have been culprits and possibly other larger companies may have also contributed (McKee, Sanyo, Borg etc.) but only Uniroyal and Varnicolor have actually been proven, dirty polluters of the really worst sort. 

So let me say this to Uniroyal Chemical (Lanxess), Ont. Min. of Environment (MECP) and Woolwich Township in particular. You are a pack of  lying, cowardly, bullying pieces of sh*t who have knowingly and intentionally covered up the extent of contamination and human and environmental damage caused by Varnicolor Chemical (& Uniroyal Chemical) for your own self-serving reasons. You disgust me.

Patience is key. The Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) finally have been publicly exposed for what they are. It is also my hope that certain public figures who made their reputations as members of that disgusting organization might just have citizens reexamining their support for them. I will list but two names for the moment and that would be Liz Witmer and our very own, thank God hopefully soon to be gone, Sandy Shantz. Is it coincidental that both were attractive women who had been appointed as Chair of the School Board (i.e. trustees) ? I think not. We citizens (both genders) are suckers for an attractive face and the politically motivated among us know that.

Caroline Burjowski has been a one woman wrecking crew. She through her tenacity and conviction took no crap from a bunch of ego maniacs looking for a cause to promote themselves. Furthermore long time trustees Mike Ramsay and Cindy Watson were in it for the long haul. Both have upbraided and criticized gross behaviour by their colleagues over the last few decades. They have stood out as beacons of determination against all odds. 

Last Monday's K-W Record published the following article written by Jeff Outhit and titled "Exodus at the school board".  It critiques the actions of the Board including their lack of transparency and perhaps even honesty in some matters. The Record also covered the court appearances and battles regarding Caroline Burjowski and the WRDSB bullying and intimidation attempts. The School Board really stepped into it big time and made a huge mistake thinking that Ms. Burjowski could be battered and broken through "lawfare" which is one of the ways the Board attacks and intimidates parents and other critics. The WRDSB believe that using the public's money against them in long running and grossly expensive court cases is the key to their winning every dispute. They are filth and Ms. Burjowski, I will admit with assistance from the K-W Record kicked their butts both in the media and in court and it was long overdue! It is my hope that not just the majority of idiot and biased trustees but also the slime at the top of the Board all rot in hell. This also applies to the scum at the top decades ago who protected and covered up both bad teachers and pedophiles like Ron Archer and others.