In Woolwich, a vacant council seat exposes bitter divisions

At the eleventh hour, Scott Hahn has quit his seat on Woolwich township council, citing responsibilities at his day job.

The discussion on how he should be replaced opens a window into the contentious politics of this seemingly peaceful municipality of small towns and rich farmland.

Earlier this week, Mayor Sandy Shantz cast a tiebreaking vote and won council’s narrow approval of a process that invites applications from the public. Council will appoint someone from among the applicants.

That decision shut out the more democratic alternative of simply appointing the runner-up in the 2014 election, Dan Holt.

Holt is an outspoken environmental advocate and retired professor. He was also chair of the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee until 2015.

In that year council disbanded the committee because of dysfunctional relationships. Its members were harshly critical of cleanup efforts by Chemtura (now Lanxess, since the plant was bought by a German company in 2017) and the Ministry of Environment.

Eventually ministry and company officials refused to meet with the environmental advocates.

But Holt and his colleagues weren’t wrong. In 1989, you couldn’t drink the water in Woolwich township because of cancercausing chemicals that had leaked from the plant. A pipeline had to be built for drinking water from Waterloo.

Decades later, toxic chemicals continue to pollute the ground and water.

When the stakes are high, emotions run high too. After the advisory committee was disbanded by council, Hahn and Shantz both faced allegations of violations of the Municipal Elections Act, prompted by complaints from Holt and another environmental activist, Alan Marshall.

In both cases the charges were withdrawn, although irregularities were found.

So it’s not surprising that Mayor Shantz isn’t thrilled about the idea of having Holt as a fellow councillor.

It’s so close to the next election that “it seems silly” to her to appoint a new person at all, she said Thursday.

Appointing Holt as runner-up might have made sense a year after the past election, she said. But we are now at the tail end of the council term, and it has been more than three years since the township residents voted.

Several others are interested in the job, including a former councillor, Julie-Anne Herteis.

Shantz said she felt she owed it to them to “open the process up.”

Also, there isn’t much time for the new person to get up to speed.

By the time the new councillor is installed in mid-March there will be just four council meetings before the summer recess.

“It’s a steep learning curve,” she said. “You want someone who can get through the reports, understand governance.”

Holt doesn’t agree. “I don’t think the learning curve is that steep,” he said. “I do have a PhD.”

There’s merit in both Holt’s and Shantz’s arguments.

But the lesson from this whole episode is best expressed by retired teacher Rich Clausi of Elmira.

“There’s a lot of bad blood that revolves around the environmental problems we have here,” he said.

Indeed. You might even say that one toxic problem has begotten another.