A group that deals contaminated water in Elmira is dealing with an affliction of its own.

A meeting was held Thursday for all the groups involved in the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee, or CPAC.

That meeting was boycotted by Dan Holt, who chairs CPAC itself.

Holt says he stayed away because he was told the entire committee wouldn’t be invited to the meeting – as doing so would give them quorum, meaning everything said would be a matter of public record.

“What’s so secret that it has to be behind closed doors? It’s a public problem,” he said.

CPAC was formed decades ago. Its name and membership has changed, but its raison d’être has remained the same – to work with the owners of the chemical manufacturing plant and the Ministry of the Environment to clean up contaminated water.

The plant first opened in 1941 to produce material for the war effort. It later switched to producing herbicides and pesticides, and later still was taken over by Chemtura.

The province has ordered that the aquifer under the plant be cleaned up by 2028.

According to Holt, the tensions between Chemtura and other committee members hit a boiling point last fall, when a consultant’s report found that contamination from the site had reached private property.

“It was at that time … that the ministry and Chemtura both decided to quit coming to the public meetings,” he said.

“We’re asking some pretty hard questions, and they don’t want to answer them.”

While including many of the same principals as a typical CPAC meeting, Thursday’s gathering was not considered to be an official meeting.

“It’s just a meeting of several different agencies coming together to say ‘How can we support the committee in their effort to clean up the environment?’” Woolwich Mayor Sandy Shantz said before the meeting.

Acknowledging that she was “concerned” by Holt’s absence on Thursday, Shantz said she understood why the committee might be feeling uneasy.

“The answers that the committee wants are not always forthcoming when they would like it, and how they would like it,” she said.

Chemtura and the Ministry of the Environment did not respond to requests for comment before this article was published.