Mayors along the Great Lakes Basin renewed their push this week to keep nuclear waste from ending up near their drinking water supply. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, representing about 120 municipalities, passed a resolution Wednesday calling for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to recognize “the value of staying as far away as possible” from the water source for 40 million people. In February, Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna called on OPG to further study its plan for a repository in 450-million-year-old rock near Kincardine. She tasked OPG with looking at different sites, updating cumulative environmental effects, and updating mitigation commitments. Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley wasn’t at the conference in Niagara Falls, New York, but was one of a group of mayors who vetted the resolution – including calls for OPG to respond in a “thorough and comprehensive manner” to McKenna’s request for more information, for national governments in Canada and the United States to evaluate “social acceptability” of any proposed repository for nuclear waste, and for both countries to designate radionuclides (radioactive particles) under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
The Observer (Canada) 17th June 2016 read more »