The article reports:
The petition also includes 31,000 comments. If printed on paper, the package would have tallied 6,000 pages, [STGLND's Beverly Fernandez] said.
The article quotes Mike Bradley, the Mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, the largest city on Lake Huron:
“The key issue is that there was not a fair selection process to look at a number of sites in various locations,” said Bradley. “A more rigorous site-selection process is given to locating a Walmart than this repository, which will be there 100,000 years-plus.”
Mayor Bradley added:
“I would like the new Trudeau government to send a strong environmental message about being protectors of the Great Lakes and deny application for the repository,” Bradley said Wednesday.
He was referring to Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, elected on Oct. 19, 2016. Trudeau appointed McKenna as his Environment Minister, a Cabinet-level position.
The article also includes a powerful statement, connecting the Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) issue to the Flint, Michigan lead poisoned drinking water scandal:
Fernandez said residents of Flint, Mich., 100 kilometres from Sarnia, spoke loudly about problems with their water, “and the government did not listen, with disastrous consequences. Now the people are again speaking out loudly, this time about the attack on the Great Lakes . . . We hope the Canadian government is listening.”
Flint, a hard-hit industrial city of 100,000, switched its water supply to a river from Lake Huron to save money, but the more corrosive river water began leaching lead out of pipes in the water distribution system and into the drinking water, despite official assurances the water was safe.
Lead is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to babies and young children, affecting brain development.
OPG has often pointed to its meetings with Michigan's Republican Governor, Rick Snyder, and Snyder's Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, as the sum total of its outreach to state officials in Michigan, just downstream of the proposed DGR. And, OPG would hasten to add, Snyder and MDEQ did not have a problem with the DGR. Obviously, given Snyder and MDEQ's failure to protect the health and safety of Flint's residents from poisoned water, this is less than reassuring when it comes to the protection of Lake Huron's irreplacable drinking water supply, against the risks of radioactive contamination from the DGR.
admin