Critics say failure to involve Michigan may violate international treaty

Millions of people in Michigan get their drinking water downstream from Kincardine, Ontario, where a nuclear waste dump is planned near the shore of Lake Huron. But under draft guidelines for the project, Michigan will not be considered as part of the region that could potentially be impacted by the Canadian version of the proposed Yucca Mountain underground storage facility in Nevada.

Many in Michigan are just now becoming aware of efforts to develop an underground nuclear waste storage dump in the Great Lakes basin. The proposed dump — located roughly across Lake Huron from the tip of Michigan’s Thumb — would store waste from Ontario’s 20 nuclear power reactors. The grass-roots U.S. group Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination has mobilized against the plan, and public bodies are beginning to catch on. Last month Macomb County passed a resolution against burying nuclear waste in the Great Lakes basin. This week the Port Huron Times Herald editorialized against the dump, and Democratic state Reps. Terry Brown and John Espinoza introduced a resolution urging fellow representatives to pressure Congress to stop the proposed dump.

Though people in Michigan have begun to focus on the dump, the official public comment period ended Wednesday for two key project documents — the guidelines for the environmental assessment and for the panel that will evaluate it.

Continued -This is how the draft document describes the area to be included in the environmental assessment:

Regional Study Area: the Regional Study Area is defined as the area within which there is the potential for cumulative biophysical and socio-economic effects. This area includes lands, communities and portions of Lake Huron around the Bruce Nuclear Site that may be relevant to the assessment of any wider-spread effects of the project. This area may also include communities in the North Channel of Lake Huron, Manitoulin Island, the North Shore of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay and the French River.

“They are telling people that they don’t have to worry [that the comment period is over], that there will be another chance to comment,” said Kay Cumbow of Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, “but if these guidelines are approved as written, Michigan will not be considered part of the Regional Study Area, and our comments are not going to count for very much.

“We think that all of Michigan and all of Lake Huron and everyone who gets drinking water downstream from the dump or lives downwind from this dump needs to be considered part of the impacted area.”

The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility also objected to the draft guidelines for project environmental assessment and suggested that failure to communicate with people in Michigan about the project could violate an international agreement known as the Espoo Convention, which requires governments to notify and consult with each other on projects that may have an adverse environmental impact:

The fact that this facility represents an irreversible concentration of radioactive wastes from 20 or more Canadian nuclear reactors in an unproven and unprecedented underground facility on the shores of Lake Huron, surely should concern communities on the both shores of Lake Huron and in other communities downstream in the Great Lakes watershed. The spirit of the ESPOO convention is being disregarded if American citizens and political bodies are not actively informed of [Ontario Power Generation's] plans and invited to participate fully in the environmental assessment process.

Nicholas Girard, spokesman for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, said that the comments received on the documents can be viewed on the agency Web site.

“Most comments pertain to opposition due to proximity to the Great Lakes and people asking for referral to an independent review panel,” Girard said.