To the editor:
The DGR Hosting Agreement Puts the NWMO in charge of South Bruce’s future.
Consider this scenario. You are a farmer and have leased, in perpetuity, a portion of your acreage to a company that gets to do whatever it wants, for as long as it wants, on a no-questions asked basis. You get to take the money – a lot of money – to keep your mouth shut. That’s the reality of South Bruce/NWMO hosting agreement. I am speculating here – but it seems closer to deal between a Columbian cocaine producer and the farmer he might collaborate with, than a fair, balanced, and transparent agreement between Canada’s nuclear industry and a municipal government. And this agreement binds not only the farmer, but generations of farmers to come.
Strong language? Perhaps. But consider this, like that cocaine factory – the Government of Canada is proposing legislation for nuclear sites that it be guarded with military grade weapons and security guards trained in anti-terrorism tactics. More direct is this – our Canadian government on Oct. 3 provided $3.75M funding to the NWMO to enhance the compatibility of their DGR to meet the need of the upcoming deployment of SMRs. However, the hosting agreement envisions only Candu fuel But the Federal Government, the NWMO, and the regulators have plans that include SMR fuel waste being placed in the DGR at South Bruce. And the municipality’s agreement with the NWMO makes it clear there is nothing the municipality or its residents can do to stop it. The agreement provides gold-plate handcuffs on every resident and the people who manage our community.
“Nothing to worry about”, says the NWMO. “No plans for expansion, yet”, they tell us.
Yet, as we also know, the NWMO has had no success in establishing long-term storage sites for the industry’s so-called low and medium radioactive waste (no fuel waste – but most everything else that comes near it). So, I ask you this question. If you were the NWMO and had successfully negotiated an agreement with South Bruce to host its high-level waste, and that agreement states that you can change or add to the nature of the waste without the municipality’s consent … where do you think you’d put all that “other” radioactive waste.
So, let’s be clear. If the NWMO is successful in negotiating a hosting agreement with South Bruce residents – all of Canada’s nuclear waste – past, present, and future – is coming. In its myriads of clauses and conditions, the draft agreement spells it out.
The key message from South Bruce Council for the last several months has been that the decision on whether to host the NWMO DGR would be based on the collective support for details of the proposed hosting agreement. Details are important, council told us. Understanding them critical, we are told.
Unfortunately, the only detail that most of us truly know and appreciate is that voting “Yes” brings $5M a year for 68 years and $750K for the next 70 years to the municipality in exchange for all of Canada’s nuclear high-level waste (that, being the 70,000 tonnes of it from sources, mostly, in Ontario and New Brunswick).
The devil is the details, and in this case – they glow. Yet, other than the municipal lawyer and the cadre of NWMO officials that drafted the proposed agreement – few really understand them. Nor can I, as the drafters of this proposed agreement have written a document that is legal in form – but in function – is a constitution that will govern the decision-making ability of our municipality for more than a century. That is because the ability to change the details of what waste will be transported to, processed, and buried in our community are subject to change at the sole discretion of only one party – the NWMO. The agreement is very specific that they will consider the input of the municipality in their decision making, but they are not obligated to act upon it.
The NWMO, the municipality and the pro-DGR advocacy groups hope to blind residents with the sheen of gold such that we will, willfully, tape not only our mouths shut, but also the mouths of generations to come.
This is the choice you are making. Money today for no choices tomorrow. That, and a “Welcome to South Bruce, Ontario – the official home of all-Canada’s Nuclear Waste.”
Bill Noll
Co-chair Protect our
Waterways – No Nuclear Waste
