Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet speaks at a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 9, regarding the new Chalk River nuclear waste facility.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is warning that a planned nuclear waste dump is too close to the Ottawa River supplying the drinking water of around five million people in Quebec and Ontario, calling for it to be relocated.
At a press conference in Parliament on Monday, he backed demands by First Nations chiefs for a halt to plans to build the Near Surface Disposal Facility, operated by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) at its Chalk River site northwest of Ottawa. The NSDF would serve as storage for around one million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste, just more than one kilometre from the Ottawa River.
“We do not understand that after all those years, everybody, including First Nations … having said that it is not acceptable, the government has not taken a stance according to which it should be placed elsewhere,” Mr. Blanchet said.
In January, CNL received approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to construct the storage facility. CNL says it conducts extensive environmental monitoring and that the new site would not pose a risk “in any location downriver” to drinking water.
“The proposed facility is designed to contain contamination and protect the surrounding environment,” CNL said in a statement Monday. It said the NSDF would be “on a bedrock ridge that naturally forces water away from the river,” and that 90 per cent of the waste is already on site.
But Kebaowek First Nation earlier this year launched a judicial review in federal court of its plans for the NSDF, saying First Nations were not properly consulted. Chief Lance Haymond of Kebaowek First Nation last year wrote to the Prime Minister saying “radioactive waste stored less than one kilometre from the Kichi Sibi-Ottawa River is a risk we collectively cannot afford.”
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has faced criticism from environmentalists who say that other possible locations further away from the Ottawa River were not properly considered before approval was given.
The heavily forested site where the disposal site is planned is home to a variety wildlife, including black bears that have dens there.
Chief Lance Haymond from Kebaowek First Nation speaks at the news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Monday.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Speaking at Monday’s House of Commons press conference, attended by a number of First Nations chiefs, Mr. Haymond accused CNL of blocking black bears from accessing their dens on the forested site and of setting up sound deterrence devices to drive away wildlife.
“These actions are not only illegal under the Wildlife Conservation Act, but violate Algonquin Anishinaabe customary laws and our profound respect for the wildlife that has co-existed with us on these lands for generations,” he said.
“The blatant disregard for both law and our traditions displayed by CNL cannot and will not go unchecked.”
Eastern wolves, which the federal environment department recently reclassified as a threatened species, also roam on the 35-hectare site. The government estimates there are likely to be fewer than 1,000 adult Eastern wolves left in Canada, and possibly as few as 236.
“The uplisting of the Eastern Wolf to ‘threatened’ in Canada suggests the dump project should be halted and an alternative site should be found well away from the Ottawa River,” said Ole Hendrickson, Chair of the national conservation committee of Sierra Club Canada, an environmental organization, in an interview Monday.
“There are federal lands more distant from the Ottawa River, but still near the Chalk River site, that should be looked at instead.”