More than 100 Great Lakes mayors and elected officials want the Canadian government to say no to a controversial plan to bury low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste within one mile of Lake Huron at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant in Kincardine, Ontario.
The officials from both side of the U.S-Canadian border slammed Ontario Power Generation's plan in a November 30, 2017 letter to Catherine McKenna, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
The letter said the utility's proposal to bury the waste so near Lake Huron threatens the water supply of 40 million people.
"We find it irresponsible and deeply troubling that OPG failed and continues to refuse to investigate any other actual sites for its proposed nuclear waste repository," the letter said.
"We know that there's other available sites in Canada that could house this kind of waste that are not so close to this natural resource," said Traverse City Mayor Jim Carruthers, who signed the letter.
"Fresh water is life in many of our opinions," Carruthers said. "That's why I speak out for our environment and for our fresh water. It's our Traverse City economy."
The letter to McKenna is the latest in a series of efforts to oppose OPG's plan by citizen groups and more than 200 local governments on both sides of the border in the Great Lakes area. Forty-six of the 104 signers of the letter were Michigan elected officials.
According to OPG, its plan is safe and the Bruce Nuclear site near Lake Huron is the right place for an underground nuclear waste repository.
