1 see attached e-mail correspondence B ut by that Feb. 13th council - - PDF document

To: Linda White, Clerk, Town of Saugeen Shores

• Feb. 29, 2012

Dear Ms. White: I would like to be placed on the Committee of the Whole agenda for the March 12th, 2012 Council meeting to address council with the comments below. I enclose copies for the Mayor and each council member as well as one for you to include in the minutes. Thanks, Cheryl Grace Dear Mayor Smith and Members of the Corporation of the Town of Saugeen Shores Council, Deputy- Mayor Charbonneau, Vice-Deputy Mayor Gowanlock, Councillors Brown, Frosst, Huber, Legault, Seaman and Schildroth: My name is Cheryl Grace - I was born in Southampton. My ancestors ( the Gowans, Strongs, Colemans, Walkers and McDougals ) moved to Arran and Amabel Townships here in Bruce County in the 1850s . Although I lived here mostly in the summers until this past fall when I retired here as a full-time resident, I have a deep and abiding love for Saugeen Shores. I speak tonight for a group of concerned Saugeen Shores residents and property owners. We present you with the following concerns about the NWMO's (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) site selection process for the national DGR for high-level radioactive waste and some of our main concerns with placing the site in our community. We are very concerned about the Saugeen Shores Council’s actions on this issue: During the January 9th, 2012 Committee of the Whole Council meeting several councillors and the mayor spoke about their desire for an open public education process. Here are some of your statements as recorded by those who attended that meeting:

• Councillor Schildroth - “members of the public engaged in an ad hoc committee”
• Councillor Huber - “Interested in forums - loud, rowdy, opportunities for dialogue. I would like to see us

do that with this”

• Councillor Seaman - “I want more information - public meetings, not kiosks.”
• Deputy-Mayor Charbonneau - “The buck stops with us to do a better job of informing the public. ...I

move we defer this until there is comprehensive education - and have five or six meetings for public consultation....

• If the council feels the timeline is too truncated - if we want to go longer - I can do that.”

That night I e-mailed all members of the council asking for public education to be extended through the summer to allow for all residents to participate in this process. I also volunteered to be a member of the committee being formed to advise council on the public education process. I was encouraged when Mayor Smith responded in a Jan.11th e-mail: “ “...I will ask Council to decide on the composition of Committee at the next scheduled meeting, I do agree the May 14 date does not allow enough time to do good job (sic) and believe Council will likely agree to extend the time.”1 Despite further e-mail correspondence addressed to Clerk White and the Mayor in January, I did not receive the information I requested about this committee. On Feb. 1st, Mayor Smith responded by e- mailing only “We should have something for the next meeting of Saugeen Shores Council.”2

1 see attached e-mail correspondence

But by that Feb. 13th council meeting, the “committee” was a done deal. Mr. Allison reported that a committee of unnamed council and staff had met with the NWMO on an unnamed date to “map out the education program.” This program included and I quote: “a direct mailing, ...kiosks, at least one open house in both Port Elgin and Southampton staffed by NWMO officials, a potential display staffed by NWMO at the home show in early May, an informational presentation to councillors at a special meeting and online links ...through the Town’s and NWMO’s websites.” There is no mention of the public meetings or loud, rowdy forums asked for during the Jan. 9th meeting. Mr. Allison’s report goes on to indicate that and I quote: “direct feedback regarding the merits of the project itself would not be sought at this time as there are multiple opportunities for those opinions to be expressed if decisions are made to proceed to subsequent steps.” 3 This is unacceptable to us. We Call for Council to take the following actions:

• 1. Defer Your Decision until after Labor Day

We formally ask you to defer your decision from May 14th until the fall of 2012 to allow all property

• wners and residents of Saugeen Shores to participate in the public education process. The NWMO

professes a desire to require a willing host community - how can we do that without allowing maximum public participation?

• 2. Expand the public education process beyond what the NWMO has suggested.

The NWMO has a job - their job is to sell this project to a community and find a place to dump all of Canada’s highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. YOUR JOB as our elected Council is to act in the best interest of our community and to respect the democratic process. ALL of your constituents need a process with experts outside the NWMO to be part of the discussion; we must have public forums where citizens can ask questions and receive balanced answers. This must occur during the spring and summer allowing the non-resident 30% of our population to

• participate. 4

The “open houses” suggested by the NWMO are not public meetings, but merely propaganda displays designed to sell their message. Don’t let the NWMO manipulate this community by controlling the

• message. Ask yourselves why the NWMO didn’t suggest this type of open meeting as part of their plan

for Saugeen Shores.

• 3. Guarantee that “community consultation” will be truly democratic:

The NWMO site selection process states that the host community must be WILLING. This willingness cannot be measured accurately without a genuine Community Consultation. For Kincardine’s proposed nuclear waste DGR, the NWMO polled residents in the dead of winter - January and February 2005 - by telephone or mail survey, depending on residency status. They were asked “Do you support the establishment of a facility for the long-term management of low and intermediate level waste at the Western Waste Management Facility?” The words NUCLEAR and DEEP GEOLOGICAL REPOSITORY were not used in this question. With a 71% response rate and a 60% positive vote, only 42% of the Kincardine population gave their approval for this project. Is that a willing community? 5 And with such a benign and general question, did they even know what they were voting for? The most democratic type

• f community consultation should be a ballot referendum on an accurate question.

2 see attached e-mail correspondence 3 The Corporation of the Town of Saugeen Shores - Information Report, Prepared by Larry Allison, CAO, Feb. 13,

2012, “Next Steps, NWMO - DGR Site Selection Public Education Measures”, https://saugeenshores.civicweb.net/FileStorage/356BC55F19FA44389D4BE7A27E81A032- WorkspaceInformation%20Report%20-%20Next%20Steps%20NWMO%20-%20DG.pdf

4 Growth Management Discussion Paper, Town of Saugeen Shores, Official Plan Review, October 6, 2011, Meridian

Planning Consultants, Inc. http://www.saugeenshores.ca/downloads/municipal/Growth_Management_Report_October_6.pdf

5 Chapter 2 of Vol. 1 of the OPG-NWMO

environmental impact statement. You can access the PDF through http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/document-eng.cfm?document=49818.

• 4. It is your duty to consider these risks for our Community:

i) This project would leave an enormous physical and social footprint in Saugeen Shores - the perimeter

• f the land needed for the DGR, not to mention the depth of the excavation, would be comparable to a

rectangle encompassing all the land within the Saugeen Shores Sewer Pumping station on the 10th concession, to Hwy. 21 to Ralph’s Hi-Way Shopette in Port Elgin. Where will that land come from in our Town? Which farms and/or natural preserves will be sacrificed? Which bodies of water will be endangered? What will be the adverse effects on natural beauty, property values, tax revenue, and loss

• f residents who do not wish to live near Canada’s national nuclear waste dump?

ii) The safety of below grade storage for nuclear waste in ANY substrate is unproven - no nation in the world has completed such a site. How many times in modern history have we been told that something is safe? Residents of northern Japan were assured that the Fukushima nuclear plant was safe, too - before last spring’s tsunami. What assurance do we have that the blasting and drilling required for this type of project will not result in rock fractures which will allow radioactive materials to leach into our water supply - either our precious Lake Huron and/or our groundwater? In Ottawa, on Feb. 21, 2012 , a member of the Joint Review Panel for the DGR for Intermediate and Low-Level Waste questioned a Natural Resources Canada official about complacency regarding increased seismic activity in this region. Recently published studies (including one by the US Geological Survey) show higher-than-expected seismicity in the Great Lakes Basin (along faults fairly close to several reactors). What else don’t we know? iii) The World Health Organization has defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and emphasizes quality of life as essential for health. 6The health risks of a construction project

• f this nature and magnitude include: adverse health consequences of air, water, and soil pollution, noise

pollution, traffic and construction-related injuries, and radiation. Because of the potential and real impact, transient and permanent, on all domains of health caused by construction of a high level nuclear waste DGR here, we condemn it as an unacceptable health risk to our community. iv) Canadians have been told that this DGR would only accept Canadian used spent fuel - but consider this - the US recently abandoned their plans for a national DGR at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada - to date they do not have another plan. In 2000, an American company won a NAFTA lawsuit which requires a site in Swan Hills, Alberta to be open to American non-nuclear waste ... and, if that’s not bad enough, the Canadian and Alberta governments have to pay this company over $8 million in damages.7 v) In 2006 the Ontario government approved the construction of 4 Generation III reactors at the Darlington site. These reactors will use enriched uranium instead of natural uranium. The waste from the proposed new reactors will take about 2.6 million years to reach decay.8 This project will affect our community for near eternity. Near eternity is too long a span to be trusted to any government process which doesn’t allow for the most open democratic participation possible. Sincerely,

6https://apps.who.int/aboutwho/en/definition.html (World Health Organization) 7 a)IN A NAFTA ARBITRATION UNDER THE UNCITRAL ARBITRATION RULES, S.D. Myers, Inc. (Claimant)

• and-Government of Canada (Respondent), PARTIAL AWARD, Nov. 2000

b)

http://www.hazmatmag.com/news/s-d-myers-wins-nafta-ruling/1000166652/

c)

http://www.ecoweek.ca/issues/ISarticle.asp?aid=1000117183

8 “The Hazards of Generation III Reactor Fuel Wastes - Implications for Transportation and Long-Term Management

• f Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel” - BY Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D ,Jackie Travers, and Ekaterina Alexandrova,

Radioactive Waste Management Associates; Prepared under the sponsorship of Greenpeace Canada, May 2010

Cheryl Grace, Southampton resident and property owner Jill Taylor, Saugeen Shores property owner Charles Hazell, Saugeen Shores property owner Ellen Dailey, Saugeen Shores property owner Geoff Dunn, Saugeen Shores property owner Laura Robinson, Southampton resident and property owner John Sifton, Saugeen Shores property owner Tricia Wilson, Saugeen Shores property owner Beatrice Strong, Southampton resident and property owner