IGNACE – “A lot of community members” turned out for Tuesday’s open house on the deep geological repository (DGR) project, Ignace Mayor Kim Baigrie said.
“We want people to be able to come and learn, educate, ask more questions … and get more involved,” she said while the event’s afternoon information session was in progress.
“That’s what we wanted to do, and it looks like that’s what we’ve done, because it’s a great turnout.”
About 40 community members, including the chief of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, attended the 2 p.m. information session at the township’s recreation complex. The 6 p.m. session saw a similar turnout, Baigrie said.
The level of interest was good to see because the DGR project is “very important for the community, very important for the region,” she said.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization wants to build a DGR – a deep-underground facility in which to keep millions of used fuel rods from Canadian nuclear reactors – at a location south of Highway 17 between Ignace and Dryden.
Ignace has been chosen as the DGR’s host municipality, Wabigoon Lake as host First Nation.
The industry-funded NWMO has projected it could
begin construction of the DGR in the next decade, after it passes federal regulatory and licensing reviews.
Wabigoon Lake will be conducting its own reviews of the multibillion-dollar project.
Baigrie told Newswatch she had strong reservations about hosting a nuclear-waste project 15 years ago when the township offered itself as a potential host municipality.
“I was scared,” she said. “But I can honestly say along the way that I’ve educated, I’ve learned, and I want this for our community. And I’m very proud of our community.”
Roger Dufault, former chair of the “willingness committee” that consulted with Ignace residents about the DGR project, said after the 2 p.m. information session that he’d like to see the township’s hosting agreement with the NWMO renegotiated.
Signed and ratified by Ignace council last year, the hosting agreement sets out the terms of compensation to Ignace for being the host municipality.
Dufault said there’s “a vast difference” in compensation between Ignace and Wabigoon Lake, with the First Nation’s compensation being much greater. NWMO and Wabigoon have not publicly released the details of their agreement.
“I hope over time that, you know, this will be good for Ignace, because we need things to happen,” he said.
Ignace “can’t have a future unless we have people come here,” he said. “And the only way for people to come here is, we’ve got to have jobs here.”
Toni Zappitelli, a senior, said “everything was good” in the information session except that she heard nothing “about young kids growing up. And I think that should have been in there … (because) they’re very important.”
By the time the DGR is built, today’s children will be adults, she noted.
Besides the information sessions, the open house also featured information tables representing the NWMO, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the township’s community engagement committee and others.
