Chris Schneidmiller
RW Monitor
2/5/2016
U.S. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) this week said she has urged the State Department to partner with the Canadian government to ensure a deep geologic repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste is not built less than a mile from Lake Huron in Ontario. The agency, though, does not appear to have pursued the lawmaker’s request to involve the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission in the matter.
The Canadian Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change is due by March 1 to rule on the potential environmental impact of Ontario Power Generation’s plan for storage of 200,000 cubic meters of waste from its Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington power stations.
Ontario Power Generation says multiple studies have found that the facility as planned would not pose a threat to the environment or the public. But opponents of the plan, including a number of U.S. lawmakers, have decried the potential danger of locating radioactive waste so close to a key source of drinking water. It is “not credible” that no other reasonable site could be found further from Lake Huron in “a territory as vast and geologically diverse as Ontario,” Miller wrote in an op-ed published late Tuesday in the Detroit News.
“That is why I have made repeated calls on our Department of State to pursue intervention by the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission, a treaty organization that was formed to protect the Lakes more than a century ago, and work with the Canadian government to find such an alternative,” Miller stated. “It is also why I joined with a bipartisan majority of my colleagues in Congress to urge newly elected Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau, whose environment minister is scheduled to make a decision on the repository March 1, to do the same.”
Miller’s office on Wednesday provided a March 19, 2014, letter in which Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield told the lawmaker the State Department would “review any possible role for the IJC and determine next steps.” The department did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Under the 1909 bilateral Boundary Waters Treaty, the Joint Commission is charged with regulating usage of the nations’ shared waterways and probing and offering solutions for transboundary issues. Spokesman Frank Bevacqua said Wednesday the commission had not received a request for intervention.
“We are not currently involved in looking at the issue. But the IJC stands ready to assist the governments of Canada and the United States if requested,” he said.
For the IJC to become involved, it would have to receive a joint letter from the State Department and Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry detailing what issues they want studied. The IJC would then form a study team of experts from both nations to issue recommendations on the question at hand, which could extend from the environmental threat posed by the planned site to other potential locations, according to Bevacqua.
While recommendations are not binding, the commission has a good track record when it comes to government follow-through on its reports, he said.
Depending on the complexity of the matter, a study could be finished in less than a year or require multiple years to complete, Bevacqua said. “This certainly doesn’t look as complex as some of the issues we’ve been asked to consider in the past,” he added.
