Sarnia mayor celebrates rejection of nuclear waste storage site near Lake Huron as a 'huge victory'

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley is celebrating the rejection of a proposed underground storage facility for nuclear waste at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Kincardine, Ont., a site that is situated close to the shores of Lake Huron. 

Ontario Power Generation will now look for alternative storage options after an Indigenous community overwhelmingly rejected the proposed facility. 

After a year of consultations and days of voting, the 4,500-member Saugeen Ojibway Nation announced late Friday that its members had voted with an 85 per cent majority against the plan. 

"It's a huge victory for the environmentalists, for the Great Lakes mayors," said Bradley, who had been fighting the proposal for eight years, because of concerns that lake water could become contaminated. 

"I first got involved in this issue in 2012, had little hope at that time of reversing this decision. It really spoke to people power. I believe there was close to a thousand different groups and people that spoke at the hearings against it."

The province's giant utility had wanted to build the repository 680 metres underground about 1.2 kilometres from Lake Huron as permanent storage for low and intermediate-level radioactive waste. The project was tentatively approved in May 2015.

While Kincardine was a "willing host," the relative proximity of the proposed bunker to the lake sparked a backlash elsewhere in Canada and the United States. Politicians, environmentalists and scores of communities expressed opposition.

Bradley warned it's still possible a different type of nuclear waste site could end up in the area, so he said the lobbying campaign needs to continue.

"I don't think that anyone can be complacent. It's not over," he said.

Bradley suggests it would be better to store the nuclear waste in the north, where it's more geologically secure.