Success in siting low-level radioactive waste management facilities

Full text: The Government of Canada is about to conclude a legal agreement with three municipalities that will result in a $260-million 10-year multi-phase project to cleanup low-level radioactive wastes and contaminated soils and establish long-term low-level radioactive waste management facilities. Over the last two decades, numerous efforts were undertaken to resolve this long-standing environmental issue. Finally, the communities where the wastes are located came forward with resolutions that they were willing to develop local solutions to the problem. All three municipalities, facilitated by Government funding and assistance, put forward their own local solution to their own waste problem. Government accepted the municipalities' proposals as the basis of a comprehensive approach for dealing with the local problem. Negotiations ensued on Principles of Understanding under which the cleanup would proceed and new long-term waste management facilities would be established. Government's acceptance of the negotiated Principles led to the preparation of a legal agreement that was subsequently signed by each of the municipalities and is now about to be ratified by the Government of Canada. Resolution of the issue will be a major milestone in the Government's environmental agenda. The project will result in an environmentally-responsible, safe, and publicly-accepted approach to the long-term management of the wastes and remove one of the largest contaminated sites issues from the Government's agenda. It also advances the Government's nuclear waste policy and indicates to waste producers that the Government is developing and implementing solutions for wastes for which it is responsible. A key lesson for the Government of Canada in this process has been the advantages of a locally-generated solution. Through the process, the Government empowered the local municipalities to develop their own solution to the local waste problem. It facilitated and supported that effort. Finally, it accepted the community-driven approach as a potential solution to be examined through the environmental assessment process. More importantly, it established, through the legal agreement, that the community-driven proposals would be the starting point for evaluating the long-term solution. The process also establishes the environmental assessment process as a true planning tool, as it is intended. The municipalities understand that the proposals may evolve through the environmental assessment and licensing processes. The starting point for the environmental assessment will be the municipal proposals, but there is opportunity to examine alternative solutions as well. Interested parties, including community representatives who were not involved in the development of the proposals, will have an opportunity to identify alternative ways of carrying out the project. The Government together with the local municipality, council and the public at large, will examine the various approaches in an open process of assessment to identify a preferred option. And to reaffirm the Government's commitment to implementing a community-drive approach, the resulting preferred option must be supported by the local municipal councils. (author)