Ignace councillor has an appointment in Austria
IGNACE – The Northwest township that’s wrestling with whether it wants to be a nuclear host community will send a representative to Vienna to talk about the community’s decision-making process.
Coun. Jodie Defeo has been invited to explain the “deliberative democracy” process employed to gauge the level of community willingness to proceed in site selection for a proposed underground nuclear-waste facility.
Her presentation is slated to take place at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference in the Austrian capital in late October.
Defeo told Newswatch she will “present a brief history of 14 years of engagement and conversation” regarding whether the township of 1,200 or so residents would want Canada’s deep geological repository nearby.
A deep geological repository, or DGR, is an underground storage place for spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a federally mandated body funded by nuclear power producers, has a spot west of Ignace on its shortlist of two final candidate sites for the DGR.
The other finalist is a location in the South Bruce municipality in southwestern Ontario.
The NWMO has said it intends to choose between the two sites by the end of 2024.
Whichever site is chosen, the NWMO aims to begin construction of the DGR – a multibillion-dollar project – around 2034.
“Community willingness” is an essential criterion for site selection, according to the NWMO, so each potential host municipality has been engaged in a “willingness process” to determine if that criterion is being met.
South Bruce has a referendum set for Oct. 28, just days after Defeo’s presentation in Austria.
A community vote took place April 26-30 in Ignace, and the consultant who conducted the vote has submitted a report to a committee of residents last month.
After the committee sends its recommendation to Ignace council, Defeo and other councillors will vote on the matter and report the township’s willingness or non-willingness to the NWMO.
“We interacted with the community so that the community would decide how they wanted their voice to be heard,” Defeo said in a recent interview.
Township council chose a consulting firm, With Chela Inc., “to engage with the community in what we feel is a meaningful way to get their voices heard,” she said.
Some communities in Europe are interested in Ignace’s experience because DGRs or similar projects are in the works for their local regions, Defeo explained.
“I think there’s a keen interest in the conversations we’ve had, what type of learnings and engagement was beneficial and what wasn’t,” she continued.
“You know – just what worked and what didn’t work? What would we do differently? How could we be better if we were to do it again? What would we do differently?”
She described Ignace’s process as getting to “a yes or a no – but a yes or no with meaningful dialogue.”
The next scheduled meeting of Ignace council is July 15, but Defeo said she doesn’t know if the DGR willingness issue will be on the agenda.
Under the township’s hosting agreement with the NWMO, the nuclear organization will pay Ignace $1.5 million upon receipt of the township’s willingness decision.
The township would have been owed an additional $500,000 if it had communicated its decision before June 30.
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, whose traditional territory includes the potential DGR site, has not communicated whether its community would welcome a DGR.
Wabigoon Lake officials have said they will hold a community vote, but no date has been set for the event.
Mike Stimpson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Thunder Bay Source
