The Municipality of South Bruce has a busy year ahead surrounding the planning and referendum for a deep geological repository project.
South Bruce Mayor Mark Goetz says that they’re starting 2024 by finishing a hosting agreement, which they hope to have wrapped up in February.
He says that once a report comes back to council with an agreement, it will become a public document that can be referred to by anyone who needs it.
“The hosting agreement is kind of the document that outlines all of the benefits and commitments made by both parties. One of the tools we used to draft that hosting agreement was the 36 guiding principles, [which] were created through public consultation with South Bruce residents, and they cover anything from water quality to safety to monetary benefits, infrastructure, things like that,” he says.”The reason it needs to become public is because that document is one of the pieces that the public is going to want to see and understand before they make a decision on this project. So if that becomes public, say by April, then we would pose the question that’ll be asked on the referendum.”
Once the question for the referendum is approved and deemed to be accurate and correct, it’s available 180 days prior to a vote being taken. Goetz says that would mean that a decision would be made in the fall of 2024.
Goetz says that when it comes time for the residents of South Bruce to vote on the matter, it will have a familiar layout of a municipal election.
“It’s similar to an election,” says Goetz. “It will just be one question, and it has to be a clear yes or no answer to it. I don’t know what the question looks like yet. That will probably be drawn up by our legal people. And then there’s a challenge period where that question could be challenged. From there, if we get the green light and that’s it’s a straightforward enough question to be asked, that’s when it gets posted for 180 days, and then on the day of the referendum, it’s just similar to a normal municipal election. I think right now we’re leaning toward the electronic voting method. I know there’s one group asking for a paper ballot, but we’ve done the last three or four elections through electronic ballot, so to go back to a paper ballot I think it would require a lot more work. I’m of the opinion that it should be an electronic ballot but that even hasn’t been decided 100 percent.”
Once South Bruce decides if it wants to be home to the DGR project or not, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation will need to make its own decision if the project goes ahead.
“The First Nations have their own vote. They’re going to do their own method – I don’t even know if they’re doing a referendum, or whether their joint council’s going to decide. The way it’s set up is that in order for this project, South Bruce would have to say yes, and then SON would have to say yes.”
That said, if one group decides to vote against the DGR, then it cannot proceed further.
Regardless of what each voter’s decision is, Goetz says that it’s important to have everyone inform themselves on the topic so they can make the best decision possible.
“There’s a difference of opinions. There’s a group that’s strongly in favour of the project. There’s a group that’s strongly opposed to the project. And I kind of like to say there’s a large part of the population that’s undecided at this point, because they’re — again, if I go back a year ago to election time, it was a clear message sent that the residents wanted more information before they make a decision so because all the information isn’t finished gathering yet. I would think that there’s a third group that’s undecided until all the information’s on the table, and I don’t want to speak for them one way or another which way I believe the way this thing could go. That’s the purpose of the referendum to tell us that.”
He says that between now and the referendum, voters should ask all of the questions they have to experts and the municipality’s staff.
“Make sure you’re talking to the right people. If you’re asking questions and you want the right information you’re best to go right to the qualified people to answer that. There are all sorts of people out there willing to put their own spin on things and to be quite frank, a lot of it has been quite inaccurate at times. Some of it has been really good questions, don’t get me wrong. People have asked some really good questions and there are proper channels with the NWMO and our team at South Bruce is able to get the answers for people and get back to them if they don’t have the answers on hand. I just want to make sure that everybody has a clear picture before they cast that ballot and they know what they’re voting on.”
When a group of delegates from the municipality, as well as from Bruce County, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and others went on a fact-finding mission to the Onkalo DGR project in Finland, it was good to get input about how such a project would be built, and how it could work here in Canada. Goetz was not one of the people who went on the trip, but he says that he’s been learning about the proposed project for several years.
“I’ve been involved in the project now for 10 years, and I’ve had my opportunity to talk to a lot of international scientists over the years and one thing I see that’s the beauty of this project is that they’re sharing international experiences. So Finland, and France, and Sweden, places like that, they’re further along in the process than we are. But the process we’ve picked here in South Bruce, with the referendum, that has never been done before, where the community decides. [In] some of those areas the government says ‘this is the area where we’re going to put it and that’s where it’s going’ and people seem to accept it, so we’re hearing. And I think that was verified with the folks that went to Finland.”
Goetz says that with that viewpoint, they can also consider the difference between Onkalo and the proposed South Bruce DGR.
“We’ve had the opportunity in Finland to witness that they have succeeded in building it. But I will say that the design of their DGR in Finland is a little bit different than the design of the one [proposed] in South Bruce. The one in Finland, you can actually drive in a vehicle down into the mine, and the one [proposed] in South Bruce is just down shaft, like the mines in northern Ontario.”
He says that whether the project is approved by South Bruce and SON residents or not, a DGR will have to be built somewhere.
“Basically, you’ve got to start somewhere. And the way I understand it is that it’s safely stored where it is, but it’s not a long-term solution. So number one, you’ve got to look at ice ages. We’ve had ice ages across this part of the continent before and it’s expected there will be more. This stuff has a lifespan of a million years, so you can’t just leave it on the surface and expect it to survive the next ice age so the DGR is designed to withstand another ice age event. Yes, it’ll be a 170-year project where they slowly put it down there and monitor it for a number of years after that. And should technology evolve where there could be further use for some of this [waste], it will be retrievable for quite some time, where you could bring it back up and reuse it for something.”
He says that even with a small modular reactor to take more energy out of the fuel bundles, experts have told him that there will still need to be a repository.