The Dominion - nuclear waste

Stopping Nuclear Waste in its Tracks

Sandra — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:10:27 +0000

Communities, Indigenous organizations pass resolutions against transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan

BEAUVAL, SK—Three places in northern Saskatchewan may be on the map in Canada's search for a high-level radioactive waste dump site, but the spent nuclear fuel bundles may be stopped in their tracks. Communities and Indigenous organizations along potential transport routes and beyond have been passing resolutions against nuclear waste.

The Northern Village of Pinehouse, English River First Nation and the town of Creighton are all currently in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) site selection process to find a "willing host community" for a deep geological repository to house the waste piling up at nuclear reactors in Quebec, New Brunswick and especially Ontario.

Canoe Lake First Nation, the town of La Loche, trappers from the Fur Block near Beauval, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation (SAWCC) and the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) have all formally opposed the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. Others criticize NWMO for refusing to deal with site selection process on a regional basis, even though a decision would affect much more than a single community.

Emil Bell has been educating Band and town councilors about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization process and the dangers of nuclear waste. A Cree grassroots activist, he lives in Fire Lake, outside of the Canoe Lake First Nation reserve.

"Canoe Lake is against this whole thing," Bell told the Media Co-op. Located in northwestern Saskatchewan, east of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range and tar sands exploitation, the First Nation passed a Band Council Resolution against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

"I was the one that was going around, getting all the signatures of the councilors," said Bell. "They are dead set against the nuclear dump. It goes against our Treaty rights, our inherent rights. If we get a major disaster wherever they put the nuclear dump, our waterways are, you know, shot. Animal life, the plant life, are going to be drastically affected."

Bell has been traveling up and down the province, meeting with other First Nations, municipal authorities and groups and urging them to take an official stance against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. "There's a few of us that are going around, doing a lot of work, and we do it out of our own pocket," he said.

But northern activists are not the only ones speaking about nuclear waste in the region. "The nuclear industry people, NWMO, have a lot of money. They're also going around, trying to convince people to, you know, accept the nuclear dump [with] the promise of a lot of money, the promise of jobs...they keep telling people 'oh yeah, it's safe, it's safe,'" Bell told the Media Co-op.

The predominantly Métis community of Île-à-la-Crosse has yet to take an official position on nuclear waste transportation and storage and will likely revisit the issue after the October 24 municipal elections. Île-à-la-Crosse Mayor Duane Favel says he and others requested that NWMO communicate and deal with municipalities in northwestern Saskatchewan collectively because a nuclear waste repository in the area would impact the entire region.

"Our proposal was, as Northwest municipalities, that we try and get NWMO to deal with us as a region, as the Northwest municipalities. We drafted up a letter [and] we tried to get the signature of every mayor—I believe there's 17 municipalities on the northwest side—[so] that NWMO would have to deal with us collectively, if they were, you know, to talk about nuclear waste within their region," Favel told the Media Co-op in an interview in the Île-à-la-Crosse village office.

"However, that got kind of sidetracked," he said. "They started meeting with municipalities individually and convinced, you know, one or two municipalities to agree to—for NWMO to go into their communities and start this process that they talk about."

Many mayors did sign the letter and a copy was given to the Northwest municipalities and to NWMO. But NWMO declined to pursue the regional approach requested by the municipalities.

"They didn't want to deal with that as a collective organization. They wanted to deal with specific municipalities. And I believe some of the reasoning was, you know, the areas that they were looking for, that would be good for this deposit of nuclear waste, wasn't throughout this region," said Favel. "However, that was not our argument. Our argument was if nuclear waste was to be stored in the northwest side of Saskatchewan, that they should be dealing with us collectively and we should vote as a region whether or not we want nuclear waste stored within this area."

The communication between Île-à-la-Crosse and NWMO is currently non-existent, Favel told the Media Co-op.

"I'm still kind of baffled in terms of why they didn't use that approach and actually consult with everybody within the region and try to, I guess at least in the beginning, have a good working relationship in terms of addressing the issue with the people of Northwest Saskatchewan," he said. "I thought it was a completely disrespectful approach."

While Île-à-la-Crosse and other municipalities consider whether to take an official position on the issue, some locals of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan have been actively organizing opposition to the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. Bryan Lee and other members of the Fish Lake Métis local began looking into the nuclear waste storage issue a few years ago, when they heard locations in northern Saskatchewan were under consideration.

"Once we heard this, then we started looking into the whole issue ourselves because we had heard some things in [the] press, that the NWMO was looking for a 'willing host community' in northern Saskatchewan," Lee told the Media Co-op. "We brought forward a motion within our local to take a position...to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste."

After passing at the Fish Lake Métis local, the resolution was taken to Western Region 2, where it passed as well. A motion for the resolution to be adopted at the provincial level by the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan did not succeed in 2010, but Lee presented it again in 2011.

"I reformatted the resolution and I brought it forward to the annual general assembly November 5, 2011. And in the presentation, we were successful in getting a two thirds majority approval at the assembly, for the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan to take the official position to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste anywhere in Saskatchewan," said Lee.

The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation of Saskatchewan also passed a resolution last year, opposing the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. The resolution was then adopted by the Native Women's Association of Canada at its annual general assembly held in Saskatoon in August 2012.

The town of La Loche and the trappers' organization from a Fur Block in the Beauval area have also passed similar resolutions. More communities and organizations are currently considering taking an official stance against nuclear waste in the province.

NWMO is moving forward in its search and Pinehouse, English River First Nation and Creighton are still under consideration. But with all the resolutions against nuclear waste transportation, whether the high-level radioactive waste would ever make it to a storage site in northern Saskatchewan without roadblocks along the way is beginning to look increasingly unlikely.

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist and member of the Vancouver Media Co-op. She recently returned to the west coast after eight weeks in Saskatchewan. This article was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Saskatchewan Nuclear Dump

Intimidation, Irregularities Cloud Pinehouse Election

Tim McSorley — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:24:54 +0000

Northern Saskatchewan residents report infractions, climate of fear in municipal election process

PINEHOUSE, SK—Something is rotten in the State of Denmark, according to people in the northern village of Pinehouse, Saskatchewan. Residents contacted provincial officials to report irregularities and acts of intimidation at last week's advance poll in an effort to ensure a free and fair municipal election today.

Longtime Pinehouse resident John Smerek sent a letter to provincial government officials reporting irregularities in the advance poll held September 12. In the letter sent Monday via email to Minister of Government Relations Jim Reiter and carbon copied to several other provincial authorities, Smerek highlighted process infractions such as the failure to abide by new voter ID requirements and acts of intimidation.

"I would like to see the people here have a free and democratic opportunity to vote without the fear or intimidation or false promises offered to them by the individuals that are sent out or hired by our leaders to intimidate the democratic process," Smerek told the Media Co-op in an interview in Pinehouse.

One of the individuals in question is Vince Natomagan, who acts as a community liaison to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). He has an office in the village office building and works closely with the Pinehouse council.

Along with two other locations in northern Saskatchewan and more than a dozen in Ontario, Pinehouse is currently part of NWMO's search for a "willing host community" for Canada's high-level radioactive waste. In 2010, Pinehouse Mayor Mike Natomagan sent NWMO an Expression of Interest, initiating the community's inclusion in the site selection process for a deep geological repository for the used nuclear fuel bundles currently stored onsite at nuclear reactors in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

Five hundred kilometres north of Saskatoon, the northern village of Pinehouse is a predominantly Cree-speaking Metis community of approximately 1,000 people near the boundary between the Canadian Shield and Boreal Plain regions. It used to be the end of the road. Trucks now travel another 220 kilometres past the turnoff to the community up to the Key Lake uranium mill. Operated by Saskatoon-based uranium mining giant Cameco, the mill processes ore from the McArthur River uranium mine 80 kilometres further north. Open pit uranium mining at Key Lake itself ended in 2002.

Today, tensions in Pinehouse run high with the municipal election taking place. Some residents are concerned that despite secret ballots, there may be negative consequences if they cast a ballot and the councillors who end up elected believe they voted for other candidates—whether they have or not, said Smerek.

"Our current leaders have hired people that work for them that go around making offers and directions that sound like a threat—that they won't be able to service the people if they don't vote for the current leaders. And they'll try to lead them directly to the polls," he said.

In one case identified in Smerek's letter, voters were threatened on their way to cast a ballot in the advance poll last week. According to an account of an incident by another resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal, residents walking to the polling station were told by an individual affiliated with the current council not to expect anything at all from the village in the future, after they alluded to their plan to vote for candidates not currently on council.

The Executive Director of Communications for the Ministry of Government Relations, Jeff Welke, responded via email to the Media Co-op's request for comment on the allegations of intimidation contained in Smerek's letter.

"References to attempts to bribe voters and/or otherwise influence for whom voters would cast their ballot are very serious allegations, and pertain to legal matters that are outside the Ministry's authority, as well as outside the authority of election officials, to deal with," Welke wrote to the Media Co-op. "Any person or persons who have experienced an attempted bribery, or who have witnessed such an attempt should consider contacting the nearest detachment of the RCMP as soon as possible. Alternatively, they could also proceed under the provisions of The Controverted Municipal Elections Act by contacting a judge and swearing out a complaint."

Smerek's letter also identifies an infraction in the advance poll process itself. At least some residents were not asked to produce identification, despite reforms to the Local Government Elections Act passed in 2011, requiring all voters provide identification. In an affidavit sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths, a resident who has requested that their name be withheld due to fear of reprisal stated that at no time was he required to produce identification when he voted at the advance poll.

"I pulled out my wallet and asked, 'Don’t you need two pieces of ID' to which [polling clerk] Nancy Misponas replied, 'No, don’t worry about it,'" states the affidavit, according to a copy of the text obtained by the Media Co-op. "None of the people lined up in front of me while I was there were asked to produce their identification.”

In his response to the Media Co-op, Welke explained that "province's role in the municipal election process is to provide for and maintain the legislative framework under which the elections are run and to provide training, resources and advice to local election officials." Conducting elections in keeping with legislation is a municipal responsibility with no direct provincial oversight. However, he stated that local officials have been made well aware of elections procedures, including the new voter ID regulations.

"Prior to any round of municipal elections the Ministry holds workshops around the province for election officials...Pinehouse attended the May 9 session in Prince Albert. As well, the Ministry took extra measures to try and ensure that local election officials were aware of the new requirements including articles in 'Municipalities Today', guides and resources on the Ministry's website and the production of promotional materials that could be downloaded and used at the local level to help citizens become familiar with the voter ID requirement," wrote Welke.

"Ministry officials have also been in direct contact with local election officials in Pinehouse to reinforce the need to abide by all election procedural rules, including the new voter ID requirements," he wrote.

This year's municipal election is not the first time a resident has voiced concern about local governance and requested the intervention of the provincial government. In 2011, Fred Pederson wrote to Municipal Affairs officials requesting an investigation into the actions of mayor and council. He highlighted the alleged misuse of village funds, the appropriation of a youth centre, housing issues and intimidation.

"People feel threatened about losing their jobs because council sit on every board in town. So it influences people from feeling free to speak out or even votes during an election," wrote Pederson in his undated letter. "[The village] office is being used for their own benefit [and] every rule has been broken...all of them have [quit] their jobs to live off of the Village."

Pederson received a response from Colleen Digness, Manager of the Northern Municipal Administration, based in La Ronge. Her letter, dated November 30, 2011, outlines and includes the relevant sections of The Northern Municipalities Act, 2010, including section 128: "No member of council is eligible to be appointed as an employee of the municipality or of any committee or controlled corporation of the municipality in which he or she serves as a member of council."

After last week's advance poll, Pederson again contacted Municipal Affairs officials—this time by telephone—to report irregularities and request intervention. The response from the central office in Regina indicated that the issue was a matter for the La Ronge office. When Pederson contacted the Northern Municipal Administration in La Ronge, he was informed that his concerns should be raised with the local village council implementing the elections process.

Pederson is running as a candidate in today's election, on a platform based on honesty. He has been an outspoken critic of the potential selection of northern Saskatchewan for a nuclear waste storage site and of the process the council and the industry-led Nuclear Waste Management Organization have been pursuing during the site selection phase. They meet behind closed doors and the community is not informed of the meeting dates, Pederson told the Media Co-op in an interview last month.

Pinehouse is not the only place in NWMO's site selection process where a council has come under fire for undisclosed meetings with NWMO. Shannon Quesnel reported in the Elliot Lake Standard that a meeting between NWMO and the city council of Elliot Lake was the subject of a complaint to and ruling by Ontario's ombudsman. In her September 5, 2012 article, Quesnel cites Elliot Lake City Clerk Lesley Sprague: "The mayor and five members of this city’s council attended [the NWMO meeting]. The ombudsman stated despite the fact the meeting was arranged and hosted by a third party, this does not relieve the municipality from giving notice of the meeting. And despite the fact the meeting was not closed to the public it is still considered to be a closed meeting because of the lack of public notice."

Back in Pinehouse, Smerek is an outspoken opponent of Pinehouse and northern Saskatchewan being considered for the site of a nuclear waste repository. "Say No To Nuclear Waste" reads a sign on the front of his house, a stone's throw from the shore of Pinehouse Lake.

For now, though, Pinehouse residents are focused on today's election. Smerek hopes his letter will result in the presence of an outside election monitor to ensure due process—including the chain of custody of the ballots—is respected. He has also requested the presence of an RCMP officer to ensure no intimidation or threats take place at the polling station.

"I'm trying to get free and fair voting opportunities for our community," said Smerek.

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist and a member of the Vancouver Media Co-op. She is currently in northern Saskatchewan. This article was originally posted on the Media Co-op.

Pinehouse Map

Defending the Land from Nuclear Waste

Sandra — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:23:31 +0000

Indigenous community elders, activists gather in northern Saskatchewan against nuclear waste site

SOUTH BAY, SK—The storm clouds had moved on by the time people arrived at South Bay on lake Ile-a-la-Crosse last Friday for a grassroots gathering against a potential nuclear waste site in northern Saskatchewan. Dene, Cree and Métis elders from affected communities, grassroots activists from around Saskatchewan and others from as far as the west coast and Germany shared coffee, songs, experiences and a whole lot of moose meat from August 3 to 6 at the Survival Celebration Camp for Sustainable Earth.

"We have to protect the land," Jules Daigneault told those gathered in a sharing circle around the campfire. When the 70-year-old elder heard about the gathering happening in South Bay, he travelled across the lake to the camp from his home in Ile-a-la-Crosse in a boat he made himself. "Everything comes from the land. All our food comes from the land."

Gunter Wippel traveled to the camp from Germany, where he has been actively involved in anti-nuclear activism for decades. Wippel has been visiting northern Saskatchewan since the late 1980s, involved with struggles against the expansion of the uranium mining industry. He was also in the province in the mid-90s for the Seaborn panel hearings on nuclear waste management in Canada.

"I can't believe that we still have to protest that same shit," Wippel remarked during the closing circle on Monday.

As is the case in most countries with nuclear power production, spent fuel bundles are stored onsite at reactors in Canada—in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. The federal Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is planning a deep geological repository to place all of Canada's nuclear waste underground in the rock. No permanent waste storage facility exists anywhere in the world, largely due to opposition from scientific, environmental, activist and other communities.

In the latest stage of the decades-long search for a long-term nuclear waste disposal site, NWMO has received expressions of interest to host the site. Although Saskatchewan is already host to the tailings and waste from the uranium mining industry producing the uranium to be refined and processed for nuclear energy elsewhere, the province was included in the search for a willing host community. Along with several places in Ontario, NWMO has three locations in northern Saskatchewan on the map: Pinehouse, the English River First Nation and Creighton.

But elders and community members from Pinehouse and the English River First Nation say that their communities are largely opposed to hosting nuclear waste in their territories. Despite the money that NWMO and Saskatchewan-based uranium mining giant CAMECO have recently been pouring into the local councils, community promoters and other programs, they say that they did not initially even know that their own councils—municipal in Pinehouse and Band in English River—were advocating for the multi-million-dollar proposals.

"The Chiefs there don't say nothing to us. They just talk about money, budgets," Dene elder Louis Wolverine told The Dominion. Wolverine, 84, was one of several elders who attended the camp from Patuanak, near the part of the English River First Nation seemingly identified for the waste site.

"They say that it's okay, that nothing's very dangerous," he said of CAMECO and NWMO. The people in Patuanak don't want nuclear waste, he said. "The elders too—they don't want it."

Elder Mary Jane Wolverine spoke to people attending the elder's circle in Dene, with translation into English by another elder from Patuanak. Several elders spoke of the impacts of uranium mining on fishing, hunting and gathering grounds. Some had traplines and seasonal camps where the Key Lake mine is now located. They are now speaking out to protect their traditional territory, the interconnected lakes and waterways, the animals and the medicinal plants from further destruction.

"We have our children, our future grandchildren growing up...Myself, I don't want it in our country," she said. "All the elders are saying the same thing, that we don't want anything to do with nuclear waste."

In Pinehouse, a town located along the road up to the Key Lake uranium mine, the mayor and municipal council have been meeting with NWMO behind closed doors, says Fred Pederson, an outspoken Cree elder from the community. NWMO has a group of paid promoters, an elder's group and access to young students, says Pederson.

But 60 per cent of eligible voters in Pinehouse signed a petition against nuclear waste disposal in northern Saskatchewan, without the petition even having reached the whole population. The Committee for Future Generations, a grassroots organization in the region, presented the petition with more than 12,000 signatures to the provincial legislature last year. Opposition continues to grow in Pinehouse and around the province.

"It's not the people that want it. It is just our leaders that are promoting it," Pederson told The Dominion. He and several others at the gathering also raised the issue of systemic racism by the provincial and federal governments in their search for a nuclear waste disposal site in northern Saskatchewan, in Indigenous and Metis traditional territories. "It's just like we don't count, like they can kill us off."

When the nightly conversation and music around the fire continued into the wee hours of Monday morning, those who stayed awake extending their time together on the last night of the gathering were rewarded. The northern lights made a surprise appearance in the night sky, with shimmering green lights dancing overhead as the last people wandered off to their tents, campers and the beach.

Elders from affected northern communities, the Committee for Future Generations, and others who attended the camp from further away reiterated their commitment to the struggle against nuclear waste in northern Saskatchewan. Revitalized by the camraderie, inspired by the elders, and energized by the young children playing along the beach, those involved with the gathering have plans well underway to continue the campaign over the next few months.

"If we band together, people produce power," said Pederson. "We can stop all of this. We can stop the destruction."

Sandra Cuffe is a Media Co-op editor based in Vancouver, and a member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Survival Celebration

Stop the Expansion of Peterborough Nukes - by KITTOH

Sandra — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:29:32 +0000

[Article by KITTOH reposted from the Eagle Watch e-list:]

Stop the Expansion of Peterborough Nukes:
No More Nuclear Madness

by KITTOH

October 16, 2009

The nuclear industry raving lunatics want to build many more nuclear reactors all over the world, especially in Asia. They say it is for "peaceful" purposes only. They call it "green" energy. Wow! What an insult to people's intelligence.

We know that ANY nuclear development and proliferation are about making war and killing people, either quickly with bombs or slowly with nuclear waste.

Indigenous communities in Cree/Dene territory (Saskatchewan, Canada), Ongwehonwe and Nishnaabe territory (Ontario, Canada), Australia, Navaho/Pueblo Territory (New Mexico and Four Corners, USA), Kazakhstan, Niger and elsewhere are being targeted to accept the waste and to endure the devastation of more uranium mining. We have a responsibility to speak out against this insanity for the sake of our future generations who will inherit this horrible legacy.

It looks like somebody wants to foment nuclear war in Asia where the majority of the world's population live. China and Japan have nuclear technologies. India and Pakistan already have nuclear weapons. Pakistan is quickly being drawn into the US led war on Afghanistan. There is no end in sight to this insane carnage and destruction.