IGNACE — Seine River First Nation resident Janet Johnson says she’s on the fence — “about 50 per cent, I’d say” — about the nuclear waste repository that might be located in the Ignace area.
The Northwest Nuclear Exploration Event being held this weekend at the Ignace Recreation Centre has given her, and others who attended the two-day event, food for thought.
“As I learn more, I’m more aware of what the potentials are, positive and negative,” Johnson, a Seine River councillor, said Friday as she was leaving the rec centre.
She said she was “mostly against it before” but her position has changed as she’s learned more.
Helping people learn and understand more about a proposed deep geological repository — which may eventually be sited near the town — is the purpose of the event that concluded Saturday afternoon, said Nuclear Waste Management Organization spokesperson Vince Ponka.
“It’s an opportunity for people in the Northwest to talk to various people in the nuclear industry,” he said.
“The purpose is really to make sure that people have the opportunity to ask questions.”
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which has narrowed its site selection for the repository down to Ignace and the South Bruce area of southern Ontario, parked its Learn More Centre trailer outside the rec centre. A new state-of-the-art pumper fire truck that the NWMO bought for the town this year was parked nearby.
Inside the building was an array of information tables for the NWMO, Ontario Power Generation, Contact North and many other exhibitors.
Anita Collins, another Seine River resident, said she was skeptical when she first heard of the repository proposal.
“Of course we’re going to be skeptical about it,” she said.
The First Nation has “asked a lot of questions” of the NWMO and received answers, she said, but she and others are still “doing a lot of information digging.”
In the end, she said, “our ancestors’ spirits will tell us what’s right.”
Ignace resident Michael Cyr, a retired heavy equipment operator, said he’s a “yes” on building a nuclear waste repository in the area.
Cyr’s reasons are economic.
“If it goes to the other place, they’ll get the money,” he said.
New Life Church pastor Tim Barker took time from his workday to check out the event and “see what’s all here.” Noting that the repository is “a very divisive thing in town,” he declined to state his opinion on it.
“I’m just following up on how things are moving forward for the project,” former Ignace mayor Lionel Cloutier, a repository proponent, said while browsing exhibitor tables.
He said he wonders if support is growing and is “really concerned about the misinformation that’s going out.”
An anti-repository pamphlet recently distributed in town contains a lot of falsehoods, Cloutier said.
“Hopefully the community engages and we get a lot of community members out,” said interim mayor Kim Baigrie.
