Northern Ont. residents oppose plan to dump radioactive material near drinking water source

Nairn and Hyman Townshop residents are opposed to a radioactive material transfer to Agnew Lake, citing health and environmental risks. Angela Gemmill reports.

Residents in Nairn and Hyman and surrounding communities met Monday to discuss concerns about a plan by the province to transfer radioactive material into the area.

Concerns were first raised last summer after a local municipal councillor noticed newer back roads and inquired about the upgrades.

That’s when the township discovered that the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Mines were planning to move 18,000 cubic metres of niobium radioactive materials from Nipissing First Nation to the tailings area at Agnew Lake.

Agnew Lake is 27 kilometres from the township’s drinking water.

“We felt we really hadn’t been consulted,” Nairn and Hyman Mayor Amy Mazey told the crowd.

“We were told the ‘naturally occurring radioactive material’ was just like gravel.”

Last September, the municipality asked the province for more specific information about the project, which was scheduled to begin this summer.

“This is not ‘NORM ‘–naturally occurring radioactive material,” Mazey said.

“It contains hazardous heavy metals -- uranium, niobium, radium 226, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, silver and manganese.”

In April, both ministries provided the township with a massive report filled with technical and scientific details. So the township hired environmental consultants Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd. to interpret the report -- and determine what science was missing.

That information was presented to residents on Monday, who were then asked for feedback and suggestions on what to do next.

Mazey said there are eight studies missing from the report.

“The two most important are a cumulative risk assessment -- what’s going to happen when you put uranium tailings on top and niobium tailings together,” she said.

“What will happen? And also a drainage study -- so where is the water going to go, how is it going to leech? All of those things that were outlined that should have been done already, we just haven’t seen them.”

Township CAO Belinda Ketchabaw said what it boils down to is that the province wants to put radioactive materials in a lake that’s already struggling.

“(Agnew Lake) site is already in crisis, and they want to bring in more radioactive material to ‘fix’ the site,” Ketchabaw said.

“It doesn’t really add up to me. When the science isn’t there, there’s no trust. We need to trust what is best for our community.”

Safe outcome

Ketchabaw said they’ve learned that some of the niobium material will be taken to a Clean Harbors facility near Sarnia, made for hazardous waste.

She said it raises the question that if the material is hazardous enough to be sent to this facility, shouldn’t it all be sent there?

“Let’s just bring it all there and have a safe outcome for everyone,” Ketchabaw said.

Furthering distrust, Mazey said the two ministries often give the community contradictory information.

“It just raises a lot of red flags,” she said.

“I hope that the Ontario government listens to the residents and takes us seriously that this isn’t an easy fix ... Just because this is the most convenient solution for the province, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution.”

Margaret Lafromboise, who lives close to the Spanish River, said she’s concerned about having “an unsafe radioactive site increased in volume.”

“I think the most constructive and practical thing to do would be to see if the municipality could get financial help to hire a lawyer and initiate an injunction to stop the action immediately,” Lafromboise said.

“As a society, as a province, we are not taking good enough care of our environment, the water and I don’t believe our current government is willing to take the action that is required.”

Representatives from the provincial ministries were not invited to Monday’s town hall.

“When they came to our first meeting, all they did was say ‘this is safe,’ ‘this is gravel.’ I don’t want to hear that, I want science,” Ketchabaw said.

Mazey said they’ve been told trucks will begin hauling the radioactive material from Nipissing First Nation to the Agnew Lake site in mid-August.

“I hope that we can stop them,” she said.