Dear editor,
Unbelievable or maybe believable! In the Feb. 8, 2021 edition of Farmtario, the situation occurring with Marsha Rempel and her farmland being expropriated, although not totally the same situation, has a similarity to what is occurring in the Municipality of South Bruce. How do city/municipal councils get to ruin the lives of their constituents?
On Jan. 24, 2020, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced that the Municipality of South Bruce had been selected to be a possible site for a deep geological repository (DGR) to bury all of Canada’s high level radioactive nuclear waste.
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The site requires 1,500 acres of land and somehow an area of 1,500 acres of farmland was obtained. Question – who influenced six or more farming landowners to sell or option their adjoining farmlands all at the same time, to be used to build a DGR? The “price/money” must have been good.
Today, many residents of South Bruce, with many being neighbouring farmland owners, are petitioning against this proposal as there is great concern as to having a nuclear waste “dump” within this municipality. Like the council of the City of Welland, the South Bruce Municipal council is only seeing “growth and dollar signs”. But is that what will happen?
South Bruce is an agricultural community with small town living. People live here because of the small town and rural atmosphere. There are farmlands, some within the proposed site, that have been in the same family since the 1860s. Many do not want the area to become known as Canada’s Nuclear Dump.
There are many concerns – will people want to buy products produced by or on top of a nuclear dump? Will this devalue neighbouring farmland? Will the DGR affect the water, the environment, etc.? What kind of radiation exposure will there be, and on and on? The NWMO says that it will all be safe, but nuclear accidents do happen – not “if” but “when”?
A difference between Marsha Rempel’s situation and South Bruce is that the land is not being expropriated. The NWMO has bought or the land has been optioned to them and a decision is to be made in 2023. (The other proposed location is Ignace in Northwestern Ontario, on crown land.) However, in both situations, councillors are seemingly making decisions that may ruin other constituents lives and livelihoods, all for “growth and money”.
Petitions against the proposals are being signed. Let’s hope the petitions tell these councillors what people think. As stated in the article about Marsha Rempel’s situation by an OFA Zone 5 director can also relate to South Bruce -… “we’re sitting on land that’s prime food production land, and ….we need to see that land as being crucial for the future of the population as a whole”. Also stated in the article is … “farmland loss is farmland loss”. How true.
S.A. McDonald
Culross/Teeswater in the Municipality of South Bruce
