Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014
DULUTH, Minnesota — On May 12, Duluth, Minnesota City Councilors Sharla Gardner and Joel Sipress successfully introduced a resolution putting the city of 80,000 on record against a proposed radioactive waste dump on Lake Huron now under consideration by the Canadian government.
The resolution “to protect the Great Lakes, and its tributaries” rejects the rationale for a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) and opposed “any other proposition for the construction of a nuclear waste repository within the Great Lakes Basin.” The additional sweep of the resolution is a reference to ongoing Canadian deliberations over the plausibility of four other radioactive waste dumps along the St. Lawrence Seaway. Duluth’s action was adopted by a vote of 8-to-1.
The move makes Duluth the 53rd city in the Great Lakes Watershed to formally reject the dump proposal. In addition, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative — a group of over 100 cities in Canada and the United States — formally agreed in May 2013 that “the project should not move forward at this time.”
Chaired by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Great Lakes cities initiative complained there was insufficient time to study the proposal and prepare comments, inadequate outreach to the Great Lakes community, and that “consideration of only one site that is one kilometer from Lake Huron” makes the plan unsupportable. — JML
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