A First Nation in northern Ontario is challenging the selection of a nearby region as the site of an underground repository that will hold Canada’s nuclear waste, arguing in a court filing that it should have had a say in the matter as the site falls “squarely” within its territory.
Eagle Lake First Nation has filed an application in Federal Court seeking a judicial review of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s decision to build the deep geological repository in the Township of Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation area.
The decision was announced in November after Ignace’s town council and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation both agreed to move forward, but Eagle Lake First Nation says it was “unjustifiably” rejected as a host community and denied its own right to consent to the project.
A site in Huron County was the only other one still under consideration for nuclear waste storage.
But it might also be challenged by an indigenous community.
“NWMO rejected ELFN as a host community and not for any fair, justifiable or defensible reasons,” but because members of the First Nation had raised concerns about the nuclear waste site, court documents said.
The challenge also names the federal minister of natural resources, accuses the NWMO of acting in “bad faith” and seeks to have its decisions quashed.
The NWMO, a non-profit body funded by the corporations that generate nuclear power and waste, said it is reviewing the legal challenge.
