Canada's new environment and climate change minister, Catherine McKenna, is being petitioned by groups to halt OPG's proposed DGR near Lake Huron north of Kincardine.
The federal minister's approval is another thing needed before the project can move ahead. She has until December 2 to make a decision.
Today, a letter was sent to the minister, signed by 65 public interest groups asking her to halt the process. A copy of the letter can be seen by clicking here.
According to the group Nuclear Waste Watch, 179 municipalities in Canada and the U.S. are urging government officials to halt the project.
Eugene Bourgois is a sheep farmer whose property is in Inverhuron near the Bruce Power site. He's lived there since 1974 and has been one of the many people challenging OPG's planning process to put low and intermediate nuclear waste near Lake Huron.
He says water, along with air, are necessities of life.
"Without either we can't live. We need those, future peoples will need those. We have an obligation; a moral obligation, a physical obligation, and a legal obligation to protect those future generations," says Bourgois. "If we pass up this opportunity to think and just dump the stuff there, as has been done in countless other jurisdictions, in every case it's leaked."
In late October, Beverly Fernandez of the group "Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump" petitioned the newly elected federal government to halt the process.
Back in May, the Joint Review Panel released its 426 page report stating the project was unlikely to cause any significant adverse health effects. That report can be found here.
If the DGR is approved, OPG plans to store 200,000 cubic metres of dry, low-and-intermediate level nuclear waste nearly 700 m below the Bruce nuclear site.