LANSING - State Representatives John Espinoza (D-Croswell) and Terry Brown (D-Pigeon) today urged Congress to do everything in its power to protect the health and safety of Michigan's residents and natural resources by opposing the construction in Canada of an underground nuclear waste dump along Lake Huron across from the Thumb, and a giant oil refinery on the St. Clair River shoreline across from St. Clair and Marine City.
"It is outrageous that Canada, which has for so long treated Michigan as a dumping ground for its trash, now believes it has the right to endanger our water and land with two major hazardous projects," said Espinoza, whose district is subjected to hundreds of Canadian trash trucks crossing into Michigan each day. "We are already fighting to restore the St. Clair River, and we can't risk further damage from toxic discharges and accidental oil spills. Thousands of jobs in Michigan's agriculture and tourism industries, as well as the drinking water of thousands of Michigan families, depend on us protecting our rivers and lakes."
The mammoth oil refinery complex that Shell Canada seeks to build is less than 3,000 feet away from local hospitals. The other project is an underground radioactive waste repository to be built less than a mile from Lake Huron by Ontario Power Generation. Radioactive waste from 20 nuclear plants would be buried there. Downstream from both facilities, an estimated 35 to 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.
Espinoza and Brown introduced a resolution today calling on the Michigan House of Representatives to urge Congress to do all it can to oppose both projects. Both Brown and Espinoza have voted for a tough plan to stop the flood of trash from other states and Canada by attacking the economics of the trash trade. The House passed that plan more than a year ago, and it is now stalled in the Senate.
"In addition to dumping their trash on us for all these years, Canada is eager to put our water and land at significant direct risk just to make an enormous profit," Brown said. "We cannot afford the hardship that leaks of nuclear waste - or even the fear of them - would create for our tourism industry, let alone the damage that contamination would do to our agricultural industry. The health of our residents, our natural resources and our economy must come first."