InsideToronto.com reports, “Following a march from the GE-Hitachi uranium plant at Lansdowne Avenue and Dupont Street, a capacity crowd of protesters filled the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre sanctuary for what organizers are calling the first of many meetings to come about the nuclear facility. …Facilitated by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance’s Angela Bischoff, the meeting brought together a host of speakers, including Roy Brady, from SAGE, Safe and Green Energy Peterborough and Council of Canadians, who spoke about public consultations to hold GE Nuclear to account; Kyra Bell-Pasht from CELA, the Canadian Environmental Law Association and Heather Marshall, a toxics campaigner from TEA, the Toronto Environmental Alliance.”
“SAGE’s Brady, who came in from Peterborough for the meeting, encouraged the Davenport community to band together to put pressure on the corporation to shut it down. ‘They don’t care about the effects on residents because the effects don’t come to light for years and years,’ he said, calling on everyone to pressure the city and the province. ‘Go, find out what GE has not told you. It’ll be amazing what you find out. Keep politicians on the case. Don’t give up. Safety is not short term. Safety is forever.'”
“Area politicians revealed they were shocked that a nuclear processing plant has been in their midst for more than five decades. ‘Like many of you in our community, I was really surprised, shocked. I didn’t know GE was here,’ Davenport MP Andrew Cash admitted to the crowd of about 100. ‘When you find out after 50 years you’ve been living next to a nuclear facility – something went wrong with the process. Clearly, the public information program failed. What I’m going to be doing is calling the CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) and the Minister (of Environment) to a meeting that never happened during the review of (GE-Hitachi’s) license.'”
The Toronto Star adds, “The facility, which produces nearly 2,000 tonnes of radioactive uranium dioxide pellets each year, reports to the National Pollutant Release Inventory and the provincial Environment ministry. GE Canada, formerly known as Canadian General Electric, began processing uranium pellets in the early 1960s when the neighbourhood was a crowded industrial zone. Over the decades, however, factories gave way to condominium townhouses and lofts in the newly urbanized Davenport Village. The Lansdowne facility receives ‘three, maybe four’ truckloads of uranium dioxide powder each month from a plant in Port Hope, GE Canada spokeswoman Kim Warburton said.”
The full InsideToronto.com article is at http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/1315304-large-crowd-calls-for-closure-of-uranium-plant/. For more on how Brady and the local chapter challenged GE assembling low-enriched uranium fuel bundles in Peterborough, go to http://canadians.org/blog/?p=5020.
