Historic vote on nuclear waste underway in Bruce County, Ont.

SOUTHAMPTON, ONT. -- Plans to build Canada’s first permanent home to nuclear waste are being decided by a local First Nations band Friday.

Over 4,500 members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) were eligible to vote on whether to approve the plan to bury Ontario’s low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste along the shores of Lake Huron.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plans to bury 200,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste in a facility, 680 metres under the Bruce Power site, north of Kincardine, Ont.

The Deep Geological Repository or DGR falls within the traditional territory of the SON, so OPG has committed to not moving forward without the  band’s support.

Whatever SON members decide, it will have far-reaching impacts. There are over 230 resolutions by various levels of government around the Great Lakes, including London, Sarnia and Toronto, opposing the plan.

In Michigan, Congressman Dan Kildee has been leading the charge against the DGR.

“Permanently storing nuclear waste less than a mile from Lake Huron just doesn’t make sense. Surely in the vast land mass that comprises Canada, there is a better place to permanently store nuclear waste than on the shores of the world’s largest supply of fresh water,” he says.

Closer to home, in Bruce County, there is resounding support for the project.

“We’re talking about the gloves, mop heads and filters here," Dave Trumble with the Grey-Bruce Labour Council says. "This is all the easy stuff to manage. And we already know the science has been proven to be very, very rigorous. And the last time I checked, water doesn’t flow uphill.”

OPG’s plan, which was over 30 years in the making, is to bury the waste in rock that’s 2.5 times deeper than Lake Huron, in rock that hasn’t had any faults or fractures in 450 million years.

“When we talk about permanent disposal. We ‘re talking about a lasting solution," OPG's Fred Kuntz says. "Something that will give us peace of mind forever into the future. That’s the whole idea of the DGR. You solve this problem.”

The low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste is currently stored above ground in buildings and near surface structures on the Bruce Power site.

But not everyone is convinced taking that waste underground is the right decision. Eugene Bourgeois and Ruth Maclean both live near the proposed underground site.

“‘We don’t know that the rock is going to behave the way their models predict," Bourgeois says. "They don’t know that the rocks going to behave as their models predict.”

Maclean shares a similar view.

“It makes me uncomfortable to think that they would do a nuclear waste burial with some highly-radioactive material, so close to the water, and then eventually walk away from it,” she says.

CTV News will have the results of the vote as soon as they’re available.