By Barb McKay

Bruce County’s peer review of OPG’s deep geological repository for low and intermediate level waste is being expanded to take a closer look at storm water management.

Much of the environmental assessment report for the deep geological repository (DGR), which examined geological and hydrogeological ground conditions in the proposed site, was considered satisfactory by the peer review team. Bruce County planning director Chris Laforest said consultants hired by the county gave a “gold star” to plans for groundwater management, however, he said consultants indicated that more work needed to be done on the surface water management side.

“The general concept would be to have a storm water pond on site and once the water is treated it would be released into the lake,” he said.

Consultant Neil Hutchinson, of Hutchinson Environmental Services, specified that more detailed information was needed around how that particular method for storm water management was decided on. A method needs to be put in place to manage surface water because the rocks with different chemical compositions could be brought up to the surface during the DGR construction process and contaminate surface water.

“It’s not that (this method) hasn’t been done before,” Laforest said, adding that the consultants want to know, among other things, if enough data was collected to support the methodology.

“They’re saying more work needs to be done to support it,” he said.