FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VISIT OF COMMUNITY RADIOACTIVE WASTE GROUPS TO RENFREW COUNTY REOPENS CONTROVERSY ON CHALK RIVER LABORATORIES

PEMBROKE, Ontario, October 13, 1992 - Community Liason Groups (CLG's) from the municipalities of Port Hope, Newcastle, Hope Township, Geraldton, and Deep River are holding a public meeting in the Best Western Hotel in Pembroke, on October 16-17. The meeting is to discuss shipping roughly one million tons of radioactive waste from the Port Hope area north to either Deep River or Geraldton. These are the two remaining "volunteer host communities" in the federally sponsored Siting Task Force process to dispose of the Port Hope wastes.

Members of a local volunteer environmental group, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County (CCRC), plan to deliver a message to the CLG's during the Pembroke meeting. Their message will focus on the need for involvement of all citizens of Renfrew County in the radioactive waste consultations.

The public meeting begins on Friday evening at 7:00 P.M. with a dinner and speaker in the Best Western Hotel. It continues until 3:00 P.M. Saturday, when the CLG's board buses for a private tour of the Chalk River Laboratories of Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL). The meeting concludes with a reception in the Deep River Town Hall at 6:00 P.M. on Saturday evening.

Questions have been raised regarding the involvement of AECL, a federal crown corporation, in the Siting Task Force process. Lyall Smith, the mayor of the town of Deep River and an AECL employee, is proposing to put the Port Hope wastes on federally owned AECL land. The Deep River CLG is heavily dominated by AECL employees, and residents from neighbouring communities have been excluded from membership.

CCRCA