WASHINGTON Aug 11 - McClatchy-Tribune Content Agency, LLC - Todd Spangler Detroit Free Press

Faced with the prospect of a Canadian power company burying nuclear waste within a mile of Lake Huron, Michigan's U.S. senators today announced legislation which would attempt to force the State Department to negotiate a delay with the Canadian government.

The legislation would call for the State Department to urge Canada to delay any approval of Ontario Power Generation's proposed Deep Geologic Repository until the International Joint Commission, a bi-national organization which helps settle boundary disputes, completes a study also called for by the legislation into whether the proposed facility is safe.

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., announced the legislation today at a news conference in Detroit, saying that such a study is provided for under the Boundary Waters Act of 1909.

But it wasn't immediately clear whether the U.S. House and Senate would want to weigh in, given what has been the largely regional nature of the dispute so far, or whether the State Department -- which typically makes requests to the International Joint Commission on behalf of the U.S. government -- could be forced to take such a step by Congress.

"Given what is at stake, invoking this treaty to require a thorough review by the International Joint Commission and a process to resolve this critical issue is a reasonable solution," said Stabenow, who is proposing the legislation along with U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, also D-Mich. U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, will propose companion legislation in the U.S. House.

Neal Kelly, a spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, said the senators were correct that any approval for a project such as the Deep Geologic Repository should be based solely on science. But he added that in this case it has "already been thoroughly studied" for more than a decade during which an "international consensus" has been developed among scientists and geologists regarding the safety of the project.

"The DGR project will not affect Lake Huron," he said. "Public health and safety will be protected."

The State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the legislation. The International Joint Commission issued a statement saying if it received a formal request to look at the project under the Boundary Waters Treaty by the U.S. government, however, it would do so.

In May, a three-member Canadian Joint Review Panel concluded nearly three years of study on the project, recommending approval for the plan to bury some 37,000 square feet of low- to intermediate-level radioactive waste in a facility to be built more than 2,200 feet underground near Ontario Power Generation's site in Kincardine, Ontario. Canada's environment minister is expected to make a final decision on the proposal by Dec. 2.

Surrounded by a layer of limestone and capped with a 660-foot layer of shale, the facility would hold waste -- but not spent fuel -- from the company's 20 nuclear reactors in Ontario. In its 457-page environmental assessment, the Joint Review Panel said it was "not likely to cause significant adverse effects" or affect Lake Huron, despite being less than a mile from its shores.

But environmental activists and politicians in Michigan have continued to roundly denounce the proposal, arguing that an accident could have wide-reaching impact and noting that more than 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. get their drinking water from the Great Lakes. In April, Stabenow and Peters proposed a resolution urging the Obama administration to prevent the facility from being built but it hasn't seen any action in Congress.

For months, opponents of the plan have been calling for the State Department to invoke the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 to force a study by the International Joint Commission into any risks posed by the facility. Meanwhile, Canada's Environmental Assessment Agency is in the middle of a public comment period ending in September on the future of the proposal.

"Canada's plan to permanently store nuclear waste on the shores of Lake Huron is an unnecessary threat to both the U.S. and Canada's shared water resources," Kildee said. "Invoking the Waters Treaty is the latest action to protect our Great Lakes and to ensure that a thorough review is done."

Kelly said even if the project did receive approval in the months to come, it would still be several years before it could be built. The company has committed to reaching an agreement with the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, which is currently opposed, before proceeding and would still need approval from the company board to begin what would be 5 to 7 years of work to complete the $1 billion project.

Contact Todd Spangler at 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.