Highlights of Legal Agreement

• It sets out the Government of Canada's commitment to proceed with a process aimed at implementing community-defined approaches to the cleanup and long-term management of local historic wastes.
  
  
• In each of the municipalities, the Project involves the cleanup of existing low-level radioactive wastes at unlicensed sites throughout the municipalities and, in the Town of Port Hope and Hope (formerly the Town of Port Hope and Hope Township), certain non-radioactive industrial wastes.
  
  
• Subject to the results of regulatory processes, these wastes will be consolidated and managed for the long-term in:
  
  - two new long-term low-level radioactive waste management facilities in the Town of Port Hope and Hope, one at the Pine Street North Extension and, the other at the current Welcome Waste Management Facility; and,
  
  - a re-engineered long-term low-level radioactive waste management facility at the Port Granby Waste Management Facility in Clarington.
  
  
• Signature of the legal agreement initiates a 5-year environmental assessment and regulatory review phase in which the Project will be better defined through public consultation, technical and scientific study, environmental assessment, and regulatory review, including review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
  
  
• Under the terms of the legal agreement, grants of $10 million are to be paid to each of the three municipalities that signed the agreement to assist them in addressing impacts associated with the presence of long-term waste management facilities within their communities.
  
  
• A program of property value protection will be established to protect property owners from financial losses relating to the Project on the sale of their property.
  
  
• Initially, the proponent for the Project will be the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (LLRWMO), Canada's agent for the management of historic wastes.