Impact Statement 6 - Anonymous Resident, Manning, AB T0H 2M0

I was born and raised in Dixonville, AB, and have been a resident of the County of Northern Lights #22 for my whole life. I am a retired citizen and now enjoy the peacefulness of our community. My wife and I love our small town and surrounding area we live in which is isolated and less busy than the larger centers. To the people in the north, they value not having all the transient people in our community which can bring in more drugs, substance abuse and crime. This can be detrimental for our youth as there would be more exposure to this. People in our community have many close ties with each other. Building a nuclear site on the Peace River would change this forever, and therefore, would totally negatively impact on the exact things we love about the North. It causes me and my family deep emotional stress and many other residents who live here. I have many sleepless nights. 

The north is already a lucrative place to live with the farming, lumber and oil and gas industry. If we have a change of federal government, the oil and gas industry would revive as it once was. We want to preserve and protect our northern environment which we all enjoy and love. With our increased threats of wildfires, the lack of rain in our northern Alberta region over the past couples’ years, what will happen if our water levels really decrease as we have seen on the Mackenzie River further north? What happens when the reactors need a large amount of water to operate and cool the rods and the water supply decreases? That is an emotional stress when I think about what could happen to our beautiful north country. The actual radiation from the nuclear power plant increases the health risks for various kinds of cancer with the young and old. Why would we want to elevate these numbers all for the glory of more money! Is it worth it? It causes me great stress to think that this is once again an issue we face in our area. We worked so hard to keep it out of our area 15 years ago. The threat to our health, contamination of our precious Peace River, the effects on wildlife, the influx of transient people all create negative factors that are just not worth it. Our roads, housing, schools and health care facilities are already stressed and cannot handle this. The risks of a leak from the nuclear plants are possible, no matter what they say, because things can happen! Don’t be naive to think it can’t. Is money worth it to you! No! Like how Canada is today, with the influx of uncontrolled immigration, communities will be stressed in areas of health care, schools, housing and so on. Then it seems that all the blame gets put on the provincial government, and the Federal Government, who is really the one to blame, goes unnoticed. This is always on my mind and I’m so afraid of the negative consequences of this project. I absolutely DO NOT want radioactive waste stored in our communities back yard. I beg that this facility is not put in the Peace River region, no matter what county we are in. 

From, An angry citizen of the County of Northern Lights #22 I vote NO to NUCLEAR