Comment: Now look at the following statement which is so true: "the studies will be worthless if the politicians aren't willing to show similar integrity and let the chips fall where they may". Adding the TIC and Terry Kilgore (from Mt. Top Removal county and rich coal mining family) to uranium mining story, The state of Virginia has place VUI investors on the TIC, placed Mr. Coles on the Roanoke River Basin Board and we still do not know the other 29 investors of VUI, they may sit all of the boards in VA , determining when they can start blowing up the hills of Virginia for uranium and VA has no regards to our health, VA has no regards to our families who lives mountains, where the mountains are blow up for coal which is shipped to China! The leaders of Virginia are a greedy and unethical bunch! No to uranium mining! Great article by Mr. McLaughlin, thanks! One more thing, write the TIC members and tell them your thoughts of the TIC and the Investors of VUI setting on their board and the wild comments made by the VUI investor!
By Tom McLaughlin
The News & Record
April 21, 2010
Last week the Virginia Tobacco Commission all but cut a check for a study of uranium mining's socioeconomic impacts in Southside Virginia, thus drawing closer the day when a decision is made — or not made — on lifting the state's mining moratorium.
Funding the study is an unusual move by the Tobacco Commission, which could stand more scrutiny of its own, but it's hardly surprising inasmuch as the leaf panel claims a broad mission to revitalize Southside's economy. Besides, what's another $200,000 when you've already burned through half a billion dollars?
The socioeconomic study is considered the bookend to a straight-up scientific review on the feasibility of uranium mining that is supposed to be completed by 2011.
Funding for the scientific study comes from the company that wants to scoop out the hot rocks — Virginia Uranium, Inc. — but because the entity in charge is the highly-respected National Academy of Sciences, most folks seem willing to wait for the findings before passing judgment on the process.
The socioeconomic study, a much more artful undertaking, is a different matter altogether. Even if sociologists and economists were to argue with the authority of Zeus that their fields are pure science and not subjective guesswork, no one would buy it. This ain't Greek, after all.
Allowing VUI to fund the socioeconomic study would be positively toxic, for obvious reasons.
The same would be true of asking uranium mining opponents to pay the tab, not that they have the cash in any event.
So who comes equipped with the cred and wherewithal to undertake an impartial, comprehensive and transparent review?
In a more perfect world, the answer would be "the government," but nagging sausage-making considerations aside there's the wee problem of the Commonwealth of Virginia being almost as broke as the rest.
With money no obstacle, the Executive Committee of the Tobacco Commission voted Thursday to earmark $200,000 for the socioeconomic study. (The panel also stipulated that the Tobacco Commission should review similar third-party efforts, including a study by the Danville Regional Foundation, to guard against overlap).
While the Executive Committee's action is a recommendation that the full Commission must ratify at its April 29 meeting, there's little doubt about where this one is headed.
The Executive Committee is made up of the Commission's grand pooh-bahs, the Southside and Southwest politicians who call the shots, and a revolt by the rank and file is almost inconceivable — even if a majority of the commission's citizen-members did harbor strong views on uranium mining (which is highly doubtful).
That all members of the Tobacco Commission are created equal, with some more equal than others, was underscored by the surprise decision by the Executive Commission to take over consideration of the funding request. Originally, the matter was slated to go before the Southside Economic Development Committee.
The chairman of the executive committee is Del. Terry Kilgore. Heck, Kilgore is not only chairman of the executive committee, he's chairman of the Tobacco Commission in full.
Kilgore also heads the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission, which is tasked with moving the entire process along. This guy pops up on the screen more often than Agent Smith in the Matrix movies.
It's also worth noting that Kilgore hails from a mining-friendly region of Virginia and isn't exactly renowned in Richmond for keeping the big boys honest.
Does anyone sense a pattern here?
Although Wright said he would have opposed the socioeconomic study had it come before the economic development panel for a vote, he wouldn't speculate on what his fellow committee members were prepared to do.
But surely, if the Econ Committee were a confirmed rubber stamp, then presumably there would have been no need to yank the matter from its clutches. Senator Frank Ruff, a member of both the Southside Economic Development and Executive Committees, also was a "no" vote. (Ruff opposed the request when it came up on the Executive Committee).
The study was headed for a quick defeat, bottled up and discarded by a second-rank committee, before Kilgore stepped in to save it.
The Tobacco Commission has a well-documented weakness for "committee shopping" (all the smart grant applicants know where to turn and whom to turn to to get the results they want), but it's rare for the manipulation to be so blatant.
Longtime watchers of the Tobacco Commission have grown used to this sort of nonsense, so maybe a posture of tired cynicism is to be expected.
But this time the Tobacco Commission isn't just paying for a new museum or wastewater treatment plant.
It's sticking its nose and its substantial bank account into a matter of existential importance to Southside.
And so far, its intervention reeks of the sort of back-room dealing that ought to set everyone's teeth on edge.
From day one of the study process, uranium mining foes have faced a conundrum: Play along, or don't?
Hiring the National Academy of Sciences to conduct the scientific study undercut the rejectionists' argument that the process was hopelessly compromised: As men and women of science, the NAS may have a predilection for finding ways to make stuff work, but no one questions quality and integrity of its research.
But even if the scientists can be trusted to make honest and evidence-based judgments, the studies will be worthless if the politicians aren't willing to show similar integrity and let the chips fall where they may.
With its clumsy handing of the socioeconomic study request, the Tobacco Commission and its busybody chairman, Del. Kilgore, have handed critics fresh evidence that the fix is in to mine uranium in Virginia. I suppose in a way we should thank the Commission for helping to clarify matters this way.
Read more:
http://www.thenewsrecord.com/index.php/opinion/article/the_fixers/
