Comment: VUI is not local, is not a mining company and other foreign mining companies will be blowing up the hills in VA for greed! No to u mining!
December 15, 2010
By Paige Winfield Cunningham
Virginia Statehouse News
A Canadian company now owns one-third of the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the U.S. And it's located at Coles Hill in Virginia.
The site is at the center of a controversy over whether Virginia’s moratorium on uranium mining should be lifted.
Supporters and opponents are anxiously awaiting the results of two studies examining the environmental and socioeconomic impacts if the Coles Hill deposit is mined. Legislators may consider lifting the moratorium after those studies are completed in December 2011.
While the site was originally thought to contain 30 million pounds of uranium oxide, that estimate has since climbed to 119 million pounds that could be worth $10 billion.
With all that money potentially at stake, the site has been attracting more investors. British Columbia-based Virginia Energy Resources has been expanding its ownership of Virginia Uranium Inc., a company set up by Walter Coles Sr., an owner of the Coles Hill property.
VUI is “locally owned and managed,” according to its Web site, which indicates the company is 78 percent owned by the two families — the Coles family and the Bowen family.
But the families have recently been cutting back their stakes as VER inches up its ownership of the property, said VUI project manager Patrick Wales.
VER is investing more in Coles Hill than any of its other uranium projects.
Wales said the VUI Web site will be updated next month to reflect VER’s now roughly 30 percent ownership of the Coles Hill property.
Formerly called Santoy Resources, the corporation last year changed its name to Virginia Energy Resources and the Coles came on board.
As corporations advocate for the moratorium to be lifted, they’ve incited fierce criticism by residents in the Coles Hill area who fear the effects of uranium mining on their drinking water and soil.
Phillip Lovelace, who farms beef cattle about five miles away from the site, formed a nonprofit last year to support the moratorium.
Even though the environmental study is being performed by the National Academy of Sciences, Lovelace criticizes it because it’s being paid for with VUI funds funneled through Virginia Tech.
“It concerns a lot of people in this area,” he said. “It hurt the National Academy of Sciences’ credibility in a lot of peoples’ eyes.”
Funding of the socioeconomic study has sparked some criticisms as well.
Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Coal and Energy Committee, led the creation of a uranium subcommittee in 2008.
After the subcommittee called for the socioeconomic study to be conducted, Kilgore found funding for it from another group over which he presides — the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Fund, a fund set up to support the economies of tobacco-dependent communities using money from a settlement with tobacco companies.
The Tobacco Commission is paying $200,000 for the study, which will be conducted by the Richmond-based firm Chmura Economics and Analytics. (Buddy Mayhew, investor of VUI, ask for the monies during a TIC meeting in April per Ace)!
Del. Watkins Abbitt also sits on both the Coal and Energy Commission and the Tobacco Commission.
He opposed using tobacco funds to pay for the study, which was approved by the commission 18-8. Abbitt said he opposed using the tobacco money because it didn’t directly create jobs in the area.
“I’m not criticizing Kilgore. Everyone’s entitled to his opinion,” Abbitt said. “I just didn’t think it was the proper place, but obviously the majority of people did.”
Read more:
http://virginia.statehousenewsonline.com/2550/canadian-company-expands-ownership-of-virginia-uranium-deposit/
