Flooding at Coles Hill, area of proposed uranium milling ponds!
By Ray Reed
Published: May 12, 2011
Three groups have united to ask the General Assembly to keep Virginia’s uranium mining ban in place next year.
The Keep the Ban Coalition said legislators will receive a study of mining issues in December from the National Academy of Sciences, but lawmakers won’t have enough time to review it and ask detailed questions about what might happen if they lift the ban.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, and an NAACP spokeswoman from the Martinsville area supported keeping the ban during a news conference call Thursday.
Heavy rainstorms could carry waste from a mining and milling operation into streams and drinking water as far downstream as Virginia Beach, members of the group said.
The coalition said 41 groups, including 14 local-government bodies, oppose mining uranium anywhere in Virginia. Eight of the governing bodies are in North Carolina.
Cale Jaffe, who was speaking for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said four independent studies of mining are under way, and lawmakers also won’t have time to digest any of them during next year’s session of the General Assembly.
Naomi Hodge-Muse of Martinsville, president of the area’s NAACP chapter and also of a local Sierra Club affiliate, said the uranium ban was “not just a matter of the environment, it is a matter of justice” because the area needs “long-term, good-quality jobs.”
Read more:
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/may/12/groups-aim-keep-uranium-mining-ban-place-ar-1035759/
By Ray Reed
Published: May 12, 2011
Three groups have united to ask the General Assembly to keep Virginia’s uranium mining ban in place next year.
The Keep the Ban Coalition said legislators will receive a study of mining issues in December from the National Academy of Sciences, but lawmakers won’t have enough time to review it and ask detailed questions about what might happen if they lift the ban.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, and an NAACP spokeswoman from the Martinsville area supported keeping the ban during a news conference call Thursday.
Heavy rainstorms could carry waste from a mining and milling operation into streams and drinking water as far downstream as Virginia Beach, members of the group said.
The coalition said 41 groups, including 14 local-government bodies, oppose mining uranium anywhere in Virginia. Eight of the governing bodies are in North Carolina.
Cale Jaffe, who was speaking for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said four independent studies of mining are under way, and lawmakers also won’t have time to digest any of them during next year’s session of the General Assembly.
Naomi Hodge-Muse of Martinsville, president of the area’s NAACP chapter and also of a local Sierra Club affiliate, said the uranium ban was “not just a matter of the environment, it is a matter of justice” because the area needs “long-term, good-quality jobs.”
Read more:
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/may/12/groups-aim-keep-uranium-mining-ban-place-ar-1035759/
