Comment: A great Video, our lives, land, air and water is more important that greed and nuke plants! Thanks to everyone on the video and everyone involved in this great production! Made me cry!
Uranium foes gird for battle at capitol
SoVaNow.com / May 16, 2011
The Keep the Ban Coalition last week said it now has 41 localities and organizations on record in the statewide movement urging the Virginia legislature to resist lifting the state’s ban on uranium mining as early as next year.
Supporters of uranium mining cite what they say is the nation’s need for energy independence and the jobs and investment they say it will bring to Southside Virginia.
The coalition last week also launched a statewide petition drive, starting with 1,000 signatures of Virginians who support keeping the ban on uranium mining, and launched a new website, http://www.keeptheban.org/
, aimed at raising awareness of what it says are the health, environmental and socio-economic impacts associated with uranium mining, milling and waste disposal. Uranium has never been mined commercially in the East, nor in a predominantly wet-climate region of the U.S., like Virginia.
According to its press release:
“Virginia has had a ban in place on mining uranium for nearly 30 years, and for good reason,” said Naomi Hodge-Muse, president of the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP and leader of the Sierra Club Keep the Ban Team, Martinsville. “There are just too many questions and potential risks of radioactive and toxic materials contaminating our streams, rivers and drinking water. With all the storms and hurricanes we get, this is the worst possible place you could put a uranium operation.”
The uranium industry is lobbying to lift the ban and begin mining uranium in Virginia, starting at a major deposit at a Pittsylvania County site called Coles Hill, first discovered in the late 1970s. The industry also secured leases on other suspected deposits in Culpeper, Fauquier, Floyd, Henry, Madison, Orange, Patrick and Pittsylvania counties. Potential uranium deposits were also detected in Franklin and Nelson counties.
Recently, Virginia Uranium Inc. told Wall Street investors that it plans to introduce legislation lifting the uranium mining ban in the 2012 session of the General Assembly.
Coalition partners say there are documented links between exposure to uranium waste and myriad health problems, including bone, liver and breast cancer, lung and kidney diseases and birth defects. Another concern is the severity and frequency of storms in the region, which could damage uranium facilities and potentially wash contaminated storm water and uranium waste into nearby water resources, they say.
In the last 40 years, nine hurricanes and other major storms have hit Virginia. In 1969, Hurricane Camille dumped 31 inches of rain on central Virginia. Last month, at least 30 tornadoes were recorded in Virginia, including one in Halifax County about 20 miles from the Coles Hill site.
Virginia Beach, which gets its drinking water from Lake Gaston, downstream of the Coles Hill site, recently released the findings of its $437,000 study which concluded that a catastrophic failure of a uranium waste containment structure at the site could contaminate the city’s drinking water for as long as two years.
Roughly 1.2 million people in Virginia and North Carolina rely on the Roanoke River system downstream of the Coles Hill site for drinking water.
“If the ban is lifted, it will be lifted statewide, which means Virginians throughout the state could potentially be affected by uranium mining, milling and waste disposal in their communities, or miles upstream,” said Cale Jaffe, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Read more:
http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/news/article/uranium_foes_gird_for_battle_at_capitol/
