Pittsylvania supervisors react to Virginia Beach study

By John Crane
Published: July 07, 2011


CHATHAM --
Virginia Beach’s uranium mining impact study presentation has drawn mixed reactions from members of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors.

During interviews Thursday, supervisors gave differing viewpoints, with one saying it didn’t affect him and others expressing concern of how uranium mining could impact the county and areas downstream of Coles Hill. Virginia Uranium Inc. seeks to mine and mill a 119-million-pound uranium ore deposit at Coles Hill, about six miles northeast of Chatham, but Virginia has had a moratorium on uranium mining and milling since 1982.

Thomas Leahy, director of public utilities for Virginia Beach, presented the results of a $437,000uranium mining impact study to supervisors during the regular meeting Tuesday night.

While two board members said they oppose uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County, others continued to approach the matter with caution.

“I thought he did a good job,” Board Chairman Tim Barber said during an interview Thursday. “It was real informative.”

“That’s about as blunt as you can get,” Barber said of the “no harm” part of the resolution that was passed in February 2009.

Virginia Beach’s $437,000 study, performed by the engineering firm Michael Baker Corp., found that drinking water systems upstream of Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island Lake) would be more significantly impacted than those downstream in the event of a worst-case storm and tailings release from a potential uranium mill site in Pittsylvania County.


According to the Baker study, released tailings would separate into about 80-90 percent particulate and 10-20 percent dissolved radioactive components, with the particulate matter settling on the riverbed and being trapped in Kerr Reservoir above the Kerr Dam.

The study also found that if tailings entered into the water system through the region’s rivers on to Kerr Reservoir and then Lake Gaston, which supplies Virginia Beach’s drinking water, it would take between two months and two years to flush the dissolved and suspended radioactive contaminants out of Kerr and Gaston.

The study did not model Lake Gaston, but Kerr Reservoir makes up about 93 percent of Gaston’s inflow. The study did not address the likelihood of a devastating major storm. Virginia Beach is commissioning a second, more detailed study including Lake Gaston, Leahy said.


Two supervisors, Chatham-Blairs Supervisor Hank Davis and Staunton River Supervisor Marshall Ecker, said they oppose uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County. Leahy’s study presentation was nothing new to Davis,

“It didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have figured out myself,” said Davis, who agreed with the Virginia Beach report.

Speculation about potential disasters before major projects is usually ignored or sloughed off, but accidents occur, Davis said.

“Whatever is ‘never going to happen’ always happens,” Davis said, pointing to disasters in Fukushima and the Gulf Coast and a recent Exxon Mobil oil spill in the Yellowstone River.


Ecker said he hopes the Virginia Beach study doesn’t get “whitewashed” and expressed concerns about how a storm-related tailings incident could impact Pittsylvania County and communities downstream of Coles Hill.

Read more about weak ones at::
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/jul/07/pittsylvania-supervisors-react-virginia-beach-stud-ar-1158931/