By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 24, 2011
SOMERSET --
The decades-old debate over uranium mining in Virginia has been reignited by Virginia Uranium Inc.'s efforts to end a 1982 state moratorium on digging out the radioactive ore. The General Assembly is expected to consider an end to the ban in its 2012 session in what could spark a pitched environmental battle.
While the company says it's focused on a single huge deposit in southern Virginia, opponents fear that an end to the ban would lead to mines around the state. Studies and geological analyses suggest other deposits could be found in the state, including this farming community in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains.
Dairy farmer Bill Speiden is often cited by uranium opponents because he rejected a mining company that approached him 30 years ago about leasing his rolling fields. If the ban is lifted, Speiden urges caution from his neighbors in Somerset.
"I would suggest they learn something about it before they sign on the dotted line," Speiden said of his neighbors.
The Keep the Ban Coalition, which opposes uranium mining, contends the ban's end "means Virginians throughout the state could potentially be affected by uranium mining, milling and waste disposal." Individual activists have also sounded the alarm to enlist others in their statewide fight.
The most definitive survey of the state's uranium potential gives some credence to opponents' alarm.
Conducted in the 1980s by the Department of Energy, the National Uranium Resource Evaluation program, or NURE, identified several favorable belts — typically other rock types and geological formations that have background concentrations of uranium.
Mining companies have to roll the dice on a speculative deposit. It requires a huge upfront investment and favorable prices for uranium in a global market that has been rocked by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The earthquake triggered a nuclear power disaster, shaking global confidence in nuclear power.
The Coles Hill uranium deposit was discovered in the 1970s, as nuclear power emerged as a promising source of clean energy. The discovery of the Pittsylvania County lode spawned interest in Speiden's property and thousands of other acres across the state that NURE identified as potential uranium deposits.
"A common scenario in mineral exploration is that a large discovery such as Coles Hill is followed by an influx of exploration companies who comb the countryside and discover additional deposits," Susan Hall of the U.S. Geological Survey wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Like many of his neighbors in Orange County, Speiden heard from a mining company that wanted to pay him $2 an acre for the mineral leases on his property, which he said has such high radioactive readings it interferes with metal detectors used by Civil War relic hunters. The Speidens were also promised 7 percent of the royalties of whatever was mined.
"I was a little bit dubious," Speiden said.
So he and his late wife, Sandra, took a fact-finding mission out West, visiting mining sites and talking to residents.
"The negative impacts on the ranchers and the water supplies out there just scared the heck out of us," Speiden said. "They wanted to lease my farm and made some pretty nice offers. I couldn't have it on my conscience."
State mining officials say no exploratory permits have been issued in Virginia since the 1980s, so suspected uranium deposits remain just that — suspected. The possible deposits generally are located north of Charlottesville, running north into Orange, Culpeper, Madison and Fauquier counties.
Geologists say that mining Coles Hill, however, could beget more mining. As mining begins, "new mineable resources are often identified," said Jim Otton, a retired U.S. geologist who has researched potential occurrences of uranium in Virginia.
Mining opponents fear just that will occur if Virginia opens the door to mining.
"If you lift the ban and you begin mining at Coles Hill, that changes the economics for other finds throughout the state," said Cale Jaffe, a senior staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has taken the lead in organizing opposition to lifting the ban. "The question of statewide impact will undoubtedly be an important component in the public debate going forward."
Read more:
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/jul/24/va-uranium-debate-sparks-question-there-more-ar-1194131/
