Comment: Keep the Uranium Ban!
RICHMOND — Sen. Bill Stanley doesn’t want lawmakers to let the uranium “genie out of the bottle” without taking the time to review pertinent studies, as uranium legislation is expected in the upcoming General Assembly session.
Sens. Stanley, R-Franklin County, and Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, provided their perspectives during a uranium mining panel discussion with a uranium mining company representative and an environmentalist during Wednesday’s “AP Day at the Capitol,” an annual legislative preview to the media. Danville Register & Bee publisher Steve Kaylor moderated.
But Stanley and Cale Jaffe, senior attorney of Southern Environmental Law Center, do not want a uranium bill rushed through the legislative process until the public fully digests studies released this month.
Because lawmakers aren’t uranium experts, the National Academy of Sciences scientific report due any day now will fuel a “spirited debate,” but it won’t say whether uranium can be mined safely in Virginia. That’s a policy decision for lawmakers, Jaffe said.
But Stanley and Jaffe said they don’t want to leave the public out of the uranium debate. When the Coal and Energy Commission requested NAS to study the issue last year, the contract stipulated five months of dissemination of findings in public meetings, Jaffe said.
Then residents could share their views with their representatives.
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