Bill Speiden's op-ed column on the moratorium of uranium mining in Virginia: Tell your legislators "no"
Date published: 9/18/2011
THE ORANGE County Board of Supervisors is to be commended for re-establishing its position on maintaining a moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia recently. This is a position opposing lifting the current moratorium in order to protect our water sources and agricultural products.
Recent fluctuations in the price of uranium has rekindled an interest for one company to mine and mill uranium in Virginia. Twelve thousand acres were leased in Northern Virginia in the 1980s, from Orange County north through Fauquier. If this is allowed in Pittsylvania, it would become legal in the whole state wherever uranium is found.
We were approached by the uranium interests in 1979 to lease our farm on the banks of the Rapidan River in Somerset, upstream from Orange, Lake of the Woods, and Fredericksburg. We were offered a five-figure sign-up bonus and royalties from a "lucrative" mining operation. Knowing nothing about the industry my wife and I toured several mines and mills in Utah and Colorado, interviewing miners, mine superintendents, and local ranchers. The technology used then and now includes storing highly radioactive waste (retaining more than 95 percent of the original radioactivity) in above-ground piles and ponds, leaching and overflowing into surface and underground water supplies. After further research, we decided we could not participate in this potential environmental disaster for our community.
Too often, the western mining and milling sites have become Superfund sites costing U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up and monitor in perpetuity. Witness Uravan and Durango, Colo., and Monticello, Utah.
Here are some important facts to consider before removing our moratorium on uranium mining:
We are dealing with radioactive exposure to our miners, air, water supplies, and neighbors.
Underground uranium miners are under constant exposure to radioactivity while they work. In the American Southwest, uranium miners have historically had much higher incidence of lung cancer than the normal population. As recently as November 2007, the job-deficient Navajo Reservation in Arizona resisted renewed uranium mining interests because of previous experience of cancer rates, livestock deaths, and water contamination.
Never in this country has uranium been mined in a community with such a dense population. This is not to say uranium can never be mined safely anywhere. In fact, I did visit a mine in Utah that was doing it right in the 1980s. The rainfall there was less than 18 inches a year, the outflow from tailings ponds was processed to the point that trout lived in the streams below, and the nearest house was about 25 miles away. Contrast that to the situation in Northern Virginia and Pittsylvania County, where homes and towns are downstream and downwind from the potential mine sites.
Tailings ponds overflowing would be almost a certainty in Virginia as we have more rainfall than the evaporation rate. Uranium ore waste is retained in the tailings and its radioactive half-life is 500,000 years or forever, whichever comes first.
Safety is the issue. Legislation and regulation will change neither our population density nor our rainfall levels. Before it is mined, uranium is like a coffee bean--a relatively harmless mass. But when crushed and mixed with water, that bean becomes a cup of coffee.
Please contact your legislator and urge him or her to oppose the lifting of the moratorium in Virginia.
Bill Speiden is the legislative director of the Orange County Farm Bureau.
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/092011/09182011/650825/index_html?page=2
