By Cale Jaffe
Jaffe is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center and a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches a course on Environmental Law and Federalism.For 30 years, Virginia has banned uranium mining. Now, one company, Virginia Uranium Inc., wants to repeal that ban with its eye on a site near Danville.
The company advertises its project as "Fuel for America," although it concedes only 0.06 percent of the deposit could be milled into yellowcake. The remainder is waste — 58billion pounds of it, according to the company's estimate — containing radioactive materials that we would have to manage in perpetuity.
Fundamentally, this is not an energy issue. (At least, 99.94 percent of it isn't.) It's a question of waste management. Does Virginia want to be the uranium-waste disposal capital of the East Coast?
Conservation groups are finding common cause under the umbrella of the Keep The Ban Coalition. We maintain that for three decades our state has been well-served by the law that prohibits uranium mining.
And we're encouraged to see a diverse array of organizations outside of the conservation community that share our perspective. The Virginia Municipal League and Virginia NAACP oppose any repeal of the ban in 2012. The Virginia Farm Bureau and the Garden Club of Virginia are imploring legislators to adopt a go-slow approach.
What is more, dozens of localities in Virginia and North Carolina have adopted resolutions in support of the ban. These include communities that supposedly would benefit from uranium waste impoundments. Patrick, Halifax and Mecklenburg counties have passed measures. Mecklenburg cites threats to Kerr Lake and Lake Gaston — resources it says "have been the driving force" behind growth in the region.
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http://www.roanoke.com/editorial/counterpoint/wb/303432
