Editor, Times-Dispatch:
In a recent Op/Ed column, Bart Hinkle dismisses a multi-year, $1.4 million study from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on uranium mining in Virginia, implausibly claiming that the study committee — made up of international experts from industry, academia and government — failed to "shed light" on the risks from uranium mining, milling and toxic waste disposal.
Yet the former director of the Department of Environmental Quality, Bob Burnley, relying on 40 years of experience as a water quality scientist, has written, "It is my firm belief, based on review of the highly anticipated National Academy of Sciences' report released last December, that the [state's uranium mining] ban needs to remain in place." Burnley is advising the Southern Environmental Law Center on this matter.
Burnley has noted Virginia's vulnerability to hurricanes and other extreme weather events. As the NAS found, "Extreme natural events (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes, intense rainfall events, drought) have the potential to lead to the release of contaminants if facilities are not designed and constructed to withstand such an event, or fail to perform as designed."
The NAS report continued, "In a hydrologically active environment such as Virginia, with relatively frequent tropical and convective storms producing intense rainfall, it is questionable whether currently-engineered tailings repositories could be expected to prevent erosion and surface groundwater contamination." Moreover, "The decay products of uranium provide a constant source of radiation in uranium tailings for thousands of years."
Fortunately, Virginia legislators are unlikely to reject the NAS's research.
Many of them pledged to wait for the study. That study, which has been independently peer-reviewed, provides abundant evidence to support a decision to keep the ban on uranium mining in Virginia.
Cale Jaffe,
Southern Environmental
Law Center.
Charlottesville.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/letters-to-the-editor/2012/jul/08/tdopin01-letters-to-the-editor-ar-2039304/
