Editor, Times-Dispatch:
Virginia Beach is the most populous city in the commonwealth. Virtually all of our 442,000 residents depend upon the Lake Gaston pipeline for drinking water.
What would happen if the water became contaminated with low-level radioactive material? What if the city were forced to shut down the pipeline for several months or even longer? The water restrictions and rationing would be devastating to the city's reputation, lasting far beyond the contamination itself. Lake Gaston is integrated into the water supplies of Norfolk and Chesapeake, so the impact would be to the entire region.
That's the city's concern with respect to allowing uranium mining at Coles Hill in western Virginia — upstream of Lake Gaston. A catastrophic rainstorm and flood could carry radioactive mining waste downstream to the city's water supply. Virginia Beach retained nationally prominent experts to study how Lake Gaston could be affected by a hypothetical failure of a uranium mine tailings disposal cell. The experts concluded that radioactivity could reach the lake and remain above state and federal regulatory levels for
up to 16 months during dry years. Most of the tailings would end up in river and reservoir beds and remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Is this an unlikely event that regulations and technology should prevent? Absolutely but history is littered with situations in which unpredictable natural events, unforeseen factors and human error have intersected to cause major disasters. Think about the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig or the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Your editorial, "The heck-no brigade," criticized mining opponents for not keeping an open mind. Read the National Academies of Science's Report on Uranium Mining in Virginia. The report clearly indicated that uranium mine tailings disposal cells represented significant long-term risks for contamination.
The NAS report also questioned whether existing federal regulations were adequate to address Virginia's wet climate. The report pointed out that there were steep regulatory hurdles to overcome before uranium mining could be undertaken safely in Virginia.
Risk is probability times consequence. The probability of a uranium mine tailings disposal cell failure may be small, but given Virginia's hydrology, the consequences could
be catastrophic. That is why Virginia Beach opposes uranium mining upstream of its water supply intake.
Thomas M. Leahy,
Director, Department of Public Utilities.
City of Virginia Beach.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/letters-to-the-editor/2012/jul/14/tdopin01-letters-to-the-editor-ar-2055697/
