Civic leader raises concerns about uranium mining in his home county
June 28, 2012 6:00 AM
by Robert Powell
Ben J. Davenport Jr. has been a driving force in the transformation of Southern Virginia’s economy. So when he speaks up on an issue like lifting a 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining, his opinion carries weight.
He was part of a group of regional leaders, the Alliance for Progress in Southern Virginia, that asked the General Assembly to postpone action on the moratorium until a uranium mining study released in December by the National Academy of Sciences received further review.
“I know that Virginia Uranium would have liked to have seen the moratorium lifted so they could go ahead and begin to understand what Virginia might require as regulations,” Davenport says.
“But we felt that this was not appropriate, that there needed to be some time given to really study the reports, looking at other areas that had been involved with uranium mining to try to be much more educated about the issue.”
VB: How did you decide to come forward and take a position on [uranium mining]?
Davenport: I don’t think it’s anything any more important that has ever happened. Here you have a game plan, and everything is falling in place. You’re moving more towards a skilled work force. You’ve got a lot of revitalization taking place. The timing of the uranium mine … just didn’t fit in really with anything we were thinking about.
When [Alliance for Progress in Southern Virginia] started, the studies [commissioned on the effects of mining had just been released], and they were pretty voluminous. … I know that Virginia Uranium would have liked to have seen the moratorium lifted so they could go ahead and begin to understand what regulations Virginia might require. But we felt that this was not appropriate, that there needed to be some time given to really study the reports, looking at other areas that had been involved with uranium mining to try to be much more educated about the issue.
We’re talking about Virginia becoming the only state on the East Coast that has an active uranium mine. Is that something that makes you feel good? … This is something that really not only affects here, but it affects the whole watershed all the way to Virginia Beach.
The core of uranium goes right up Highway 29 on up into Northern Virginia. If you lift
the moratorium on uranium mining and uranium becomes quite valuable, there’s going to be an effort to mine those, too, I would think.
We felt that the governor basically said, “I want to do no harm.” He would like to support any kind of energy development provided that it’s safe. I think he thought that [National Academy of Sciences] study was going to offer some reassurance. But it didn’t…. There were a lot of caveats.
A mine is something that has a definite ending to it. Once you have finished the core deposit, it’s over.
But in this case, you’re left with [tailings]. Virginia needs to understand what its responsibility is going to be. Because tailings last pretty much forever, you have to be concerned about that. So, not only in the active part of the mining operation but also after the fact, there are a lot of things to be viewed and considered. That’s what I think this [state work study] group is doing.
VB: If they come back and say, “We think it can be done safely in Virginia,” would you support that?
Davenport: On the one hand, I’d be relieved that they felt like it could be done safely. But on the other hand, I can’t come to grips with the stigma piece.
We’ve got two prestigious schools in Chatham — Hargrave and Chatham Hall. Both of these schools are heavily driven by tuition, and both of them have a lot of competition. The kind of people that use these schools are people who are of good financial means, and they know how to exercise their options. It comes down to, safe or not, do you send your child to a town where there’s a uranium mine?
If we were to lose these two schools, we would become a true mining town. The whole economy would be wrapped around that.
Hargrave has a $9 million annual budget and Chatham Hall a budget of about $7 million. But tied in with that we have a lot of faculty that are members of the community. It’s a neat little town.
I guess we’re being asked to take the risk not knowing the outcome [of uranium mining] while knowing on the other hand the penalty if one or both [schools] were to fail.
“If I close my eyes, what do I see this looking like 10 or 20 years from now?” I see a beautiful river, and I can see shops and technology companies. All of those things fit together. I don’t see a mine.
http://www.virginiabusiness.com/index.php/news/article/solon-of-southern-virginia/
