Opinion
SoVaNow.com / August 08, 2012
Sometimes when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck … well, you know the rest.
Can we take a brief waddle back in time? Last December, the National Academy of Sciences issued a highly skeptical report on the wisdom of mining uranium upstream from us in Pittsylvania County.
At 302 pages, crammed with the sort of detail and rigor that only a bunch of highly trained scientists can muster, the NSA study drew conclusions that are much too copious to repeat here. Suffice it to say, anyone who read the thing — a select group, no doubt — should have gotten the report’s main message, loud and clear: If you really want to proceed with a venture as risky as uranium mining, make sure you do so as transparently, as carefully, as respectfully of the potential for human error and unforeseen consequences as you possibly can.
Jump forward to the present: Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration, which keeps pressing the uranium issue, continues to slip up on various banana peels of non-disclosure, non-transparency and outright incompetence. Last week it was the revelation that a series of public hearings by the Virginia Department of Health to consider the impact of uranium mining on water quality hadn’t actually been advertised to the, er, public. What happens if you convene a meeting and fail to let anyone know? The hearings weren’t even mentioned on the website of the Uranium Study Group, the panel appointed by McDonnell to develop a possible regulatory scheme for uranium milling and mining. You could almost hear the reaction from Richmond once the “mistake” was uncovered: Oops, my bad!
This comes on top of previous attempts by the administration to keep the work of the Uranium Working Group hidden from public view: The panel’s lead bureaucrat, the deputy director of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, initially contended that the UWG’s findings would fall under the status of “confidential governor’s working papers.” McDonnell distanced himself from that public relations blunder, but the work of a panel that almost no one asked for — and whose very formation came as a surprise to many — grinds on.
Enough with this nonsense. It should be evident by now that one of two things must be true (if not both): (1) the carelessness that the administration evinces on the very issue that the NAS panel emphasized above all — transparency — suggests strongly that this entire process is a dog-and-pony show, which would help to explain the sloppiness of it all; (2) if the state of Virginia is this incapable of organizing a process that is respectful of members of the public who would be most affected by the operation of a uranium mine, what are the chances it can effectively oversee the mine itself — especially with so many potential campaign contributions at stake? In posing any question, the first thing to consider is the likelihood that multiple answers may exist. So let’s make this simple: Feckless or clueless? And do we have to choose?
In the meantime, people need to ponder the odds that a pathetic adherence to the norms of transparency and accountability during the rule-making phase will give rise to a uranium regulatory authority in Virginia that has teeth, backbone and motives so pure it could make the songbirds sing. If anyone seriously believes this is going to happen, I know where you can buy a box of Strontium-22.
As someone who basically believes in the capacity of government to do good things, I don’t carry that logic so far as to believe it will always do good things. It takes only one screwed-up administration, with a heedless view of what Whitehurst, in her op-ed today, calls a “safety culture” for the uranium industry, to deliver a world of hurt for communities downstream from the waste deposits that will sit dormant for hundreds of years after Virginia Uranium has come and gone. With the stakes this high, who truly sits in a position to offer assurances?
The formation of the Uranium Working Group — which was done without the knowledge of most legislators, by the way — naturally invites a response by opponents who have little choice but to play by the rules of the game. And so it is that VUI’s critics remain diligent about tracking public hearings and posing tough questions, and those with deeper pockets (pockets that are by no means unlimited) can even be counted on to hire a lobbyist or two. But let’s not lose sight of the essential con that an extremely powerful mining industry is attempting to play on Southside Virginia. Framing the debate as one where the core issue becomes whether mining can be carried out with the greatest of care, with its aftereffects properly managed over an immense period of time, crossing administrations good and bad, isn’t a rhetorical question. It’s a silly one.
http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/opinion/article/one_slip-up_too_many/
