Comments: In Canada, they just take your land for uranium mining, so why do they come to the US?
Evan French
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Dec 19, 2008 - 12:00 AMShirley Pate was boating on a lake with her husband, Klaas VanGraft, in the former Ferguson Township last summer when she noticed some brightly-coloured ribbons marking stakes on Crown land along the eastern shore.
The 78-year-old Etobicoke woman, who is secretary/treasurer for the Nine Mile Lake Cottagers Association, said she immediately had an idea of what the stakes might be marking.
"We assumed they are staking uranium, as it was found there years back."
When she contacted the prospector who planted the stakes, Dan Patrie, he wouldn't say what kind of material he was searching for.
"They don't have to tell you," she said. "I asked him if it was uranium, and he said, ?could be, why do you think there's any there?"
With countries worldwide looking to build more nuclear power plants, Pate worries Nine Mile Lake could be targeted for the valuable commodities sitting beneath the soil.
"Uranium has increased in value," she said. "And it is wanted, especially in China."
In a letter of warning she wrote to McDougall Township council, Pate explained what could happen if mining takes place.
"The Serpent River, near Elliot Lake, is considered contaminated for a distance stretching more than 100 kilometres downstream from abandoned uranium mining operations and people are cautioned not to drink the water or consume fish from this segment of the river."
She said she's afraid of what mining exploration could do to the environment.
"Exploration alone is dangerous," since it releases harmful material that would otherwise be buried, said Pate.
After prospectors have staked a claim, they can sell the rights to a mining operation, regardless of who owns the surface property.
If the miners want to dig, Pate and other concerned cottagers won't have a defence.
Since she doesn't own the mineral rights on the staked property, she has no say as to what can and cannot be removed from underfoot.
"Most Crown land does not include mineral rights," she said, adding prospectors only need to be 18 or older, and pay a $25 fee, to be allowed to go to work.
They don't have to give residents any warning, and they can cut down any trees they need in order to make their stakes, she said.
Twenty municipalities in Ontario have passed resolutions calling on the province to place a moratorium on all uranium mining and exploration.
Pate said she's been in touch with residents in Peterborough and Haliburton who are also worried.
"I've heard so many scary things from different outfits."
The environment isn't the only thing at stake. Gloria and Frank Morrison woke up one morning, in 2006, to find their private property had been staked by Frontenac Ventures, a company which was also after uranium.
The Robertsville couple spent days on the phone, contacting environmental associations and numerous government agencies, but were unable to save their property from the prospectors.
Ramsey Hart, program co-ordinator for Mining Watch Canada, said the couple contacted two local First Nations and mobilized a grassroots movement.
After public protests the company got an injunction to keep the angry people from getting in the way of progress. One enthusiastic protester even spent a few nights in jail.
Although the protesters managed to delay drilling, which was scheduled for June 2007, there has been no resolution to the issue.
Hart said although all mining is detrimental to the environment in one way or another, uranium pit mining carries the added danger of radiation poisoning.
"Uranium has a radioactivity which can be very hard to contain."
He said if a company decides to build a mine on the Morrison's property, they'll likely buy them out first, since living next to a uranium mine could be deadly.
Dan Farrow, acting district geologist for Northern Development and Mines in Sudbury, said a thing called "right of free entry" allows prospectors to stake your land, but generally they will ask for permission first.
"People don't know it, but if you put a no trespassing sign up they can't enter private held land."
He said the prospector can, however, stake beside your land using a "witness post," and can access the minerals underneath using lateral tunneling if need be.
"Technically, when you stake a claim you do hold those mineral rights," he said, adding that if you don't hold the mineral rights on your property, prospectors have the right to make claims.
There are limits to where prospectors can look, said Farrow. They can't stake claims on municipally owned land or on First Nations reserves.
Pate said she'll continue to get the word out about staking in the Parry Sound District.
She said although development of the claims could be many years down the road, she wants to organize residents and cottagers as group, so "that we may have a strong voice to state our concerns."
Read more:
http://www.cottagecountrynow.ca/news/article/398023--uranium-in-your-backyard
