Comment: The paper needs to retract the statement about Wales said this is the same group that sued the county, this is not true, please retract now!
By John Crane
Published: March 28, 2011
A group of Pittsylvania County residents has formed a grassroots organization to oppose lifting the ban on uranium mining and milling in the commonwealth.
The citizens established Piedmont Residents in Defense of the Environment, a nonprofit, to be an environmental watchdog, monitor issues and hold government officials accountable for their actions, said PRIDE President Karen Maute.
“PRIDE will actively promote keeping the ban on uranium mining in Virginia and seek to empower the communities to bring awareness of other issues that have negative impact on citizen health, the environment and the economy,” the group stated in a news release.
Virginia Uranium Inc. seeks to mine and mill a 119-million-pound uranium ore deposit at Coles Hill, about six miles northeast of Chatham.
PRIDE Vice President and Secretary Nancy Barbour Smith said the group officially formed last week.
“We needed to organize folks interested in the same things we are,” Smith said Monday. It will draw its members from Virginia and North Carolina.
Pittsylvania County resident Anne Cockrell is PRIDE’s treasurer.
Maute said the group wanted to have an organization in the county’s southern end similar to the League of Individuals for the Environment in the county’s northern portion.
PRIDE so far has about a dozen members and is a chapter of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League based in Glendale Springs, N.C.
BREDL is a “regional, community-based, nonprofit environmental organization” whose “founding principals are earth stewardship, environmental democracy, social justice and community empowerment,” according to the league’s Website.
PRIDE’s formation is a re-emergence of the same group that was active in the area in the past, Maute said. The organization, which became inactive, focused its efforts against a facility in the county that burned hazardous liquid waste for fuel in the making of an aggregate used to make cinder blocks, Maute said.
Maute said she is not sure how much membership dues will be. The group would like to get donations and grant money for events including guest speakers, Maute said.
“We’re hoping to be able to have rapport with local and state officials about the issues,” Maute said.
Read more:
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/mar/28/organization-forms-push-keep-ban-uranium-mining-ar-934142/
