Thursday, July 12, 2012
Monitoring uranium mines presents new issues
Posted: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 11:40 am
To the editor,
At the June 16 meeting of Gov. McDonnell’s Uranium Working Group in Chatham, Dr. William Lassiter, representing the Division of Mines, Minerals and Energy, stated that the Commonwealth of Virginia has neither the funding nor the personnel to monitor all the existing and “reclaimed” mine sites currently in Virginia.
If that is the case, how can Virginia possibly afford to take on uranium mining as well?
After all, uranium has its own unique character in that the ore, the products and the byproducts are all radioactive and contain numerous other toxic substances as well.
No other type of mining has this level of toxicity. Even coal mining in all its ruinous phases, from pushing off the tops of mountains to poisoning streams, rivers and wells, and burying homes and pastures under its own overburden, is relatively benign compared to the unavoidable and permanent toxicity that uranium mining and milling leaves in its wake.
If Virginia lacks the money to monitor even the existing mines, it would seem that no one in Richmond has put much thought into this fast-track approach to uranium mining by the governor, including McDonnell himself.
The members of the Uranium Working Group seemed nervous and confused at the Chatham meeting, as if they had no real idea what to do or say other than to spend more than a million of our tax dollars to hire a fledgling consulting firm made up entirely of “experts” with ties to the uranium industry. Can anyone imagine what they might say?
This push by the governor to force uranium mining on the people of Virginia is a shameful waste of our hard-earned tax dollars.
The Halifax County Public School System has lost more than $10 million in funding since McDonnell has been in office. And yet he can come up with a million dollars that will benefit only one industry. Why is uranium mining more important that the education of our children?
If the owners of Coles Hill and their uranium cronies want to gamble on a chance to get their uranium mine, I say let them do it with their own money, not the money of the taxpayers of Virginia.
Jesse Andrews
Halifax
http://www.wpcva.com/opinion/article_ff34a652-c05c-11e1-a5cb-0019bb2963f4.html