Mining opponents worry over bill
BY MARY BETH JACKSON
Some uranium mining opponents have nagging doubts and questions about nuclear energy legislation that has passed initial votes this week in the General Assembly, wondering if there’s a crack in the door to uranium mining and milling.
The bills establish the “Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium,” a government authority to promote nuclear energy and research in the state. Andrew Lester, executive director of the Roanoke River Basin Association, said the wording invites skepticism.
“The wording is nebulous enough to let you interpret it any way you want to,” Lester said.
The bills found the authority “for the purposes of making the commonwealth a national and global leader in nuclear energy and serving as an interdisciplinary study, research and information resource for the commonwealth on nuclear energy issues.”
Delegate T. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, is the patron of House Bill 1790. He said the bill addresses the needs of companies in his district, such as nuclear power companies Areva and Babcock & Wilcox, that would benefit from shared research in a way that would not compromise intellectual property.
“There have been conversations for quite some time with various members … to try to come up with a mechanism to collaborate more efficiently,” Garrett said.
Garrett said uranium and mining and milling is unrelated to his bill.
“Uranium mining and milling is totally separate,” he said. “This bill does not at all include those elements.”
The authority will be governed by a 17-member board, including the presidents of four Virginia universities; the director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy; and six nuclear energy industry representatives, among others.
One sticking point is the bill’s exemptions from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Clarksville, said he didn’t see anything that could be construed as a veiled threat.
“I do not believe it will do our area any harm,” Ruff wrote in an email to the Danville Register & Bee. “The focus is on research and improving the climate for nuclear power on land and on our naval vessels.”
He added, “Those working on the bill successfully kept both sides of the mining and milling issue from adding language to the bill that would allow that to be the focus. Nothing was added that will help the pro-mining side, nor was anything added that could block mining.”
However, Ruff and Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Moneta, voted against the Senate and House bills this week.
Ruff said he received many calls from people who are suspicious of the bills.
“A number of people were concerned and it’s always better to vote no when in doubt,” he said.
The doubt he considered were not his, but those of his constituents, he said.
“I know where the legislation came from and where it was and the passion of those folks,” he said. “They have no interest whatsoever in having it hijacked by proponents of the uranium mining industry.”
Director Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center said he sees no cause for alarm in its wording, either.
Jaffe said he is confident the withdrawal of Sen. John Watkins’ uranium bill for lack of support is the end of the matter for awhile. He believes legislators acted wisely, and credits the 2011 National Academy of Sciences report for opening eyes in Richmond.
“That study shed a lot of light for a lot of people that the risks are too great,” he said.
Upon withdrawing his bill, Watkins called upon Gov. Bob McDonnell to employ the Administrative Process Act to write regulations for uranium mining and milling. Jaffe said he does not want to speculate about what the governor will or won’t do, but said he was in a meeting in December to brief the governor on the issue and characterized McDonnell as “very engaged.”
“I was impressed with his eagerness to dig into the issues,” Jaffe said. “He was very focused on the studies.”
“There doesn’t seem to be support for uranium mining and lifting the ban,” Herring said. “I don’t think we ought to spend tax money if there’s not support for it.”
Herring expects the issue will remain dormant for this year, citing the withdrawal of Watkins’ legislation.
“I think that sent a real clear signal that the ban’s going to remain in place,” he said.
Lester said the RRBA just wants assurances.
“We are very concerned and we would prefer to have a strong statement in the bill(s) that none of the funds of the Authority will be used to develop regulations,” he said.
He added, “We’re going to have to watch these folks closely forever.”
The bills establish the “Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium,” a government authority to promote nuclear energy and research in the state. Andrew Lester, executive director of the Roanoke River Basin Association, said the wording invites skepticism.
“The wording is nebulous enough to let you interpret it any way you want to,” Lester said.
The bills found the authority “for the purposes of making the commonwealth a national and global leader in nuclear energy and serving as an interdisciplinary study, research and information resource for the commonwealth on nuclear energy issues.”
Delegate T. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, is the patron of House Bill 1790. He said the bill addresses the needs of companies in his district, such as nuclear power companies Areva and Babcock & Wilcox, that would benefit from shared research in a way that would not compromise intellectual property.
“There have been conversations for quite some time with various members … to try to come up with a mechanism to collaborate more efficiently,” Garrett said.
Garrett said uranium and mining and milling is unrelated to his bill.
“Uranium mining and milling is totally separate,” he said. “This bill does not at all include those elements.”
The authority will be governed by a 17-member board, including the presidents of four Virginia universities; the director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy; and six nuclear energy industry representatives, among others.
One sticking point is the bill’s exemptions from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Clarksville, said he didn’t see anything that could be construed as a veiled threat.
“I do not believe it will do our area any harm,” Ruff wrote in an email to the Danville Register & Bee. “The focus is on research and improving the climate for nuclear power on land and on our naval vessels.”
He added, “Those working on the bill successfully kept both sides of the mining and milling issue from adding language to the bill that would allow that to be the focus. Nothing was added that will help the pro-mining side, nor was anything added that could block mining.”
However, Ruff and Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Moneta, voted against the Senate and House bills this week.
Ruff said he received many calls from people who are suspicious of the bills.
“A number of people were concerned and it’s always better to vote no when in doubt,” he said.
The doubt he considered were not his, but those of his constituents, he said.
“I know where the legislation came from and where it was and the passion of those folks,” he said. “They have no interest whatsoever in having it hijacked by proponents of the uranium mining industry.”
Director Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center said he sees no cause for alarm in its wording, either.
Jaffe said he is confident the withdrawal of Sen. John Watkins’ uranium bill for lack of support is the end of the matter for awhile. He believes legislators acted wisely, and credits the 2011 National Academy of Sciences report for opening eyes in Richmond.
“That study shed a lot of light for a lot of people that the risks are too great,” he said.
Upon withdrawing his bill, Watkins called upon Gov. Bob McDonnell to employ the Administrative Process Act to write regulations for uranium mining and milling. Jaffe said he does not want to speculate about what the governor will or won’t do, but said he was in a meeting in December to brief the governor on the issue and characterized McDonnell as “very engaged.”
“I was impressed with his eagerness to dig into the issues,” Jaffe said. “He was very focused on the studies.”
“There doesn’t seem to be support for uranium mining and lifting the ban,” Herring said. “I don’t think we ought to spend tax money if there’s not support for it.”
Herring expects the issue will remain dormant for this year, citing the withdrawal of Watkins’ legislation.
“I think that sent a real clear signal that the ban’s going to remain in place,” he said.
Lester said the RRBA just wants assurances.
“We are very concerned and we would prefer to have a strong statement in the bill(s) that none of the funds of the Authority will be used to develop regulations,” he said.
He added, “We’re going to have to watch these folks closely forever.”
Jackson reports for the Danville Register & Bee.
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/
A sextet of Southside Virginia legislators have written Gov. Bob McDonnell asking him to resist uranium supporters who want him to move ahead with the development of new mining regulations despite the recent demise of legislation for that purpose.
"We strongly urge you not to follow that course," reads the Feb. 6 letter to the governor, which notes "the General Assembly has concluded the risks are too great to approve lifting the moratorium on mining."
The letter is signed by six Republicans: Sens. Frank Ruff of Mecklenburg County and Bill Stanley of Franklin County; and Dels. James Edmunds of Halifax County, Danny Marshall of Danville, Don Merricks of Pittsylvania County, and Tommy Wright of Lunenburg County.
"To ignore the overwhelming opposition to uranium mining that has been expressed by citizens and organizations across the Commonwealth does not fit with representative government" they wrote. "An issue as divisive as this should be dealt with by the legislative process."
Last week, Sen. John Watkins withdrew his uranium legislation when it became clear he lacked the votes to get the bill past the Senate committee where it had been sent.
He also urged McDonnell to direct state agencies to proceed with developing regulations.
Anything less, Watkins said, "is to bury our heads in the sand along with the Nation's most valuable uranium deposit."
Fighting the pro-uranium effort is a broad coalition of interested parties who want Virginia to maintain its 31-year mining moratorium.
They fear possible environmental fallout and public health hazards from the accidental release of mining waste, known as tailings, leftover from the milling process when uranium ore is separated from rock.
Those forces also worry uranium supporters may yet try to revive mining legislation before the 2013 General Assembly session ends later this month.
South Hampton Roads localities are among the groups that oppose mining out of concern that the accidental of tailings into waterways that feed local drinking water supplies could cause contamination.
-- Julian Walker
From Deborah Ferrucio:
We thought you might want to read the following letter to Governor
McDonnell asking him to say no to uranium mining and the Virginia
Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority
______________________________
Dear Governor McDonnell:
Recently, Delegate John Watkins “regretfully” requested that the
Senate Agriculture Committee strike his bill to lift the ban on
uranium mining then soon after requested that you use your executive
power under the Administrative Process Act to proceed with writing
regulations that would govern the mining of uranium in Virginia,
specifically at the Coles Hill uranium deposit.
Should you use your executive authority to proceed with uranium mining
regulations even as the will of the people is decidedly against
uranium mining, you risk the inevitable and burgeoning wrath of the
people, the destruction of your political career, and a political
battle that you cannot win. If uranium mining were to prevail, the
long-lasting legacy of radioactive contamination of the region and
beyond would be your legacy.
There are several reasons why your choice to proceed on the uranium
mining course would be a disaster for Virginia, North Carolina, and
the East Coast and why it would be ruinous to your political career,
even if you don’t have aspirations for higher office. Our perspective
comes from more than three decades of environmental justice and
pollution prevention work surrounding the complicated and contentious
subject of waste disposal, especially in North Carolina and the
region.
In 1982, North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., spent nearly one
million dollars in National Guardsmen and State Police to forcibly
bury some ten-thousand truckloads of toxic polychlorinated biphenyl
PCB-contaminated soil in a landfill just above groundwater against the
will of the people of Warren County. The Governor’s course of action
triggered a six-week protest movement that included demonstrations and
more than 550 arrests and that would become known for launching the
environmental justice movement and for transforming environmentalism.
For four years, citizens had mounted a campaign to stop the PCB
landfill, battling government regulators and politicians in public
hearings, the courts, and the news media. Meanwhile, as Warren County
fought for local sovereignty on the landfill issue, the Governor
convinced the North Carolina General Assembly to pass the 1981
Hazardous Waste Management Act which authorizes a tyranny of executive
power concerning the siting of toxic, hazardous and nuclear waste
facilities and gives North Carolina governors the authority to
override local ordinances written to prohibit hazardous waste
facilities. The governor makes the final decision prior to public
hearings, which have a purely cosmetic function; preempts all local
sovereignty rights concerning the decision; and authorizes the use of
force as needed.
The intended consequences of the 1981 Hazardous Waste Management Act
(WMA) have been to make North Carolina attractive to waste industries
which have for three decades attempted to site massive commercial
waste facilities in the state. However, citizens have repeatedly
stopped most of these facilities, including Waste Management Inc.’s
massive hazardous waste landfill; Thermyl-Kem’s massive toxic waste
incinerator; the Southeast’s Low-Level Radioactive waste landfill
promoted in the Raleigh News and Observer at the time as a
“Radioactive gold mine,” as well as numerous massive solid waste
landfills. All of these dangerous commercial waste facilities would
have been open for interstate commerce, making North Carolina a
national and perhaps international dumping grounds.
The North Carolina Waste Management Act legalizes executive tyranny.
To many North Carolina citizens, the WMA made Governor Jim Hunt the
czar of deadly waste. To economic developers and high-risk waste
industries, the WMA made Governor Hunt the patron saint of waste
disposal.
Governor Hunt’s decision to use his executive and legislative
authority to forcibly bury the PCBs in Warren County tainted his
administrations’ history and his economic, environmental and justice
legacy. In many circles he is known for “Hunt’s Dump” and as the
Governor who attempted to lay waste his own state, promoting and
helping legalize toxic and nuclear aggression in the form of
regulations, statutes, and laws written to protect waste industry
polluters and not the environment and public health.
You have two choices.
You may proceed with an old-world strategy of usurping unfettered
science and the will of the people with your support for uranium
mining. You may support the “as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA)”
standard for protection of the environment, natural resources, and
public health that promotes regulations and statutes aimed at
achieving economic benefits and legal protection for polluters by
minimizing pollution prevention requirements and costs and by
utilizing low standards for compliance. You may lead Virginia and the
nation in the continuation of an unsustainable model of economic
development that continues to promote pollution at the cost of the
welfare of the people and the environment.
Or you may proceed as a “new-world” leader, refraining from using a
tyranny of executive power to proceed with uranium mining. Instead,
you may direct your executive authority to promoting an “Environmental
Justice-Pollution Prevention (EJPP)” standard for protection of the
environment, natural resources, and public health, a standard that
promotes a sustainable model of economic development.
If you authorize the writing of mining regulations through executive
order or through the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority, or
through any other means, and if you promote a nuclear-based economic
development model through this Authority or any other means, then you
will seal your historic fate, in effect, by facilitating radioactive
aggression against your own citizens. Your uranium mining campaign
will be fiercely opposed, and the public will never accept uranium
mining nor a radioactive-based economy.
Governor McDonnell, should you decide, instead, to lead the state in
the prudent choice of stopping uranium mining while implementing plans
and policies to minimize future nuclear, radioactive, and toxic
threats to Virginia and to her North Carolina neighbor, your legacy
will be one of which you will be proud to pass on to your children and
grandchildren and one for which you will be remembered with the
lasting appreciation of generations to come.
Sincerely,
Deborah Ferruccio
Ken Ferruccio
North Carolina Citizens Against Uranium Mining
and the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority
McDonnell asking him to say no to uranium mining and the Virginia
Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority
______________________________
Dear Governor McDonnell:
Recently, Delegate John Watkins “regretfully” requested that the
Senate Agriculture Committee strike his bill to lift the ban on
uranium mining then soon after requested that you use your executive
power under the Administrative Process Act to proceed with writing
regulations that would govern the mining of uranium in Virginia,
specifically at the Coles Hill uranium deposit.
Should you use your executive authority to proceed with uranium mining
regulations even as the will of the people is decidedly against
uranium mining, you risk the inevitable and burgeoning wrath of the
people, the destruction of your political career, and a political
battle that you cannot win. If uranium mining were to prevail, the
long-lasting legacy of radioactive contamination of the region and
beyond would be your legacy.
There are several reasons why your choice to proceed on the uranium
mining course would be a disaster for Virginia, North Carolina, and
the East Coast and why it would be ruinous to your political career,
even if you don’t have aspirations for higher office. Our perspective
comes from more than three decades of environmental justice and
pollution prevention work surrounding the complicated and contentious
subject of waste disposal, especially in North Carolina and the
region.
In 1982, North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., spent nearly one
million dollars in National Guardsmen and State Police to forcibly
bury some ten-thousand truckloads of toxic polychlorinated biphenyl
PCB-contaminated soil in a landfill just above groundwater against the
will of the people of Warren County. The Governor’s course of action
triggered a six-week protest movement that included demonstrations and
more than 550 arrests and that would become known for launching the
environmental justice movement and for transforming environmentalism.
For four years, citizens had mounted a campaign to stop the PCB
landfill, battling government regulators and politicians in public
hearings, the courts, and the news media. Meanwhile, as Warren County
fought for local sovereignty on the landfill issue, the Governor
convinced the North Carolina General Assembly to pass the 1981
Hazardous Waste Management Act which authorizes a tyranny of executive
power concerning the siting of toxic, hazardous and nuclear waste
facilities and gives North Carolina governors the authority to
override local ordinances written to prohibit hazardous waste
facilities. The governor makes the final decision prior to public
hearings, which have a purely cosmetic function; preempts all local
sovereignty rights concerning the decision; and authorizes the use of
force as needed.
The intended consequences of the 1981 Hazardous Waste Management Act
(WMA) have been to make North Carolina attractive to waste industries
which have for three decades attempted to site massive commercial
waste facilities in the state. However, citizens have repeatedly
stopped most of these facilities, including Waste Management Inc.’s
massive hazardous waste landfill; Thermyl-Kem’s massive toxic waste
incinerator; the Southeast’s Low-Level Radioactive waste landfill
promoted in the Raleigh News and Observer at the time as a
“Radioactive gold mine,” as well as numerous massive solid waste
landfills. All of these dangerous commercial waste facilities would
have been open for interstate commerce, making North Carolina a
national and perhaps international dumping grounds.
The North Carolina Waste Management Act legalizes executive tyranny.
To many North Carolina citizens, the WMA made Governor Jim Hunt the
czar of deadly waste. To economic developers and high-risk waste
industries, the WMA made Governor Hunt the patron saint of waste
disposal.
Governor Hunt’s decision to use his executive and legislative
authority to forcibly bury the PCBs in Warren County tainted his
administrations’ history and his economic, environmental and justice
legacy. In many circles he is known for “Hunt’s Dump” and as the
Governor who attempted to lay waste his own state, promoting and
helping legalize toxic and nuclear aggression in the form of
regulations, statutes, and laws written to protect waste industry
polluters and not the environment and public health.
You have two choices.
You may proceed with an old-world strategy of usurping unfettered
science and the will of the people with your support for uranium
mining. You may support the “as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA)”
standard for protection of the environment, natural resources, and
public health that promotes regulations and statutes aimed at
achieving economic benefits and legal protection for polluters by
minimizing pollution prevention requirements and costs and by
utilizing low standards for compliance. You may lead Virginia and the
nation in the continuation of an unsustainable model of economic
development that continues to promote pollution at the cost of the
welfare of the people and the environment.
Or you may proceed as a “new-world” leader, refraining from using a
tyranny of executive power to proceed with uranium mining. Instead,
you may direct your executive authority to promoting an “Environmental
Justice-Pollution Prevention (EJPP)” standard for protection of the
environment, natural resources, and public health, a standard that
promotes a sustainable model of economic development.
If you authorize the writing of mining regulations through executive
order or through the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority, or
through any other means, and if you promote a nuclear-based economic
development model through this Authority or any other means, then you
will seal your historic fate, in effect, by facilitating radioactive
aggression against your own citizens. Your uranium mining campaign
will be fiercely opposed, and the public will never accept uranium
mining nor a radioactive-based economy.
Governor McDonnell, should you decide, instead, to lead the state in
the prudent choice of stopping uranium mining while implementing plans
and policies to minimize future nuclear, radioactive, and toxic
threats to Virginia and to her North Carolina neighbor, your legacy
will be one of which you will be proud to pass on to your children and
grandchildren and one for which you will be remembered with the
lasting appreciation of generations to come.
Sincerely,
Deborah Ferruccio
Ken Ferruccio
North Carolina Citizens Against Uranium Mining
and the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority
