Our County to Become "National Sacrifice Area"?

(Letter to the Editor in Star Tribune 01-09-08 )

In his Dec. 29 letter to the editor, concerning the "safety" of uranium mining, Walter Coles Sr. cited Lynchburg as having a safe uranium-handling facility.He stated that "even enriched uranium is already being transported safely up and down the roads of southern Virginia."
An important difference between the Lynchburg operation and the potential Pittsylvania County operation is that Lynchburg does not mine uranium and therefore does not of necessity use processes which directly contaminate the environment.The hazardous materials which the Lynchburg operation handles can both arrive and depart in sealed containers and thus avoid direct contamination of groundwater. That would not be the case with the proposed Pittsylvania County operation.A mining operation is open to the elements. It cannot be contained.Not only does it directly use the underground waterways, and thus contaminate both them and the water passing through them en route to people's wells, storms can sometimes break the mill tailings dams and further spread radiation into the water.


In both cases the water is contaminated. And water, once contaminated, cannot be cleaned.It takes thousands of years for the radiation to cool.And no insurance policy to cover clean-up of contamination would be meaningful, even if one could be secured, since such contamination cannot be cleaned up.As for procuring an independent study, that would be tricky at best. Most parties seeking to engage a company to conduct such a study would probably consider only companies with on-point experience.However, a company which has already conducted a uranium-mining safety study has already taken a position on the issue of its safety and would have a very hard time changing it.The very act of selecting such a company to make the study would constitute a compromise in independence by the hiring party, since the outcome of that company's study would be virtually assured in advance.Thus, a truly independent study would have to be conducted by an inexperienced company, a fact which might itself render dubious the outcome it reaches, whatever that might be.Incidentally, almost certainly the position taken by an overwhelming majority of the companies who have already conducted studies of the safety of uranium mining is pro-uranium industry.This is so because it is likely that most such studies have been ordered by parties who stood to gain financially (uranium companies and in some cases political units which received money from uranium companies), rather than by parties who wanted only to protect themselves (citizens living in close proximity), and studies tend to support the positions desired by the parties who pay for them.Perhaps the real question for Southside Virginia should be: Are we prepared to join the Four Corners Area of the Navajo Nation and the Black Hills of South Dakota in being known as a "National Sacrifice Area"?Jon Bell