Uranium mining study appears dead for this legislative session

By Mason Adams

RICHMOND – The House Rules Committee voted this afternoon to table a proposed study to assess the risks and benefits of uranium mining in Virginia.

The procedural move effectively kills the bill, which many of its opponents saw as the first step to lift Virginia’s 25-year-old moratorium on uranium mining.

Senate Bill 525 was spurred largely by Virginia Uranium, which wants to mine what is believed to be one of the largest concentrations of uranium in the country, now several miles underground in Pittsylvania County.

The vote was spurred largely by Dels. Watkins Abbitt, I-Appomattox County, and Clarke Hogan, R-Halifax County. Hogan represents an area downstream of the proposed mine, while Abbitt had played a role in the discussion of uranium mining back that led to placement of the moratorium in 1983.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he thought the state ought to study uranium mining, but it should move slowly because it could affect the environment and residents’ quality of life for anywhere between “200 and 2,000 years.”

Still in question is language within the Senate budget proposal that directs the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to provide a report “assessing the feasibility of establishing, implementing and overseeing a state program for the regulation of uranium mining.”

The state budget is currently in a conference committee where Hogan is one of the conferees.