The reason Virginia Uranium Inc. is not willing to engage in a debate with Southside Concerned Citizens is because the officials at VUI know that they have no answers to the real questions that would be posed in such a debate.
They are unable to answer even the most fundamental questions about the safety and health hazards uranium mining inevitably carries with it. They are not able to address these issues because the honest answers to those questions would reveal that they really don't know what they are doing.
VUI has a nice slide show for the public, which is in reality more about nuclear power plants than about uranium mining and milling. But we are not facing the possibility of a nuclear power plant at Coles Hill. We are instead facing an extremely dangerous and untried possibility, a uranium mine and mill.
And now, VUI is attempting to make an end run around the state legislature and ask the Coal and Energy Commission to conduct their "study" of uranium mining. This is the commission that did the same study in the 1980s and concluded that uranium mining would be a fine thing for Virginia. It was only through the vision and foresight of the legislators at that time that we were spared the fate of being radioactive guinea pigs.
And the Coal and Energy Commission will probably say once again that they see no problem with uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County. Keep in mind that this is the same group of folks who have overseen the virtual destruction of Southwestern Virginia by the coal mining industry. All anyone has to do is drive out to those counties where coal has been mined to see what a mess has been made of those places. The landscape is devastated, the communities abandoned, and the streams and rivers flowing with the runoff from the mining and processing of coal. The frightening thing is that coal is not radioactive like uranium. Coal mining is bad enough, but at least it is not deadly poison.
And it looks to me as if the people of Southside, and especially the people of Pittsylvania County and Chatham, are willing to sit by and let this happen. The majority of them just don't seem to care. That is the real tragedy to me, that complacency and ignorance are allowing this travesty to proceed, questioned only by a few of us who are labeled as tree-hugging nut cakes. Well, I for one have been called worse. And if that makes me a person who loves his home and family, then I will gladly accept that label.
The citizens of Southside will get what they deserve, based on their own actions or lack thereof.
If, after this amount of time, the people who will be most affected by having a uranium mine and mill in their backyard don't care enough to speak up, then they WILL HAVE just that, and they will have to live with it for better or for worse.
And VUI has done nothing to convince me that their uranium would enrich anyone's life but the owners of and investors in VUI.
Wake up, folks. This is your home, your family, your future. Protect it while you still can.
Jesse Andrews
Halifax
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