By Published by The Editorial Board
Danville Register & Bee
Published: December 7, 2008
The state study on uranium mining will begin to take shape this week. Members of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission will meet in Richmond on Friday to discuss the study’s parameters.
Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, is chairman of the commission and admits that his area of expertise is coal mining, not uranium mining. But Kilgore knows what he wants out of this study.
“My objective is to be as broad as possible so no stone goes unturned,” Kilgore said this week. “We want to make sure going in it’s broad.”
With a large and growing number of interests vying for a seat at the table, Kilgore and members of the commission will have their hands full. In the year since Virginia Uranium Inc. went public with its hope to mine the uranium deposit at Coles Hill, everything about this issue has been controversial — even the Coal and Energy Commission’s role in the study.
Originally, commission member and state Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, tried to push a study bill through the General Assembly. While Wagner’s study made it out of the Senate, it died in the House Rules Committee.
Kilgore believes the uranium mining issue should have been brought to the Coal and Energy Commission first, instead of going through the legislative process.
What’s the difference? Kilgore believes putting issues like this before the Coal and Energy Commission, “takes it out of the more political process and puts it into a more scientific group that’s supposed to be looking at these issues.”
But deciding on what those issues are is the first step.
To Kilgore’s credit, he wants to work with the local community during the study and envisions two to four meetings — if not more — in the Dan River Region. He also wants to follow the work of Delegate Clarke Hogan of Halifax County, who was already working with the local chambers of commerce to develop the questions the community wants answered from the uranium mining study.
While the study Kilgore is leading will — if it’s done in a comprehensive manner — answer a lot of questions, the real future of uranium mining in Virginia will be decided by the General Assembly. The state’s moratorium on uranium mining remains in effect.
Even as the Coal and Energy Commission works to develop its study, there are groups standing by the existing moratorium. One of those is the Danville Pittsylvania County Academy of Medicine, which led a grassroots effort to convince the Medical Society of Virginia — a group representing roughly half of the state’s physicians — to support the moratorium.
The group’s resolution simply reads, “RESOLVED, that the Medical Society of Virginia support continuing the moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia until there is satisfactory evidence that it will not constitute a public health hazard.”
“It wasn’t even on our radar screens … until October,” Medical Society of Virginia President Dr. Thomas Eppes Jr., of Forest, said of uranium mining. “We feel we should stand for the public health concerns of all citizens of the commonwealth, no matter how old or how young. … We just needed a public health statement.”
That statement should no doubt help to ensure that the medical and public health implications of uranium mining are studied by the Coal and Energy Commission.
“It’s got to be unbiased. We want everybody to perceive it as unbiased,” Kilgore said. “I want to look at everything. If we don’t, I just think we would have failed in our mission.”
Kilgore’s right about that. Virginia’s uranium study will need lots of chairs at the table. But recent developments to the east of the Dan River Region lead us to believe that that table will continue to grow in size.
Coming Monday: The thirsty giants.
• Editorials are the consensus view of the Danville Register & Bee’s editorial board — Publisher Steven W. Kaylor, Editor Arnold Hendrix and Opinion Page Editor Robert Benson.
http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/editorials/danville_editorials/article/leaving_no_stone_unturned/7850/#When:10:28:55Z
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