Register and Bee, Jan. 18, 2009

By Published by The Editorial Board Register and Bee, Jan. 18, 2009Published: January 18, 2009
Last year at this time, a bill was working its way through the state Senate to study uranium mining and milling in Virginia. When the bill got to the House of Delegates, it was killed in the Rules Committee.
But that wasn’t the end of the study bill. The state’s Coal and Energy Commission, which is made up of General Assembly members, decided it would tackle the issue.
So it took less than a year for Virginia Uranium Inc. to get the study bill it wanted from the state.
To some opponents of VUI and its plan to mine and mill uranium at Coles Hill, that was proof of a done deal when a lot of local people haven’t made up their minds — and others are dead set against it.
When the Coal and Energy Commission’s Uranium Mining Subcommittee met in Chatham earlier this month, some of those mining opponents publicly and harshly questioned subcommittee members about their acceptance of campaign contributions from Virginia Uranium and the lobbying firms employed by VUI.
The rhetorical buzz saw clearly caught subcommittee members off guard. They came to Chatham at the request of the Dan River Region’s legislators for the expressed purpose of hearing the questions local people wanted answered by the state study. The last thing they expected was to have their own integrity questioned because of the campaign contributions they had received.
Anyone with an Internet connection can quickly learn from the Virginia Public Access Project’s Web site (http://www.vpap.org) that Virginia Uranium Inc. has 12 registered lobbyists and that the company has made campaign contributions totaling $32,800 — with 58 percent of that money going to Republicans.
It’s obvious Virginia Uranium didn’t give $32,800 to our state’s politicians and spend $94,100 to hire 12 lobbyists for nothing. The company’s leaders clearly believe that uranium mining and milling technology has advanced to the point that it can be done safely in Virginia.
What Virginia Uranium has done — and will probably continue to do — is perfectly legal and completely transparent. All kinds of companies, special interest groups and individuals give campaign contributions to politicians. It’s the price society pays for not publicly financing political campaigns, but that’s another issue for another day.
Two members of the Uranium Mining Subcommittee — Sens. John Watkins of Midlothian and Sen. Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach — have received money from VUI. But neither one of them — or the entire subcommittee, for that matter — have the power to get mining started at Coles Hill. Only the General Assembly can do that by lifting the uranium mining moratorium. But the only way that’s likely to happen is if the study now under development determines that it’s safe to mine uranium in Virginia.
“It will not affect my vote one way or the other,” Watkins told the Danville Register & Bee about the money he received from VUI. “… I’m not going to give it back. Why should I?”
He shouldn’t. But it does put even more pressure on Watkins, Wagner and the other subcommittee members to do the most fair and comprehensive study of uranium mining and milling that is possible — regardless of either the cost or the time it will take.
When it comes to power and influence in Richmond, we shouldn’t kid ourselves about the power of the environmental lobbyists and the green groups that hire them.
Those environmental groups lobby on behalf of a large number of issues, while VUI exists to do one thing and one thing only. Virginia is also such a pro-business state that the greens could spend 10 times as much money on campaign contributions and lobbyists and they still wouldn’t match the power and influence of the business community in the halls of power.
So while Virginia Uranium is a new and relatively small company, it’s not by any stretch of the imagination a David going up against a green Goliath.
For now, Watkins, Wagner and the other commission members deserve to have their reputations kept intact. They haven’t broken any laws or done anything wrong. They have simply agreed to study this controversial matter, a stand this newspaper took more than a year ago.
We need a comprehensive uranium mining study, not the vilification of politicians. Most people want a full and fair study done, and if that’s what they get, it won’t matter who gave the politicians campaig