Uranium mining plan splits Va. county

Radioactive topic. Billions of dollars worth of uranium lies buried in Southwest Virginia. Would mining it harm public health and the environment?

By Rex BowmanPublished: February 8, 2009

COLES HILL -- Byron Motley's family has lived here in Pittsylvania County for generations. The hay farmer can still look across the narrow blacktop road in front of his house and see the oak tree beneath which his father was born.

But Motley is suddenly pondering a move to North Carolina.

Likewise, Phillip Lovelace, the ninth generation in his family to live in Pittsylvania, is considering moving to South Carolina. "I was born in a farmhouse here, and my daddy paid the doctor who delivered me three ducks and a jar of blackberry preserves," the 57-year-old cattle farmer said. "I've pretty much been in this neighborhood all my life."

Though their roots run deep in Pittsylvania's soil, Motley and Lovelace and other members of the county's Old Guard -- multigenerational families whose ties to the county often run back to the 1700s -- are considering an exodus if their fight to prevent the proposed uranium mine at Coles Hill fails.

At the least, they say, the proposed mine of several hundred acres would wreck the pastoral landscape, increase truck traffic and turn the silence of country life into a cacophony of clanging industrial noise. And at worst, they fear, the mine would pollute the groundwater and streams with uranium and choke the air with harmful residue.

Which is why Motley, 51, is thinking about bugging out if the mine is approved. The alternative, he said, is to "sit here and suck dust."
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Geologists say there may be nearly 120 million pounds of uranium, billions of dollars worth, in two large pockets about 6 miles northeast of Chatham. Urged by a group of more than 30 landowners who have formed Virginia Uranium Inc., the state is now preparing to study whether the uranium can be mined safely.

Buddy Mayhew is one of those landowners. A third-generation tobacco farmer, he described his neighbors' talk of moving away as bluster. He said he is confident they'll stay if the state study shows mining can be done safely. "I don't believe anybody's going to move."

Mayhew noted that Virginia Uranium chief Walter Coles, whose family has been in Pittsylvania since the 1700s, plans to live in his ancestral home located nearly in the middle of the two uranium deposits.

Before any mine work could start, Virginia would have to lift its 27-year-old moratorium on uranium mining, an act that would open up the entire state to the uranium industry. The U.S. Geological Survey says a vast swath of Virginia, from Pittsylvania to Fauquier County, potentially holds the nuclear fuel.

The study of uranium mining being conducted by the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy could take up to two years to complete.

Opponents of the mine plan to use that time to continue to fight. They've organized several opposition groups, circulated petitions, packed public hearings and enlisted the help of environmental groups, all in an effort to urge the General Assembly to keep the moratorium in place.

Virginia Uranium, meanwhile, has agreed to merge with a Canadian mining company to enhance its financial resources. The company and the law firm that represents it have also given more than $7,000 in campaign contributions to some of the 13 legislators who are members of the coal and energy commission's Uranium Mining Subcommittee, which is overseeing the study.

Opponents such as Lovelace and Motley contend that an objective study will bear out their fears. Virtually all uranium mining in the United States is done in arid parts of the West. Pittsylvania, pocked by ponds and crisscrossed by creeks, is too wet, too vulnerable to contamination, they and environmentalists argue.

And while they are hopeful the study will say as much, members of the Old Guard are mindful that Virginia Uranium may get its way. In which case, they are preparing to move.

"It breaks my heart, but we'll leave, without a doubt," said Ed Fitzgerald IV, an eighth-generation Pittsylvania resident whose great-grandfather started the county's first phone company. "I can't believe it's safe. I've read too much about it to believe it's safe for my children."

Aside from his environmental and health concerns about the proposed uranium mine, Fitzgerald said it would destroy a big part of what makes Pittsylvania unique -- a quiet way of life now unknown by millions of Americans and even suburbanites in Northern Virginia and the Richmond area.

"It's a place where the night life is church socials," said Fitzgerald, 48. "Sitting on the porch and watching stars is not for everybody, but it's wholesome."

Patrick Wales, a Danville native and geologist for Virginia Uranium, said landowners' fears are overblown: the ore deposits are in an isolated part of the county, and trucks would only occasionally haul uranium from the site. And the upside, he said, is that the uranium would help fuel the nation's nuclear reactors and make the country less dependent on foreign oil, while bringing 300 jobs or more to Pittsylvania.

No one, he said, intends to do any harm to the county: "We haven't been here 4,000 years, but this is our hometown, too."

Lovelace, though, is convinced a uranium mine would be the death of a county his ancestors helped build. "We've got a pretty county, without a doubt it's a pretty county," he said. "I had the time of my life running around these hayfields as a boy. I think my children and the children of my friends deserve the same chance as me."

Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or rbowman@timesdispatch.com