Uranium mining worries Pittsylvania County NAACP

By Denice ThibodeauPublished: March 12, 2009

CHATHAM — Members of the Pittsylvania County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People say they are concerned about how uranium mining will affect the area’s water.

The NAACP held a forum Thursday night to address concerns about the proposed uranium mining at Coles Hill, which is about six miles northeast of Chatham.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Coy Harville and Banister District Supervisor William Pritchett, who supervises the district where the proposed mining would take place, were at the meeting to answer questions posed by about 50 members of the NAACP and other interested members of the community.

One of the biggest concerns to many of the members was the question of water testing done by Virginia Uranium Inc., both before and after the core sample drilling was done.

Some residents felt minority homeowners were left out of the water sampling process, NAACP President Willie T. Fitzgerald said. They took those concerns to Pritchett, who contacted VUI.

VUI representatives Walter Coles and Henry Hurt told residents the testing was done at four ponds, wells at the site, 15 locations in nearby creeks and tributaries, as stipulated by the permit they received from the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to do exploratory drilling.

Coles said VUI went beyond those stipulations and did an informal study of wells at homes within a mile of the site. He said VUI representatives knocked on doors and, if they received permission, tested the wells.

The printed statement VUI handed out at the meeting stated, “At the conclusion of the program, more than 80 residential wells (of about 200 in the area) had been voluntarily tested, including the wells of those minority families who had granted permission.”

Several people attending the meeting asked how they could get copies of the results of those tests, but Coles told them privacy issues left it up to the individual homeowners to decide whether to make the results public.

One resident, Deborah Lovelace, said she had obtained one of the test results, which indicated lead levels rose from 2.83 before drilling began to 17.9 afterward, making the water unsafe to drink.

“I would like to see more water testing done before any more drilling is done,” Lovelace said.

Several members of the group asked that the Board of Supervisors authorize and pay for more testing.

Harville told the crowd that if the supervisors did testing, it would have to be done to every well in the county at a cost of $1,000 to $1,500 per well, which would result in a tax increase.
He did agree to ask the Virginia Board of Health if it would look into evaluating the water testing that has been done.

Harville said he plans to wait for results of the study before making any personal decision on whether uranium mining should be allowed — a process he said will take two or three years, with many public hearings along the way.

Pritchett agreed.
“Let the study go forth so we can make a decision on what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said. “If it is harmful, I will not support it.”

• Contact Denice Thibodeau at dthibodeau@registerbee.com
or (434) 791-7985.