Flooding at Coles Hill after 2 1/2 inches of rain from just a rain storn!
Comment: Please read all the letters to the editor listed below about the fight against uranium mining in Virginia but mostly about our lovely Pittsylvania County, VA!
A comment on outrageous doings
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
With the news that Virginia Uranium will pay for a study to determine the future of uranium mining in Virginia, this very major issue now moves into the realm of the absurd.
The acquiescence of the government of the commonwealth to this situation is stunning in its stupidity and bald-faced corruption.
Our elected officials have shown little judgment and even less common sense in this decision. The fate of their careers as elected officials must be in doubt.
Every state-wide representative who did not stand up to oppose this corrupt bargain has abrogated his responsibility as a guardian of the people's interest. They are unworthy of our votes and have earned our collective disdain.
I am sure the National Academy of Science is indeed a "neutral" organization through which to conduct this study, bought and paid (quiet literally) by our Canadian friends and their cadre of wealthy local and foreign investors.
The scientists at Virginia Tech would never think of the opportunity to use Pittsylvania County as a laboratory and its citizens as guinea pigs in their investigations of the affects of uranium mining on the environment east of the Mississippi.
They are responsible individuals first, and scientists second. In fact, this new relationship could be the beginning of several new National Academy/Virginia Tech studies.
Let's see what else they could do. Here's one: "The Feasibility of Bank Bailouts as a Means of Helping the Economy."
That one would be paid for by Wachovia and Bank of America. I wonder what the National Academy of Science would find?
Here's another: "The Positive or Negative Effects of Socialism in America."
That one would be funded by the American Communist Party. I am sure the folks at Virginia Tech will come up with a fair and balanced conclusion.
Finally, in the area of sports we have, "Steroids: Good or Bad for Baseball?" This one has the financial backing of Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.
I am on tenterhooks awaiting that conclusion.
Pardon my sarcasm, but I fear the deck is stacked against Pittsylvania County. Is this the sad fate that must play out over the next two decades?
The "study" will conclude that uranium mining is safe "under certain circumstances."
The fine print of the extreme conditional approval will be ignored by the uranium industry and they will embrace the study as definite "scientific" proof that all is well.
Mining regulations will move swiftly through the hapless House of Delegates; mining will begin with a flourish of heady pronouncements about employment and the economic prosperity that is headed our way.
Blasting activity will begin; tailing ponds will be dug; all will move quickly forward. Then, somewhere down the line, there will be an economic (price of uranium falls) or environmental (water ruined) catastrophe.
Government and uranium industry officials will throw up their hands and declare that no one could have foreseen this (remember Katrina?), and they are not to blame.
The mines will close; the investors will go silent and Virginia Uranium will creep back to its Canadian homeland.
By that time, the people of Virginia will be left to tend the mess that Virginia Uranium began: the two 800-foot holes in the ground; the ruined landscape, poisoned water and contaminated air.
Unemployment will rise, now that tobacco and non-mining businesses have long left the area. Taxes will rise; land values will fall.
The National Academy will assert the fine print of its study (i.e. that mining probably could not be done successfully) and the scientists at Virginia Tech will have their laboratory and guinea pigs just down the road from them in Pittsylvania County.
My father used to say that if you can't pay for something, you can't buy it. If the Commonwealth of Virginia cannot pay for a study, they should not have one.
Virginia Uranium is a biased funder; the conflict of interest is so apparent that it is embarrassing for a private citizen to have to point this out to officials who should know better.
If Virginia cannot pay now for a study of this sort, how are they going to pay for the regulation and upkeep of the area once mining begins? Where will that money come from?
Until these basic questions are answered completely, all citizens of good faith must remain opposed to any study of any kind paid for by the very people who profit from its slanted outcome.
We shall and must regard the findings of this tainted study, and the people who support it, with a cynical and suspicious eye.
Richard Dixon
Chatham
Kilgore missed much on recent 'tour' of Coles Hill
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Our local newspaper printed this:
"Kilgore, who is from Scott County in far southwest Virginia, recently flew over Coles Hill on the way to a Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission meeting.
"To satisfy his curiosity, the small plane landed in a field and Kilgore explored the site, one of the largest uranium deposit in the United States.
"'I just wanted to visualize what we've been talking about,'" he said. "It's way out away from anything.'"
I can imagine who gave Mr. Kilgore his personal tour of Coles Hill.
Mr. Kilgore, coming from the mountains of Virginia as I do, has probably been taught from childhood not to go on private property without prior permission.
For one thing, that is trespassing and for another, being from the mountains, you do not go on someone's personal property without permission no matter how curious you are, much less land an airplane in their field and start exploring.
Flying over our area that is filled with farms of various sizes, how one could determine which one in fact is Coles Hill is beyond me.
Of course, I don't own my own private plane or have someone else flying me to a meeting in one, and I don't believe Mr. Coles has anything painted on his rooftops to point himself out.
"It's way out away from anything."
I wonder how Mr. Kilgore flew in without seeing any of the five public schools with enrollment of 2,153 that is within a few miles of Coles Hill, not to mention the elite private schools that we have, Chatham Hall and Hargave Military Academy.
There are a total of 20 public schools and five private schools in Pittsylvania County.
These children, who attend the public schools, mine included, live in the immediate area, they have families. They are not "way out away from anything."
Coles Hill is within six miles of our county seat of Chatham and the town of Gretna.
A quick search of Scott County resulted in a study done by the Southwest Virginia Graduate Medical Education Consortium showing death rates from several common causes are higher in Scott County than in Virginia.
Two that I found particularly interesting were unintentional injury (+44 percent) and suicide (+131 percent).
The study further stated: "The relative poverty and poor health status of the population indicates a need for increased and sustained access to primary care in Scott County."
Mr. Kilgore represents Scott County and other mining counties and oversees the Coal and Energy Commission.
Do we want to become a mining county if these are the facts?
U.S. Census shows that Scott County has 18.1 percent of its population living below the poverty level compared to 12.1 percent in Pittsylvania County.
The average income in Scott County is about $7,500 less per year than Pittsylvania County in 2007.
Sometimes we think we are in bad situations until we explore others.
Mr. Kilgore remembers that our Gretna Hawks defeated Gate City (Scott County) in the state championship football game two years ago.
Gate City had banners touting "Gretna Who?"
How do I know he remembers? He brought it up after the Coal and Energy meeting in Richmond. He remembered Gretna quite well!
It seems to me Mr. Kilgore wants to take the message back to others in Richmond and elsewhere that there is nothing here to worry about - nothing or no one here.
The 8,600-plus people in the Coles Hill area are something!
Those 2,153 children are our future!
I invite Mr. Kilgore back for the real tour of Coles Hill and the surrounding area to see there are important things and people near Coles Hill.
Deborah Lovelace
Gretna
Uranium mining will leave destruction in its wake
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Please no uranium mining in Virginia.
In the Washington Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted:
"Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams.
"On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodland survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra.
"King coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemispheres oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forest." (July 2009).
As quoted by email to me from Matt Wasson from ilovemountains.org.
Just recently this was stopped by Congress.
So, why do we give them a back door to have new areas to explore for minerals and have their destruction here in their wake for a way to benefit a few?
Where are the area educators' outcry?
Chemistry and biology teachers surely know that mass destruction must come from mining and milling of ore that is not in the metallic state when extracted from the soil.
It does not come in a sealed cylinder when taken from the ground.
Please read about mountain-top removal at ilovemountains.org.
John David Lewis,
1955 graduate
Spring Garden High School
'Unbiased' uranium study already tainted
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Today I read that, regarding uranium mining, "Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy, said Virginia Uranium Inc. will pay for the study by the National Academy of Sciences."
So, a man backed by a foreign interest with unlimited pockets deeper than even his own, and supported by family and friends in our government from Chatham to Richmond to Washington, can pay for an "unbiased" opinion on the financial lucrativeness of uranium mining in our community (reportedly worth billions of dollars), and expect that we will accept its validity?
However, "Kilgore said Virginia Uranium will fund the scientific study, but not an in-depth look at the socioeconomic impact of uranium mining."
Why not? Is it because that part of the equation is the least of VUI's concern?
Of course, that's why we, the rest of us, must make it ours.
Linda Worsley
Chatham
Study’s scope must be wide-ranging
By PUBLISHED BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: September 9, 2009
To the editor:
Most people are understandably confused about the uranium studies. Will the National Academy of Sciences undertake a uranium technical study funded solely by a mining company? Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission, doesn’t know. No one knows. We know even less about the uranium socioeconomic study.
A governing board will decide whether NAS will do the technical study. This board has not yet made a decision, or even discussed Del. Kilgore’s very recent request for a study. The board must also determine whether accepting 100 percent of the funding — however indirectly — from a uranium mining company is consistent with the board’s responsibility to safeguard the academy’s unique reputation for independent, unbiased scientific research.
Del. Kilgore has held open the possibility that other organizations (besides Virginia Uranium Inc.) will contribute money for the technical study, but so far no one has. It’s not clear whether any organization has been solicited to contribute. So far no legislator has offered to ask the legislature for funding to cover even a small portion of the cost. If it’s important to the state to do this study, why are our legislators unwilling to pay for even a token part of it?
Though second in the time sequence, the uranium socioeconomic study is arguably the more important of the two studies. The technical study will address the safety issue by providing legislators with evidence regarding whether uranium mining, milling and tailings storage are being done safely elsewhere under conditions comparable to those in Virginia. It should also identify knowledge gaps.
The socioeconomic study will address the issue of whether uranium mining is something we want in our state. It should provide evidence about how introducing the uranium industry affects the overall health, economic well-being and quality of life in communities. Perception, as well as science, plays a critical role in whether introducing this industry is a good idea. The state policy decision depends not only on the safety question, but also on the much larger and less tangible question of what life we want for our communities.
KATIE WHITEHEAD
Chairwoman
Dan River Basin Assoc. Mining Task Force
Chatham
http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/danville_letters/article/studys_scope_must_be_wide-ranging/13724/
http://www.wpcva.com/chatham/opinion/
A comment on outrageous doings
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
With the news that Virginia Uranium will pay for a study to determine the future of uranium mining in Virginia, this very major issue now moves into the realm of the absurd.
The acquiescence of the government of the commonwealth to this situation is stunning in its stupidity and bald-faced corruption.
Our elected officials have shown little judgment and even less common sense in this decision. The fate of their careers as elected officials must be in doubt.
Every state-wide representative who did not stand up to oppose this corrupt bargain has abrogated his responsibility as a guardian of the people's interest. They are unworthy of our votes and have earned our collective disdain.
I am sure the National Academy of Science is indeed a "neutral" organization through which to conduct this study, bought and paid (quiet literally) by our Canadian friends and their cadre of wealthy local and foreign investors.
The scientists at Virginia Tech would never think of the opportunity to use Pittsylvania County as a laboratory and its citizens as guinea pigs in their investigations of the affects of uranium mining on the environment east of the Mississippi.
They are responsible individuals first, and scientists second. In fact, this new relationship could be the beginning of several new National Academy/Virginia Tech studies.
Let's see what else they could do. Here's one: "The Feasibility of Bank Bailouts as a Means of Helping the Economy."
That one would be paid for by Wachovia and Bank of America. I wonder what the National Academy of Science would find?
Here's another: "The Positive or Negative Effects of Socialism in America."
That one would be funded by the American Communist Party. I am sure the folks at Virginia Tech will come up with a fair and balanced conclusion.
Finally, in the area of sports we have, "Steroids: Good or Bad for Baseball?" This one has the financial backing of Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.
I am on tenterhooks awaiting that conclusion.
Pardon my sarcasm, but I fear the deck is stacked against Pittsylvania County. Is this the sad fate that must play out over the next two decades?
The "study" will conclude that uranium mining is safe "under certain circumstances."
The fine print of the extreme conditional approval will be ignored by the uranium industry and they will embrace the study as definite "scientific" proof that all is well.
Mining regulations will move swiftly through the hapless House of Delegates; mining will begin with a flourish of heady pronouncements about employment and the economic prosperity that is headed our way.
Blasting activity will begin; tailing ponds will be dug; all will move quickly forward. Then, somewhere down the line, there will be an economic (price of uranium falls) or environmental (water ruined) catastrophe.
Government and uranium industry officials will throw up their hands and declare that no one could have foreseen this (remember Katrina?), and they are not to blame.
The mines will close; the investors will go silent and Virginia Uranium will creep back to its Canadian homeland.
By that time, the people of Virginia will be left to tend the mess that Virginia Uranium began: the two 800-foot holes in the ground; the ruined landscape, poisoned water and contaminated air.
Unemployment will rise, now that tobacco and non-mining businesses have long left the area. Taxes will rise; land values will fall.
The National Academy will assert the fine print of its study (i.e. that mining probably could not be done successfully) and the scientists at Virginia Tech will have their laboratory and guinea pigs just down the road from them in Pittsylvania County.
My father used to say that if you can't pay for something, you can't buy it. If the Commonwealth of Virginia cannot pay for a study, they should not have one.
Virginia Uranium is a biased funder; the conflict of interest is so apparent that it is embarrassing for a private citizen to have to point this out to officials who should know better.
If Virginia cannot pay now for a study of this sort, how are they going to pay for the regulation and upkeep of the area once mining begins? Where will that money come from?
Until these basic questions are answered completely, all citizens of good faith must remain opposed to any study of any kind paid for by the very people who profit from its slanted outcome.
We shall and must regard the findings of this tainted study, and the people who support it, with a cynical and suspicious eye.
Richard Dixon
Chatham
Kilgore missed much on recent 'tour' of Coles Hill
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Our local newspaper printed this:
"Kilgore, who is from Scott County in far southwest Virginia, recently flew over Coles Hill on the way to a Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission meeting.
"To satisfy his curiosity, the small plane landed in a field and Kilgore explored the site, one of the largest uranium deposit in the United States.
"'I just wanted to visualize what we've been talking about,'" he said. "It's way out away from anything.'"
I can imagine who gave Mr. Kilgore his personal tour of Coles Hill.
Mr. Kilgore, coming from the mountains of Virginia as I do, has probably been taught from childhood not to go on private property without prior permission.
For one thing, that is trespassing and for another, being from the mountains, you do not go on someone's personal property without permission no matter how curious you are, much less land an airplane in their field and start exploring.
Flying over our area that is filled with farms of various sizes, how one could determine which one in fact is Coles Hill is beyond me.
Of course, I don't own my own private plane or have someone else flying me to a meeting in one, and I don't believe Mr. Coles has anything painted on his rooftops to point himself out.
"It's way out away from anything."
I wonder how Mr. Kilgore flew in without seeing any of the five public schools with enrollment of 2,153 that is within a few miles of Coles Hill, not to mention the elite private schools that we have, Chatham Hall and Hargave Military Academy.
There are a total of 20 public schools and five private schools in Pittsylvania County.
These children, who attend the public schools, mine included, live in the immediate area, they have families. They are not "way out away from anything."
Coles Hill is within six miles of our county seat of Chatham and the town of Gretna.
A quick search of Scott County resulted in a study done by the Southwest Virginia Graduate Medical Education Consortium showing death rates from several common causes are higher in Scott County than in Virginia.
Two that I found particularly interesting were unintentional injury (+44 percent) and suicide (+131 percent).
The study further stated: "The relative poverty and poor health status of the population indicates a need for increased and sustained access to primary care in Scott County."
Mr. Kilgore represents Scott County and other mining counties and oversees the Coal and Energy Commission.
Do we want to become a mining county if these are the facts?
U.S. Census shows that Scott County has 18.1 percent of its population living below the poverty level compared to 12.1 percent in Pittsylvania County.
The average income in Scott County is about $7,500 less per year than Pittsylvania County in 2007.
Sometimes we think we are in bad situations until we explore others.
Mr. Kilgore remembers that our Gretna Hawks defeated Gate City (Scott County) in the state championship football game two years ago.
Gate City had banners touting "Gretna Who?"
How do I know he remembers? He brought it up after the Coal and Energy meeting in Richmond. He remembered Gretna quite well!
It seems to me Mr. Kilgore wants to take the message back to others in Richmond and elsewhere that there is nothing here to worry about - nothing or no one here.
The 8,600-plus people in the Coles Hill area are something!
Those 2,153 children are our future!
I invite Mr. Kilgore back for the real tour of Coles Hill and the surrounding area to see there are important things and people near Coles Hill.
Deborah Lovelace
Gretna
Uranium mining will leave destruction in its wake
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Please no uranium mining in Virginia.
In the Washington Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted:
"Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams.
"On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodland survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra.
"King coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemispheres oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forest." (July 2009).
As quoted by email to me from Matt Wasson from ilovemountains.org.
Just recently this was stopped by Congress.
So, why do we give them a back door to have new areas to explore for minerals and have their destruction here in their wake for a way to benefit a few?
Where are the area educators' outcry?
Chemistry and biology teachers surely know that mass destruction must come from mining and milling of ore that is not in the metallic state when extracted from the soil.
It does not come in a sealed cylinder when taken from the ground.
Please read about mountain-top removal at ilovemountains.org.
John David Lewis,
1955 graduate
Spring Garden High School
'Unbiased' uranium study already tainted
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:06 AM EDT
Today I read that, regarding uranium mining, "Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy, said Virginia Uranium Inc. will pay for the study by the National Academy of Sciences."
So, a man backed by a foreign interest with unlimited pockets deeper than even his own, and supported by family and friends in our government from Chatham to Richmond to Washington, can pay for an "unbiased" opinion on the financial lucrativeness of uranium mining in our community (reportedly worth billions of dollars), and expect that we will accept its validity?
However, "Kilgore said Virginia Uranium will fund the scientific study, but not an in-depth look at the socioeconomic impact of uranium mining."
Why not? Is it because that part of the equation is the least of VUI's concern?
Of course, that's why we, the rest of us, must make it ours.
Linda Worsley
Chatham
Study’s scope must be wide-ranging
By PUBLISHED BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: September 9, 2009
To the editor:
Most people are understandably confused about the uranium studies. Will the National Academy of Sciences undertake a uranium technical study funded solely by a mining company? Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission, doesn’t know. No one knows. We know even less about the uranium socioeconomic study.
A governing board will decide whether NAS will do the technical study. This board has not yet made a decision, or even discussed Del. Kilgore’s very recent request for a study. The board must also determine whether accepting 100 percent of the funding — however indirectly — from a uranium mining company is consistent with the board’s responsibility to safeguard the academy’s unique reputation for independent, unbiased scientific research.
Del. Kilgore has held open the possibility that other organizations (besides Virginia Uranium Inc.) will contribute money for the technical study, but so far no one has. It’s not clear whether any organization has been solicited to contribute. So far no legislator has offered to ask the legislature for funding to cover even a small portion of the cost. If it’s important to the state to do this study, why are our legislators unwilling to pay for even a token part of it?
Though second in the time sequence, the uranium socioeconomic study is arguably the more important of the two studies. The technical study will address the safety issue by providing legislators with evidence regarding whether uranium mining, milling and tailings storage are being done safely elsewhere under conditions comparable to those in Virginia. It should also identify knowledge gaps.
The socioeconomic study will address the issue of whether uranium mining is something we want in our state. It should provide evidence about how introducing the uranium industry affects the overall health, economic well-being and quality of life in communities. Perception, as well as science, plays a critical role in whether introducing this industry is a good idea. The state policy decision depends not only on the safety question, but also on the much larger and less tangible question of what life we want for our communities.
KATIE WHITEHEAD
Chairwoman
Dan River Basin Assoc. Mining Task Force
Chatham
http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/danville_letters/article/studys_scope_must_be_wide-ranging/13724/
http://www.wpcva.com/chatham/opinion/
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