Response to Parsons' letter (Uranium Mining in Virginia)

Comment: The back and forth of a letter by Shireen and nuke dude. Please review the comments after the letter!

Response to Parsons' letter

Sep 22, 2009 - 05:22:32 pm CDT As you all may have seen by now, Shireen Parsons, Virginia community organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund responded to my recent letter in the Caswell Messenger that fact-checked her previous mid-August letter "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?"

Unfortunately, Ms. Parsons managed to completely ignore the fact that I thoroughly fact-checked and debunked her previous article. Instead of responding to any of the issues, she diverted attention to my personal life, which includes a career as a structural engineer and hobby as a blogger on clean energy. Would you rather get technical information on such issues from an engineer with technical experience or a community organizer?

The reason Ms. Parsons ignored the facts was because she apparently doesn't care about the facts when it comes to uranium mining in the Piedmont. Ms. Parsons and other community organizers with the CELDF are taking away from honest debate of concerned citizens who want to hear the facts about uranium mining in their backyard. The truth is that Ms. Parsons' radical views pit her against job creation and energy independence for the Piedmont and the United States.

Which makes you wonder...'What are Ms. Parsons' intentions?' After all, in April, Ms. Parsons was quoted in the Danville Register & Bee as saying that the goal of the CELDF "is not to stop uranium mining. Our goal is to seize local governing authority."

We should all be eagerly awaiting the results of the National Academy of Sciences study on the potential effects of uranium mining in the Piedmont, regardless of your stance on the issue.

J Carrington Dillon
Charlotte, NC

Let us know what you think about this story or topic.

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dee8tee wrote on Sep 24, 2009 2:54 PM:

" Personally, I am less likely to be concerned with what Dillon has to say. He has no real stake in the health and well-being of the local community as it appears that he lives in Charlotte. I am afraid I am a bit suspect of Mr. Dillon and his motives and I sincerely hope that proponents of mining fail at their mission here. He is a very calloused human being. "


Shireen wrote on Sep 24, 2009 11:37 AM:

" Thank you, Mr. Dillon for showing us what you really are: a tool of nuclear industry corporations -- those legal fictions that shelter their owners from responsibility while they profit from destroying the landscape and poisoning ecosystems and human communities.

Again, you present no facts, nor challenges to the facts I provided in my commentaries. You simply launch into another ad hominem diatribe.

What are my intentions? To empower community residents to wield their inherent governing authority to prevent corporate assaults on their communities.

The heart of this issue is not uranium mining. It's who decides what a community looks like, feels like, how safe it is and how best to develop the local economy. Who decides -- a handful of corporate officers, aided and abetted by the state, or the people who live there?

The Legal Defense Fund's partner communities are assuming the responsibility of local decision-making and self-governance. They're building democracy from the ground up.

I asked you to provide us with one example of a uranium mine, anywhere in the world, that hasn't contaminated the water, soil and air and harmed human health. You haven't responded because you can't -- there isn't one.

Seems like this discussion is over. "

Lets Be Real wrote on Sep 23, 2009 8:27 PM:

" J. Carrington Dillon, what a ruthless slant you put on the phrase, "Our goal is to seize local governing authority"...As if peasants with pitchforks will march to oust the powers that be. Ms. Parsons knows from experience that local governments are the only entities that can attempt to prohibit self-serving corporations from polluting the land, water and air of their constituents by the passage of local laws. The state of VA is prepared to hand over the sacrifice zone of Southside to VUI. North Carolina will be vastly affected also. Furthermore, the much touted NAS study is just window dressing. Who knows what will be their finding? How can that study be disproved or debated? Will VUI pay for that side of the story? I doubt it..Do you really think that people are naive enough to swallow your very well-worn phrases "energy independence" and "job creation" as justification for jeopardizing the whole area in question? Well, some might. And that is what the uranium industry is banking on. If VUI can just get their foot in the door, via the NAS study, (so prestigious! who could doubt the veracity of such a study?) they will then be able to interpret, extrapolate and propagandize as they wish. As you wrote, "the potential affects of uranium mining in the Piedmont" - it's that little word 'potential' that leaves the wiggle room. The risk is not worth any economic benefit to this region. You should examine your motives. "

Concerned Parent wrote on Sep 23, 2009 7:50 AM:

" I think it absolutely is imperative to convey the facts about uranium mining and milling, though it arguably is a very emotional issue. One tends to forget that VUI would be conducting open pit mining, which currently is not being done anywhere in the United States. The more "benign" method of ISL apparently would not work with the geography of this region. Also, the NRC would not regulate open pit mining as they do ISL - It would be in the hands of the state's mining department. And indeed, there are factual, peer-reviewed scientific studies done in the US within this decade that are revealing more concerns about uranium than ever before -- including that uranium can damage DNA as a heavy metal, it has estrogenic properties, and it may cause higher incidences of kidney disease in residents who live in communities close to former mining features (that particular study is in the review stage). And another non-myth is that someone - somehow - will have to monitor the enormous amount of mine waste rock and mill tailings that will be buried in liners underneath these communities for any breaches. And that task will have to be ongoing, forever. Will that fall upon the local or state taxpayers to fund? And when that very expansive open pit mine ceases operating, and the mill ultimately needs to be decommissioned, who will fund the millions and millions of dollars it will require for reclamation? Mining proponents who want to compare Pittsylvania County's weather and climate to France or Canada for that matter are completely ignoring the trend of tropical storm systems that have moved up from the Gulf and in from the Atlantic - slowing, stalling and dumping inches of rain that have prompted flash flooding in past years. Are you aware of any "storm water runoff" plans that have miraculously stopped major flooding? Geez - Just look at Georgia right now, and imagine those waters flowing through a carved-out open pit uranium mine located near key tributaries and rivers of this region. I think the people of Virginia will stand up and protect their land and their water, which means more to them than any promise of economic salvation for a small group. "

http://www.caswellmessenger.com/articles/2009/09/22/opinion/opin01.txt