Comment: Pretty, right but later will be in rumbles, with 2 big pits on each site!!!
Published: April 3, 2009
The historic home at Coles Hill, where Virginia Uranium Inc. seeks to mine and mill a uranium deposit, will be featured in the Garden Club of Virginia’s Historic Garden Week Tour this month.
The home made the cover of the Garden Club of Virginia’s tour guidebook this year, Staci Wall, co-chair of Chatham’s Historic Garden Week Tour, said.
VUI Chairman Walter Coles Sr. owns the Georgian-designed, three-story home that was built in 1817 and sits among more than 1,000 acres on Coles Road. His ancestors settled in Pittsylvania County in 1790 and several generations of the Coles family have lived in the house since it was constructed.(How can he mine uranium around such a lovely place, it will have uranium dust all over it and takes a risk of being hit with flying rocks from the blasts?)
The Chatham Garden Club, a chapter of the state’s club, decided to include the Coles Hill property before VUI proposed to mine and mill uranium there, Wall said.
“Their home was selected to be in this tour three to five years ago,” Wall said.
The Garden Club has no ties to uranium or to VUI.
At least one uranium mining opponent said the Coles Hill home tour is ironic. Gregg Vickrey, founder and chairman of the Alliance, praised the statewide tradition the garden club represents, but said Coles should consider having docents show visitors the uranium mining operation.
“They can tour the home and see the open pits,” view where uranium cores are held and where milling will take place, Vickrey said. They could also talk about what the property would look like after mining, Vickrey said.
Coles, who said he will continue to live in the house if mining and milling occur, said the lease agreement requires that the land be returned to its original contour after mining is complete and put into a conservation easement in perpetuity. (Open Pit Mining cannot be reclaimed, how do you fill two 800 feet deep hole?)
The home was featured in one of the first Chatham garden tours in the early 1930s, and Coles said he is pleased his home is on the guidebook’s cover.
“We were happy that it happened,” Coles said of making the highly coveted and competitive cover of this year’s guidebook.
He lives in the house with his wife, Alice Clement Coles.
Six hundred acres surrounding the home is a protected area, including the house, a family graveyard dating to the 1800s, an old, renovated schoolhouse and stables, Coles said. The Coles Hill property totals about 1,000 acres jointly owned by Coles and his sister Sarah Coles McBrayer.
Six hundred acres surrounding the home is a protected area, including the house, a family graveyard dating to the 1800s, an old, renovated schoolhouse and stables, Coles said. The Coles Hill property totals about 1,000 acres jointly owned by Coles and his sister Sarah Coles McBrayer.
No uranium-related activity will take place on the 600-acre portion.(Fly Rock can travel up to a mile from the blasts, ask our VA families in the Area of Mt. Top Removal, even kills people!)
1 comment:
We should all show up at the tour (with press coverage), wearing oxygen masks, carrying oxygen tanks, wearing dosimeters, and carrying geiger counters.
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