Comment: Please read all the great letters with the problem of uranium mining anywhere in the world! Nevertheless, we will focus on Virginia and demand Virginia to Ban Uranium mining and milling now!
What would uranium mining mean?
Aug 18, 2009 - 06:28:53 pm CDT
Uranium mining has never been done safely anywhere in the world. It cannot be done safely.
Logically, that should end this discussion, but it will not, because a few individuals, shielded from liability behind Virginia Uranium Inc. (VUI) - a US corporation, wholly owned by Canadian corporations - would reap huge profits from mining and milling uranium on 2,000+ acres in rural Pittsylvania County. And the Coles Hill mine would be merely the first mine in eastern Virginia, as our entire Piedmont is strewn with uranium deposits and VUI's corporate mandate is to explore and develop them. If, as it surely will, the legislature lifts the moratorium, Virginia's Piedmont would become a uranium mining corridor, just as Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are coal mining corridors.
As planned, the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an area equal to 55 square city blocks, and would be 800 feet deep. Through the blasting, extracting and crushing of uranium-bearing rock, open-pit mines and their huge, onsite tailings (waste) piles release into the environment heavy metals (including arsenic, lead and mercury) and radioactive materials (including thorium-230, radium-22, radon-222 and its progeny - various radioactive isotopes of bismuth, polonium and lead).
The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to four billion years. They are bioaccumulative - taken up and retained by plants and animals - and they become part of the food chain forever. In animals (including Homo sapiens), the radioactive toxins cause lung, kidney and liver damage, cancers, leukemias and genetic mutations. In mammals, these contaminants are passed on to future generations in utero and via breast milk - they're the gift that keeps on giving.
Once released into the environment, the heavy metals and radioactive contaminants travel great distances. Leached into ground and surface water in Pittsylvania County, they would contaminate the Roanoke River Watershed to Virginia Beach, and to North Carolina's Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The wind-borne particulates would travel thousands of miles - every way the wind blows - in a few days, being dispersed along the way.
VUI's public relations team tells us that - this time - uranium mining would be done safely, because the mining and milling of uranium in Virginia would be done in accordance with a regulatory program developed by the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy (DMME). What they don't tell us is that the purpose of our federal and state regulatory agencies is not to protect the environment and human health. Rather, their purpose is to permit corporations to destroy the landscape, contaminate the environment and degrade human health to whatever degree will ensure healthy corporate profit margins within a particular industry.
Monitoring and oversight by our regulatory agencies are inadequate to nonexistent. Since the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 and our state regulatory agencies emerged subsequently, all indications are that our water, soil and air are far more contaminated than before our federal and state regulatory systems existed. And human health continues to decline accordingly.
DMME presides over one of the most devastating mineral extraction processes in the world - mountaintop removal coal mining, which, in the Appalachian coal states, has razed hundreds of thousands of acres of once-forested mountains, buried thousands of miles of streams under the rubble and destroyed hundreds of coalfield communities. This is a legal activity permitted by the EPA and DMME. Can we rationally expect those agencies to protect us from the catastrophic effects of uranium mining in Virginia and beyond?
Those who would profit from uranium mining in Virginia say it would be an economic boon, with jobs and money pouring into the economically depressed Piedmont region. VUI says miners would receive $68,000 salaries - a princely sum in a county where the 2000 median household income was $35,000, the unemployment rate was 9.4% and 12% of the population lived below the poverty line.
What the corporate spin fails to mention, however, is that hard-rock mining requires skilled labor, and that experienced miners would be imported from other states to earn those $68,000 salaries and risk their health and lives. And that, wherever hard-rock mining occurs, surrounding communities become ghost towns and regional economies implode. The economic rewards are enjoyed only by the corporate owners and officers.
In Virginia's Piedmont, as in all regions cursed with hard-rock mining, the blasting, heavy truck traffic, environmental contamination and impacts to human health would cause real property values to evaporate. Local businesses would shut down, and the regional economy would collapse outward in every direction. The Bannister River - part of the Roanoke River Watershed - is less than a mile from the Coles Hill mine site, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Bannister and all waterways downstream would be contaminated.
The relevant question, then, is who decides what Virginia communities look like, how safe they are, what quality of life they enjoy? Who decides whether the Virginia Piedmont and beyond will be sacrificed for a uranium mining corporation's profits? Is it We, the People, or is it a handful of corporate executives, aided and abetted by the state legislature and regulatory agencies?
The Declaration of Independence states:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
An ever-increasing number of citizens in Pittsylvania County and beyond, understanding the catastrophic effects uranium mining would wreak upon their communities and future generations, declare that they will not consent to this corporate assault, and that they will exercise their inherent local governing authority to enact binding local laws that will protect and preserve the health, safety and wellbeing of their communities and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.
Like Eastern North Carolina, the Town of Halifax is downstream from the planned uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. On February 7, 2008, in response to the concerns and demands of their citizens, the Halifax Town Council voted unanimously to enact the Halifax Corporate Mining, Bodily Trespass and Community Self-Government Ordinance, which was drafted, at the council's request, by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit law firm. The ordinance asserts the town's inherent local governing authority, bans mining within the town, and criminalizes chemical and radioactive bodily trespass.
Halifax Town Council member Jack Dunavant said of the decision, "This is an historic vote. We, the people, intend to protect our health and environment from corporate assault. It's time to invoke the Constitution and acknowledge the power of the people to protect our own destiny and end this era of corporate greed and pollution."
Citizens and elected officials of every community downstream and/or downwind from the planned Pittsylvania County mine site would do well to follow Halifax's lead and exert their inherent governing authority to protect themselves.
Shireen Parsons
Virginia Community Organizer
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
http://www.celdf.org/
306 Miller Street
Christiansburg, Virginia 24073
540-381-3153 (home/office)
540-449-9144 (cell)
horizon66@verizon.net
http://www.caswellmessenger.com/articles/2009/08/18/opinion/opinion01.txt
Selling our souls - and the very planet itself
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
The Mayans, the Hopi and numerous other predictive sources believe that we are living at the end of the age.
They foresee a period of worldwide destruction with the earth broken and altered in many places.
The new world order then will arise, though with a much less populated planet.
Already we see famine, disease pandemics such as swine flu with thousands expected to die, and the failure of our government and financial institutions.
Is this a prelude?
Whether or not the ancient people had a lock on human extinction, there is no way to say.
Certainly, we have lost much of our oneness with the sea of living things of which we are a part.
We have literally sold our own souls in order to exploit our environment for money.
This must change and it will, with or without humankind.
We can do as the aboriginal peoples have always done: living as a part of the natural order sensitive to the power and mystery of life or we can concrete, asphalt and kill our way through the planet as we now do.
Either we clean up our act, or our species cannot long endure.
Emory Davis
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion06.txt
Uranium nuclear debate like comparing apples to tomatoes
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
I enjoyed reading "Nuclear Power key to the worlds future."
I thank Jim Ford for his efforts; however Mr. Ford has done the same thing so many other supporters of uranium mining have done. They compare apples to tomatoes.
He is talking about how safe processed uranium is, stuff you keep in a cylinder 6" in diameter.
We are talking about "tons and tons of rock and dust" containing low levels of radiation.
Another example of mixing fruits and vegetables is the "energy from coal on a one to one basis compared to nuclear kills many times more people on a yearly basis."
Here he is comparing a nuclear energy plant to the people killed in coal mining.
There is no correlation between these.
George Stanhope
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion02.txt
Don't take the government's word on uranium mining
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
I have been reading a lot on various websites about the pros and cons of uranium mining in Pittsylvania County. I find a lot of conflicting information and misinformation.
Based on digesting what I read, I think that most of the populace of the county either is not involved or is waiting to be relieved of the responsibility of being involved by the "yea or nay" of the much purported "study" of whether it will be safe.
From what I am reading, this study is not even under way because it is not funded.
Not funded, I should add, in these times of government cutbacks, by any entity other than Virginia Uranium Inc., which has offered a generous amount to get it started.
Conflict of interest? Maybe, to any reputable institute who might be approached.
Or could it be that no reputable academic entity would sign their name to a safety stamp for an enterprise that God (or nature, if you prefer) could overturn in a moment with a hurricane, a flood, or some guy who pushed the wrong button?
Nah. That's too optimistic.
But the fact remains: Where is this study? Who is doing it?
What are we, the people, waiting on? I guess we know what the politicians are waiting on - $$$.
In the meantime, take the opportunity before it's too late. Do your own study.
Look at this, folks, and don't take the government's word for it.
How's that worked for you lately?
Just Google "uranium mining" and see how good it makes you feel.
Linda Worsley
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion03.txt
What would uranium mining mean?
Aug 18, 2009 - 06:28:53 pm CDT
Uranium mining has never been done safely anywhere in the world. It cannot be done safely.
Logically, that should end this discussion, but it will not, because a few individuals, shielded from liability behind Virginia Uranium Inc. (VUI) - a US corporation, wholly owned by Canadian corporations - would reap huge profits from mining and milling uranium on 2,000+ acres in rural Pittsylvania County. And the Coles Hill mine would be merely the first mine in eastern Virginia, as our entire Piedmont is strewn with uranium deposits and VUI's corporate mandate is to explore and develop them. If, as it surely will, the legislature lifts the moratorium, Virginia's Piedmont would become a uranium mining corridor, just as Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are coal mining corridors.
As planned, the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an area equal to 55 square city blocks, and would be 800 feet deep. Through the blasting, extracting and crushing of uranium-bearing rock, open-pit mines and their huge, onsite tailings (waste) piles release into the environment heavy metals (including arsenic, lead and mercury) and radioactive materials (including thorium-230, radium-22, radon-222 and its progeny - various radioactive isotopes of bismuth, polonium and lead).
The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to four billion years. They are bioaccumulative - taken up and retained by plants and animals - and they become part of the food chain forever. In animals (including Homo sapiens), the radioactive toxins cause lung, kidney and liver damage, cancers, leukemias and genetic mutations. In mammals, these contaminants are passed on to future generations in utero and via breast milk - they're the gift that keeps on giving.
Once released into the environment, the heavy metals and radioactive contaminants travel great distances. Leached into ground and surface water in Pittsylvania County, they would contaminate the Roanoke River Watershed to Virginia Beach, and to North Carolina's Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The wind-borne particulates would travel thousands of miles - every way the wind blows - in a few days, being dispersed along the way.
VUI's public relations team tells us that - this time - uranium mining would be done safely, because the mining and milling of uranium in Virginia would be done in accordance with a regulatory program developed by the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy (DMME). What they don't tell us is that the purpose of our federal and state regulatory agencies is not to protect the environment and human health. Rather, their purpose is to permit corporations to destroy the landscape, contaminate the environment and degrade human health to whatever degree will ensure healthy corporate profit margins within a particular industry.
Monitoring and oversight by our regulatory agencies are inadequate to nonexistent. Since the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 and our state regulatory agencies emerged subsequently, all indications are that our water, soil and air are far more contaminated than before our federal and state regulatory systems existed. And human health continues to decline accordingly.
DMME presides over one of the most devastating mineral extraction processes in the world - mountaintop removal coal mining, which, in the Appalachian coal states, has razed hundreds of thousands of acres of once-forested mountains, buried thousands of miles of streams under the rubble and destroyed hundreds of coalfield communities. This is a legal activity permitted by the EPA and DMME. Can we rationally expect those agencies to protect us from the catastrophic effects of uranium mining in Virginia and beyond?
Those who would profit from uranium mining in Virginia say it would be an economic boon, with jobs and money pouring into the economically depressed Piedmont region. VUI says miners would receive $68,000 salaries - a princely sum in a county where the 2000 median household income was $35,000, the unemployment rate was 9.4% and 12% of the population lived below the poverty line.
What the corporate spin fails to mention, however, is that hard-rock mining requires skilled labor, and that experienced miners would be imported from other states to earn those $68,000 salaries and risk their health and lives. And that, wherever hard-rock mining occurs, surrounding communities become ghost towns and regional economies implode. The economic rewards are enjoyed only by the corporate owners and officers.
In Virginia's Piedmont, as in all regions cursed with hard-rock mining, the blasting, heavy truck traffic, environmental contamination and impacts to human health would cause real property values to evaporate. Local businesses would shut down, and the regional economy would collapse outward in every direction. The Bannister River - part of the Roanoke River Watershed - is less than a mile from the Coles Hill mine site, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Bannister and all waterways downstream would be contaminated.
The relevant question, then, is who decides what Virginia communities look like, how safe they are, what quality of life they enjoy? Who decides whether the Virginia Piedmont and beyond will be sacrificed for a uranium mining corporation's profits? Is it We, the People, or is it a handful of corporate executives, aided and abetted by the state legislature and regulatory agencies?
The Declaration of Independence states:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
An ever-increasing number of citizens in Pittsylvania County and beyond, understanding the catastrophic effects uranium mining would wreak upon their communities and future generations, declare that they will not consent to this corporate assault, and that they will exercise their inherent local governing authority to enact binding local laws that will protect and preserve the health, safety and wellbeing of their communities and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.
Like Eastern North Carolina, the Town of Halifax is downstream from the planned uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. On February 7, 2008, in response to the concerns and demands of their citizens, the Halifax Town Council voted unanimously to enact the Halifax Corporate Mining, Bodily Trespass and Community Self-Government Ordinance, which was drafted, at the council's request, by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit law firm. The ordinance asserts the town's inherent local governing authority, bans mining within the town, and criminalizes chemical and radioactive bodily trespass.
Halifax Town Council member Jack Dunavant said of the decision, "This is an historic vote. We, the people, intend to protect our health and environment from corporate assault. It's time to invoke the Constitution and acknowledge the power of the people to protect our own destiny and end this era of corporate greed and pollution."
Citizens and elected officials of every community downstream and/or downwind from the planned Pittsylvania County mine site would do well to follow Halifax's lead and exert their inherent governing authority to protect themselves.
Shireen Parsons
Virginia Community Organizer
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
http://www.celdf.org/
306 Miller Street
Christiansburg, Virginia 24073
540-381-3153 (home/office)
540-449-9144 (cell)
horizon66@verizon.net
http://www.caswellmessenger.com/articles/2009/08/18/opinion/opinion01.txt
Selling our souls - and the very planet itself
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
The Mayans, the Hopi and numerous other predictive sources believe that we are living at the end of the age.
They foresee a period of worldwide destruction with the earth broken and altered in many places.
The new world order then will arise, though with a much less populated planet.
Already we see famine, disease pandemics such as swine flu with thousands expected to die, and the failure of our government and financial institutions.
Is this a prelude?
Whether or not the ancient people had a lock on human extinction, there is no way to say.
Certainly, we have lost much of our oneness with the sea of living things of which we are a part.
We have literally sold our own souls in order to exploit our environment for money.
This must change and it will, with or without humankind.
We can do as the aboriginal peoples have always done: living as a part of the natural order sensitive to the power and mystery of life or we can concrete, asphalt and kill our way through the planet as we now do.
Either we clean up our act, or our species cannot long endure.
Emory Davis
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion06.txt
Uranium nuclear debate like comparing apples to tomatoes
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
I enjoyed reading "Nuclear Power key to the worlds future."
I thank Jim Ford for his efforts; however Mr. Ford has done the same thing so many other supporters of uranium mining have done. They compare apples to tomatoes.
He is talking about how safe processed uranium is, stuff you keep in a cylinder 6" in diameter.
We are talking about "tons and tons of rock and dust" containing low levels of radiation.
Another example of mixing fruits and vegetables is the "energy from coal on a one to one basis compared to nuclear kills many times more people on a yearly basis."
Here he is comparing a nuclear energy plant to the people killed in coal mining.
There is no correlation between these.
George Stanhope
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion02.txt
Don't take the government's word on uranium mining
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:06 AM EDT
I have been reading a lot on various websites about the pros and cons of uranium mining in Pittsylvania County. I find a lot of conflicting information and misinformation.
Based on digesting what I read, I think that most of the populace of the county either is not involved or is waiting to be relieved of the responsibility of being involved by the "yea or nay" of the much purported "study" of whether it will be safe.
From what I am reading, this study is not even under way because it is not funded.
Not funded, I should add, in these times of government cutbacks, by any entity other than Virginia Uranium Inc., which has offered a generous amount to get it started.
Conflict of interest? Maybe, to any reputable institute who might be approached.
Or could it be that no reputable academic entity would sign their name to a safety stamp for an enterprise that God (or nature, if you prefer) could overturn in a moment with a hurricane, a flood, or some guy who pushed the wrong button?
Nah. That's too optimistic.
But the fact remains: Where is this study? Who is doing it?
What are we, the people, waiting on? I guess we know what the politicians are waiting on - $$$.
In the meantime, take the opportunity before it's too late. Do your own study.
Look at this, folks, and don't take the government's word for it.
How's that worked for you lately?
Just Google "uranium mining" and see how good it makes you feel.
Linda Worsley
Chatham
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/19/chatham/opinion/opinion03.txt
No comments:
Post a Comment