Gail Richards says NRC trying to intimidate her for reporting lax security
By Anne Paine
THE TENNESSEAN
Gail Richards thought her nightmare was over.
In April, the http://www.tva.gov/">Tennessee Valley Authority whistle-blower reached a settlement over her firing, which came after she reported security lapses in the power producer's http://www.tva.gov/power/nuclear/index.htm"> nuclear energy program.
But now the http://www.nrc.gov/">U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission — the group that oversees TVA's nuclear facilities — has started its own investigation of Richards for potential infractions, including whether she improperly took private documents that she used to defend herself in a series of workplace allegations.
Richards said NRC investigators grilled her for several hours this month in a Washington, D.C., hotel, threatening to get the Department of Justice involved in her case — a prospect that the wife and grandmother worries could lead to prison. She and her lawyer say the NRC is guilty of the same intimidating retaliation tactics that it's supposed to protect whistle-blowers from.
"It was like I was on trial," said Richards, 62, who talked to NRC investigators on Sept. 10 after being subpoenaed."The NRC was picking up where TVA left off. I felt really intimidated. And then to have them throw the Department of Justice in my face, I just kind of lost it."
Joey Ledford, a spokesman in the NRC's Atlanta office, said he could say little about the case.
"I can confirm there's an ongoing civil matter involving Ms. Richards," Ledford said. "I can't elaborate any further.
"We thoroughly look at all allegations that come our way. We do it in a fair and evenhanded way."
Richards' attorney, Lynne Bernabei, wrote in a http://www.tennessean.com/assets/pdf/DN143270925.PDF">letter to NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko earlier this week that the commission's actions are indicative of a 25-year "close relationship that is not proper between a regulator and a nuclear licensee."
Access was an issue
Richards, who worked for 18 years in TVA's human resources department, had transferred to its Nuclear Access Services in 2005, where all went smoothly at first.
There her responsibilities in TVA's Chattanooga offices included background checks and determining who would have access without an escort into secure areas of nuclear plants.
She received good reviews for her work, including a job evaluation in 2006 that included praise for her accuracy.
Things began to change, Richards said, after she reported her supervisor for allowing unauthorized people, including a cleaning crew, into secure areas.
Harassment began with false accusations that her work was riddled with errors, she said. An audit conducted by TVA in 2007 found no major errors in her work but turned up significant deficiencies in the work of others, according to her attorney's findings.
She had continued to report on her supervisor's alleged laxity and a lack of training provided to the staff who did background checks, including herself.
After being put on two performance improvement plans, Richards was fired in September 2007, though she was asked to stay on for 90 days to finish her work on a project. During a grievance hearing in the building where she worked, Richards said, she was escorted off the grounds when she provided internal documents to counter charges about her performance.
Richards reached a settlement agreement with TVA in April for an undisclosed amount of money. TVA spokesman David Mould confirmed the settlement but said he could not give details.
During the grievance hearing that was cut short, Richards said, TVA official Patrick Asendorf told her that the private documents would prompt an NRC investigation.
That investigation has come true, and another former whistle-blower said it's appalling.
"If the NRC is going to go after the same people TVA is wrongly going after, who is worrying about the safety of the plants?" said Ann Harris, who reported safety concerns in the 1980s and 1990s at TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.
Harris settled several harassment cases with TVA and now heads a group calledhttp://www.citizen.org/congress/govtaccount/articles.cfm?ID=18349"> We the People, a nuclear workers support group.
"The NRC is complicit with TVA in abusing employees," she said. "They're trying to cover their own tracks. They're trying to make Gail back down."
Bernabei said that the only effort the NRC made to look into Richards' initial charges against TVA came six months after she reported them, and only after a story about her situation was published in The Tennessean.
The NRC effort mainly amounted to a series of questions in a phone interview and attempts by NRC attorney Carolyn Evans to skew Richards' answers in a way that would cover up TVA's problems, Bernabei said.
"It is clear that this entire investigation is a vendetta by the NRC against Ms. Richards, because she had disclosed both TVA's and the NRC's cavalier attitude toward security," Bernabei wrote in her letter to the NRC.
In January of this year, an NRC letter to Richards, which referred to her comments in The Tennessean, said the agency had corroborated Richards' concern about authorized access to secure areas. She was thanked for speaking up.
NRC calls process fair
Attorney Bernabei said TVA accusations that her client had violated rules by taking private documents to a grievance hearing were among the issues that were resolved.
Richards said she thought the settlement with TVA had put her situation to rest, but then learned of the NRC's pursuit of her in July as she and her husband were mending fences on their farm in Marion County.
She received a phone call from her son saying two NRC investigators were at her home. She thought he was joking and hung up. Soon after, they came out in the field to serve her with a subpoena.
It said she would be questioned about "potential violations of NRC regulations," protected documents and other matters.
Bernabei, who has represented many TVA whistle-blowers, said that NRC seems bent on stirring up a criminal case and that the agency has been far from evenhanded.
"The NRC is essentially by its action telling all employees that they can't invoke a grievance because they could be prosecuted," Bernabei said.
The NRC and TVA say multiple procedures are in place for employees to report problems without fear of reprisal, anonymously or not.
"Our process is very fair to confidential informants," the NRC's Ledford said. "It's also very fair when it comes to people accused of wrongdoing. Things are thoroughly researched."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090926/NEWS02/909260333/Fired+TVA+whistle-blower+faces+investigation
Showing posts with label peoples rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peoples rights. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Cheltenham Township Home Rule Charter giving US, the people of Cheltenham, the Right to decide our Quality Of Life.
Residents of another Pennsylvania county declare "We the people decide!" Check out the timeline below:
Shireen Parsons
Cheltenham Township Home Rule Charter giving US, the people of Cheltenham, the Right to decide our Quality Of Life.
WHO DECIDES?
We The People
Of Cheltenham
~ Be Informed ~ Be Heard ~ Participate ~
How Will Amending the Home Rule Charter Benefit the Citizens of Cheltenham?
Dear Neighbors & Friends
Since we began this process back in July, and especially now with a ballot question looming, there is a lot of misinformation swirling about regarding the contents of the amendment. Misinformation which strays so far from point it becomes convoluted and fear mongering.
To understand more fully about what we are undertaking through this charter amendment and why, we invite you to our first ~
Community Meeting
Thursday, October 1, 7:30pm
"An Evening of Questions and Answers"
with Ben Price
from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
plus update on SEPTA mega-garage
All Hallows Church
Greenwood Ave. & Bent Rd., Wyncote
We will be discussing issues around the Bill of Rights and the proposed amendment. Ben Price from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund will be on hand to answer all of your questions.
Come hear real information, bring your questions and concerns, and get clear on the issues so you can share them with your neighbors and confidently support the charter amendment.
Please share this email with others in the community who are not on our mailing list - follow the link at the bottom of the page
Thank you for your continued support.
We The People Of Cheltenham< /td>
Join in the fun! Volunteer with Us ~ Be a Part of History
Next Organizing
Meeting
Tuesday, September 29, 7:30p
Calvary Presbyterian Church
217 Fernbrook Ave, Wyncote
=2 0
Timeline:
7/4
Petition Campaign kicks off to collect at least 2613
signatures to meet filing requirements.
8/4
All petitions, containing a total of 3023 signatures, are filed with the Montgomery County Board of Elections. Everything is filed correctly and
according to the law and without challenge.
8/20
Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, acting as Board of Elections, decides to block the question from being placed on the November ballot.
8/25
We The People Of Cheltenham file for a declaritory judgment and Mandamus relief with the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.
9/2
WTPOC receives notice of hearing date - two and a half days before the holiday weekend.
9/9
Scheduled hearing date for WTPOC to have a county judge decide if the decision made by MCBOC to block question from being placed on the ballot.
9/17
Received a favorable ruling from the county court.
http://www.wethepeopleofcheltenham.com/
Shireen Parsons
Cheltenham Township Home Rule Charter giving US, the people of Cheltenham, the Right to decide our Quality Of Life.
WHO DECIDES?
We The People
Of Cheltenham
~ Be Informed ~ Be Heard ~ Participate ~
How Will Amending the Home Rule Charter Benefit the Citizens of Cheltenham?
Dear Neighbors & Friends
Since we began this process back in July, and especially now with a ballot question looming, there is a lot of misinformation swirling about regarding the contents of the amendment. Misinformation which strays so far from point it becomes convoluted and fear mongering.
To understand more fully about what we are undertaking through this charter amendment and why, we invite you to our first ~
Community Meeting
Thursday, October 1, 7:30pm
"An Evening of Questions and Answers"
with Ben Price
from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
plus update on SEPTA mega-garage
All Hallows Church
Greenwood Ave. & Bent Rd., Wyncote
We will be discussing issues around the Bill of Rights and the proposed amendment. Ben Price from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund will be on hand to answer all of your questions.
Come hear real information, bring your questions and concerns, and get clear on the issues so you can share them with your neighbors and confidently support the charter amendment.
Please share this email with others in the community who are not on our mailing list - follow the link at the bottom of the page
Thank you for your continued support.
We The People Of Cheltenham< /td>
Join in the fun! Volunteer with Us ~ Be a Part of History
Next Organizing
Meeting
Tuesday, September 29, 7:30p
Calvary Presbyterian Church
217 Fernbrook Ave, Wyncote
=2 0
Timeline:
7/4
Petition Campaign kicks off to collect at least 2613
signatures to meet filing requirements.
8/4
All petitions, containing a total of 3023 signatures, are filed with the Montgomery County Board of Elections. Everything is filed correctly and
according to the law and without challenge.
8/20
Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, acting as Board of Elections, decides to block the question from being placed on the November ballot.
8/25
We The People Of Cheltenham file for a declaritory judgment and Mandamus relief with the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.
9/2
WTPOC receives notice of hearing date - two and a half days before the holiday weekend.
9/9
Scheduled hearing date for WTPOC to have a county judge decide if the decision made by MCBOC to block question from being placed on the ballot.
9/17
Received a favorable ruling from the county court.
http://www.wethepeopleofcheltenham.com/
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Rights of Corporations
September 22, 2009
Editorial
The question at the heart of one of the biggest Supreme Court cases this year is simple: What constitutional rights should corporations have? To us, as well as many legal scholars, former justices and, indeed, drafters of the Constitution, the answer is that their rights should be quite limited — far less than those of people.
This Supreme Court, the John Roberts court, seems to be having trouble with that. It has been on a campaign to increase corporations’ legal rights — based on the conviction of some conservative justices that businesses are, at least legally, not much different than people.
Now the court is considering what should be a fairly narrow campaign finance case, involving whether Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, had the right to air a slashing movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary season. There is a real danger that the case will expand corporations’ rights in ways that would undermine the election system.
The legal doctrine underlying this debate is known as “corporate personhood.”
The courts have long treated corporations as persons in limited ways for some legal purposes. They may own property and have limited rights to free speech. They can sue and be sued. They have the right to enter into contracts and advertise their products. But corporations cannot and should not be allowed to vote, run for office or bear arms. Since 1907, Congress has banned them from contributing to federal political campaigns — a ban the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.
In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. “Few of us are only our economic interests,” she said. “We have beliefs. We have convictions.” Corporations, “engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging,” she said.
Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: “A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests.” Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are “indistinguishable from the individual who owns them.”
The Constitution mentions the rights of the people frequently but does not cite corporations. Indeed, many of the founders were skeptical of corporate influence.
John Marshall, the nation’s greatest chief justice, saw a corporation as “an artificial being, invisible, intangible,” he wrote in 1819. “Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.”
That does not mean that corporations should have no rights. It is in society’s interest that they are allowed to speak about their products and policies and that they are able to go to court when another company steals their patents. It makes sense that they can be sued, as a person would be, when they pollute or violate labor laws.
The law also gives corporations special legal status: limited liability, special rules for the accumulation of assets and the ability to live forever. These rules put corporations in a privileged position in producing profits and aggregating wealth. Their influence would be overwhelming with the full array of rights that people have.
One of the main areas where corporations’ rights have long been limited is politics. Polls suggest that Americans are worried about the influence that corporations already have with elected officials. The drive to give corporations more rights is coming from the court’s conservative bloc — a curious position given their often-proclaimed devotion to the text of the Constitution.
The founders of this nation knew just what they were doing when they drew a line between legally created economic entities and living, breathing human beings. The court should stick to that line.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/22tue1.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
Editorial
The question at the heart of one of the biggest Supreme Court cases this year is simple: What constitutional rights should corporations have? To us, as well as many legal scholars, former justices and, indeed, drafters of the Constitution, the answer is that their rights should be quite limited — far less than those of people.
This Supreme Court, the John Roberts court, seems to be having trouble with that. It has been on a campaign to increase corporations’ legal rights — based on the conviction of some conservative justices that businesses are, at least legally, not much different than people.
Now the court is considering what should be a fairly narrow campaign finance case, involving whether Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, had the right to air a slashing movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary season. There is a real danger that the case will expand corporations’ rights in ways that would undermine the election system.
The legal doctrine underlying this debate is known as “corporate personhood.”
The courts have long treated corporations as persons in limited ways for some legal purposes. They may own property and have limited rights to free speech. They can sue and be sued. They have the right to enter into contracts and advertise their products. But corporations cannot and should not be allowed to vote, run for office or bear arms. Since 1907, Congress has banned them from contributing to federal political campaigns — a ban the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.
In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. “Few of us are only our economic interests,” she said. “We have beliefs. We have convictions.” Corporations, “engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging,” she said.
Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: “A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests.” Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are “indistinguishable from the individual who owns them.”
The Constitution mentions the rights of the people frequently but does not cite corporations. Indeed, many of the founders were skeptical of corporate influence.
John Marshall, the nation’s greatest chief justice, saw a corporation as “an artificial being, invisible, intangible,” he wrote in 1819. “Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.”
That does not mean that corporations should have no rights. It is in society’s interest that they are allowed to speak about their products and policies and that they are able to go to court when another company steals their patents. It makes sense that they can be sued, as a person would be, when they pollute or violate labor laws.
The law also gives corporations special legal status: limited liability, special rules for the accumulation of assets and the ability to live forever. These rules put corporations in a privileged position in producing profits and aggregating wealth. Their influence would be overwhelming with the full array of rights that people have.
One of the main areas where corporations’ rights have long been limited is politics. Polls suggest that Americans are worried about the influence that corporations already have with elected officials. The drive to give corporations more rights is coming from the court’s conservative bloc — a curious position given their often-proclaimed devotion to the text of the Constitution.
The founders of this nation knew just what they were doing when they drew a line between legally created economic entities and living, breathing human beings. The court should stick to that line.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/22tue1.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Sometimes, the little guy wins against the big company
And it happened tonight down in South Boston!
Barry Tuck had been fighting Verizon Wireless for four months over his bill. With the changeover from Alltel to Verizon, his bill had climbed to over $800. Every time he called them, he’d get no answer to his problem. Verizon had no sympathy for him and disconnected his service. So, what’s one person going to do against a big company?
Barry had an idea. He headed out on a mission, armed with a piece of plywood and can of spray paint. What did he do?
When he told me of his plan, I thought he was nuts. I thought I was going to get a story of either a guy arrested for civil disobedience or a story about a guy getting ran over on Halifax Rd. Turns out I’m writing a story about a guy who get exactly what he wanted.
After being confronted by Verizon store management, Barry stood his ground and said he was doing nothing illegal by standing on the public right-of-way and holding a sign. Store management even tried to take the sign and threatened to call the police. Barry didn’t back down. On the next visit out to him, the manager asked “What’s the problem?”. They talked and the manager went back inside. Barry did the right thing and took his sign down while Verizon worked on his bill. On the next visit out, Barry’s bill was taken care of and his phone was reconnected.
Well done, Barry Tuck. Congratulations on taking a stand and getting what you wanted.
http://www.southsidecentral.com/wordpress/2009/09/21/sometimes-the-little-guy-wins-against-the-big-company/
Barry Tuck had been fighting Verizon Wireless for four months over his bill. With the changeover from Alltel to Verizon, his bill had climbed to over $800. Every time he called them, he’d get no answer to his problem. Verizon had no sympathy for him and disconnected his service. So, what’s one person going to do against a big company?
Barry had an idea. He headed out on a mission, armed with a piece of plywood and can of spray paint. What did he do?
When he told me of his plan, I thought he was nuts. I thought I was going to get a story of either a guy arrested for civil disobedience or a story about a guy getting ran over on Halifax Rd. Turns out I’m writing a story about a guy who get exactly what he wanted.
After being confronted by Verizon store management, Barry stood his ground and said he was doing nothing illegal by standing on the public right-of-way and holding a sign. Store management even tried to take the sign and threatened to call the police. Barry didn’t back down. On the next visit out to him, the manager asked “What’s the problem?”. They talked and the manager went back inside. Barry did the right thing and took his sign down while Verizon worked on his bill. On the next visit out, Barry’s bill was taken care of and his phone was reconnected.
Well done, Barry Tuck. Congratulations on taking a stand and getting what you wanted.
http://www.southsidecentral.com/wordpress/2009/09/21/sometimes-the-little-guy-wins-against-the-big-company/
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
What Would Uranium Mining Mean? written by Shireen Parsons - Response to Parsons' letter/Response to Dillon's letter
Comment: Please review three letters listed below, the first letter is called: "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?" by Shireen, the second letter Nuke Dude title: " Response to Parsons' (letter 2) and finally Shireen's letter :Response to Dillon's letter (Letter No. 3) .
Thanks Shireen for all the letters!
Response to Dillon's letter (letter 3)
Sep 15, 2009 - 05:17:43 pm CDT
In his September 8 "Response to Parsons' letter," J. Carrington Dillon launched a laughable ad hominem attack on me and on the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, for which I am the Virginia community organizer. It seems that my own commentary about how uranium mining in Virginia would impact communities and the environment downstream in North Carolina has him hopping mad.
According to Dillon, I have a "total disregard for factual information, my "claims" are "ridiculous," I employ "unjustifiable fear tactics" and "completely made-up and baseless facts" (how can a fact be made-up and/or baseless?), and that I'm "grossly unqualified to even participate in this dialog." My goodness! And he describes the Legal Defense Fund as "a group of radical environmental class-action lawyers" and says that I said our goal is to "seize local governing authority."
Whew! Where to start? First, to set the record straight, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit, community interest law firm that provides free and low-cost legal services to communities threatened by corporate assaults, such as mining, land-application of sewage sludge, toxic waste dumps, factory farming.... We assist our partner communities to prevent such corporate assaults by asserting their inherent local governing authority and enacting binding local laws banning specific corporate activities. More than 120 communities in a growing number of states - including Virginia - have enacted such local laws, and have prevented the corporate assaults that threatened them. We don't have to "seize" local governing authority - our federal and state constitutions affirm it. We simply have to wield it. If we don't have democracy in the communities where we live, where on Earth do we have it?
With regard to my statements about the catastrophic impacts of uranium mining on environmental and human health, I and a growing number of Virginia residents have researched those impacts on communities and the environment around the world thoroughly enough to debate anyone on this subject - anyone who has access to the internet can do this. And we all know for a fact that, everywhere in the world where they've operated, uranium mining corporations have contaminated the air, water and soil with heavy metals and radioactive materials, some of which persist in the environment for 4.5 billion years, and that, here in the US, it's been done with the blessing of our federal and state regulatory agencies. If Dillon has evidence of one exception to that statement, I invite him to provide it.
And, yes, Virginia Uranium Inc. is, indeed, wholly owned by Canadian corporations.
Now, whenever I'm subjected to an ad hominem attack, I consider the source. Who is J. Carrington Dillon, and what motivated his angry response to my commentary?
J. Carrington Dillon is a structural engineer for AREVA, a multi-billion-dollar, multinational mega-corporation primarily owned by the French government. According to its corporate website, AREVA is "ranked first in the global nuclear power industry." Dillon's AREVA job description also includes creating and managing Clean Energy Insight (www.cleanenergyinsight.org), a propaganda tool for the nuclear industry.
And what kind of corporate footprint does AREVA have on the environment and human communities where it operates? According to Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), the humanitarian news and analysis service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in Niger, for example, mining operations, owned and operated by AREVA in partnership with the Nigerian government, have contaminated the air, soil and water, resulting in sickness and death for local residents, and have depleted regional groundwater supplies.
And the Paris-based Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD), which specializes in the analysis of radioactivity in the environment, found "serious lapses" in and near AREVA mining sites in Niger. In 2005, CRIIRAD environmental studies found water radiation levels in mining communities up to 110 times higher than the World Health Organization safe drinking water standards for industrial areas. You can read about AREVA's mining impacts in Niger at www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=83706.
Uranium mining corporations profit from environmental devastation and human suffering wherever they operate. J. Carrington Dillon is one of their minions. Consider the source.
Shireen Parsons
Virginia Community Organizer
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
(Nuke response to Shireen's first letter, listed below: "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?"
Response to Parsons' letter (Letter No. 2)
Sep 08, 2009 - 06:47:26 pm CDT I recently read an opinion piece published in the Caswell Messenger titled "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?" written by Shireen Parsons (8/18/09). From the first sentence, I was insulted by Ms. Parsons' total disregard for factual information. Considering my personal and professional background, I felt obligated to provide the readers of the Caswell Messenger a response to Ms. Parsons' ridiculous claims.
I was raised in Ridgeway, Va., and actually spent a couple of my summers playing Dixie Youth baseball in Yanceyville. I grew up witnessing the economic struggles of the Piedmont. I've had family and friends lose their jobs as local textile and furniture mills packed up shop in the past decade or so, and I see possible uranium mining activities as an opportunity for the Piedmont to regain an economic foothold.
I now reside in Charlotte and work in the nuclear engineering field. The people of the Piedmont are important to me, to who I am as an individual and a professional. I feel that they are entitled to the truth from a person who is at least qualified to provide it.
Ms. Parsons is an organizer for the Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund a group of radical environmental class-action lawyers whose goal, according to Ms. Parsons "is to seize local governing authority." (Danville Register & Bee, April 2009) With dishonest statements like these, Ms. Parsons has lost all credibility and respect from even local opponents of Virginia Uranium Inc.
It is important to address local concerns when it comes to uranium mining. But it is also important to address these concerns with facts and not unjustifiable fear tactics. The truth is that facts are stubborn things. By providing nothing but completely made-up and baseless facts in her letter, Ms. Parson proved herself to be grossly unqualified to even participate in this dialogue. What I can offer is a personal concern for the safety and economic prosperity of the local communities and the credibility to do so with facts.
Currently, the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent 18-month study to address concerns of Virginians about safety and economic impacts. This study is being paid for by Virginia Uranium Inc., as opposed to taxpayers and was endorsed recently by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu during a trip to Virginia in which he addressed concerns that have been raised about uranium mining in the area. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated that in "any kind of mining, whether it's uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people. There's a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that we will wait for the results of that study."
In order to provide fact-based information, I would like to shortly address some of Ms. Parson's statements from her letter:
1. "Uranium mining has never been done safely anywhere in the world. It cannot be done safely."
This couldn't be any further from the truth. Uranium mining is closely regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in addition to state-level regulation authorities like the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy.
There are many federal laws and regulations that provide these government agencies with the ability to ensure safe operations. In fact, since these federal regulations came into effect in 1980, there have been zero uranium mining incidents in the U.S.
2. "(Virginia Uranium Inc.) a US corporation, wholly owned by Canadian Corporations."
Actually, 75% of VUI is owned by the Coles and Bowen families (landowners) from Pittsylvania County. 25% is owned by a Canadian company. Furthermore, the Coles and Bowen families have made it clear that they will not proceed with operations in their backyards until it is ensured that local communities will benefit from uranium mining operations.
3. Ms. Parsons has stated that the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an absolutely "huge" amount of land. In her article, Ms. Parsons states that "the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an area equal to 55 city blocks."
The Coles and Bowen property is approximately 3,000 acres. Ms. Parsons says that 55 city blocks, or about 220 acres will be mined (about the same size of the Danville Piedmont Mall). This means that only 7 percent of the property will be mined. "Huge" is a subjective term, but law states that the mine must be restored after mining has ended, so it seems to be sort of a moot point anyway.
4. "The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to four billion years."
Although no studies exist to prove her figures to be accurate, Ms. Parsons is likely attempting to use data from radioactive waste coming from enriched uranium used in a nuclear reactor. The uranium taken from the mine will be naturally occuring, not enriched, and will not have been put through a fission reactor. Uranium in its natural form also exists in things like seawater, granite counter tops, and dirt. We come in contact with it everyday of our lives.
5. "What (VUI) doesn'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
This is simply an outrageous statement and even publishing it is questionable.
6. "There is absolutely no doubt that the Bannister and all waterways downstream would be contaminated"
If there is "no doubt," then why is the National Academy of Sciences even attempting to conduct a study into whether uranium mining can be done safely at Cole's Hill?
7. Ms. Parsons also makes several general comments about radiation effects on the local area from uranium mining activities.
Aside from Ms. Parsons' statements being absolutely imaginary, studies completed to determine radiation effects from uranium mining do not back up her claims. A 1980 study completed by the NRC concluded that a person living beside a "cluster" of uranium mines for 15 years will receive an effective radiation dose of 41 millirem. A common chest x-ray at a general physician's office will give you 40 millirem of radiation. Think about that one.
The one thing that Ms. Parsons is correct about in her letter is that the U.S. Constitution guarantees people the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that would come from guaranteed economic prosperity in the form of 500 high-paying jobs. Why should "small-town folk" allow an outside organization like the CELDF come in and stifle economic growth in the name of their own personal agenda?
Imagine a new industry being able to come into the Piedmont and do something that has not been done in quite a while - provide 500 jobs and healthy local spending that stimulates the local economy. Hopefully, the National Academy of Sciences study will conclude that uranium mining at Cole's Hill can be done safely and that the Piedmont can look forward to the ensuing economic growth. Until the study is completed, no one should jump to conclusions by subjecting themselves to radical myths and actions peddled by people like Ms. Parsons and the CELDF.
J Carrington Dillon
Charlotte, NC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments:
Karen wrote on Sep 10, 2009 6:03 PM:
" Someone as tightly connected to the nuclear industry (Areva) as Mr. Dillon is would have to take this position. In this country regulatory agencies have not protected the inhabitants of areas where uranium mining has taken place. The post-mining contamination from tailings, (the residue left from rock and soil after uranium is extracted) exists in U.S. In the western U.S. are contaminated areas that will never be made right. People in our western states are fighting at a grass roots level to keep their land from being made uninhabitable. They are starting with their local governments because rarely does the State want to step in. Big money talks, and Mr. Dillon's affiliation can be found at the following address: www.linkedin.com/in/jcarringtondillon. Right here in Caswell there is a toxic waste dump on Dowdy Lane off Rte. 86 that has been condemned by the EPA and designated a Superfund site. It is not being cleaned up as there is no cleanup money in the Superfund. And there are not enough people screaming about it to move the government.
Would Mr. Dillon label the people of West Virginia radical as he has Ms. Parsons group? Are they radical because they protest their homes rendered worthless, their health jeopardized, their communities flooded, and their children's schools made unsafe by toxic mining sludge? All from mountain top removal mining which blasts off the tops of the mountains, clogging mountain streams and ruining the environment. Why is mining done this way? Because it is more profitable for the corporations indulging in this practice. There is no government agency rushing to the aid of all those whose lives are affected. Look up the track record of Massey Corp. and see what they have done to West Virginia. Then think of the consequences of big money, high contamination, and lack of government intervention. The uranium mining industry has been curtailed in Canada because of the damage done there. Virginia Uranium Inc. does have a large Canadian contingent onboard. The company has a Toronto stock exchange listing. There are many corporation names at this point, holding companies, and more twists and turns in the history of VU Inc. than I can relate. And that is what this company is counting on. That no one will figure it all out. Few people will take the time to do the research to discover how dangerous this venture is. The National Academy of Sciences study that is lulling people into a false sense of security will come back without a means to definitely form an opinion either pro or con. And that ambivalence will open the door. Unless there is resistance. How many people will do the research to discover what this proposal means? "
Doug wrote on Sep 9, 2009 12:48 PM:
" It's easy to label people whom you disagree with as radical, without presenting any evidence. This mining will contaminate the Danville area, not Charlotte. Now let's take a look at government regulators--will they do a better job than they did regulating the pig farms, and peanut butter maanufacturers? "
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Who will protect Virginia from uranium mining? (Letter No. 1)
By SHIREEN PARSONS
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. — a U.S. corporation wholly owned by Canadian corporations — would reap huge profits from mining and milling uranium on more than 2,000 acres in rural Pittsylvania County.
The Coles Hill mine would be merely the first mine in eastern Virginia, as our entire Piedmont is strewn with uranium deposits, and Virginia Uranium’s corporate mandate is to explore and develop them. If, as it surely will, the legislature lifts the moratorium, the Piedmont would become a uranium mining corridor, just as Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are coal mining corridors.
As planned, the Coles 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, all open-pit mines and their waste piles release into the environment heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury, and radioactive materials.
The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to 4 billion years. They are taken up and retained by plants and animals, and they become part of the food chain forever. In animals and humans, 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.
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, 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.
Virginia Uranium’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 according to a regulatory program developed by the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy (DMME).
But monitoring and oversight by our regulatory agencies are inadequate to nonexistent. Since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970, one-third of Americans live in areas with unhealthy ozone levels. Forty percent of our rivers, lakes and tributaries aren’t safe for swimming or fishing. Deforestation, excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers — and a 60 percent increase in the amount of refuse generated in the past 25 years — have further contaminated the soil and water.
Virginia's 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 regulatory agencies to protect us from the catastrophic effects of uranium mining in Virginia?
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.. Virginia Uranium says miners would make $68,000 a year in a county where the 2000 median household income was $35,000, the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent and 12 percent 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 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 Banister River, a source of Virginia Beach’s water, is less than a mile from the Coles Hill mine site, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Banister 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?
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 well-being of their communities and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.
Like Virginia Beach, the Town of Halifax is downstream from the planned uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. In February 2008, the Halifax Town Council voted unanimously to enact the Halifax Corporate Mining, Bodily Trespass and Community Self-Government Ordinance, 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.â€
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 is the Virginia organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Christiansburg.
http://caswellmessenger.com/articles/2009/09/09/opinion/opinion02.txt
Thanks Shireen for all the letters!
Response to Dillon's letter (letter 3)
Sep 15, 2009 - 05:17:43 pm CDT
In his September 8 "Response to Parsons' letter," J. Carrington Dillon launched a laughable ad hominem attack on me and on the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, for which I am the Virginia community organizer. It seems that my own commentary about how uranium mining in Virginia would impact communities and the environment downstream in North Carolina has him hopping mad.
According to Dillon, I have a "total disregard for factual information, my "claims" are "ridiculous," I employ "unjustifiable fear tactics" and "completely made-up and baseless facts" (how can a fact be made-up and/or baseless?), and that I'm "grossly unqualified to even participate in this dialog." My goodness! And he describes the Legal Defense Fund as "a group of radical environmental class-action lawyers" and says that I said our goal is to "seize local governing authority."
Whew! Where to start? First, to set the record straight, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit, community interest law firm that provides free and low-cost legal services to communities threatened by corporate assaults, such as mining, land-application of sewage sludge, toxic waste dumps, factory farming.... We assist our partner communities to prevent such corporate assaults by asserting their inherent local governing authority and enacting binding local laws banning specific corporate activities. More than 120 communities in a growing number of states - including Virginia - have enacted such local laws, and have prevented the corporate assaults that threatened them. We don't have to "seize" local governing authority - our federal and state constitutions affirm it. We simply have to wield it. If we don't have democracy in the communities where we live, where on Earth do we have it?
With regard to my statements about the catastrophic impacts of uranium mining on environmental and human health, I and a growing number of Virginia residents have researched those impacts on communities and the environment around the world thoroughly enough to debate anyone on this subject - anyone who has access to the internet can do this. And we all know for a fact that, everywhere in the world where they've operated, uranium mining corporations have contaminated the air, water and soil with heavy metals and radioactive materials, some of which persist in the environment for 4.5 billion years, and that, here in the US, it's been done with the blessing of our federal and state regulatory agencies. If Dillon has evidence of one exception to that statement, I invite him to provide it.
And, yes, Virginia Uranium Inc. is, indeed, wholly owned by Canadian corporations.
Now, whenever I'm subjected to an ad hominem attack, I consider the source. Who is J. Carrington Dillon, and what motivated his angry response to my commentary?
J. Carrington Dillon is a structural engineer for AREVA, a multi-billion-dollar, multinational mega-corporation primarily owned by the French government. According to its corporate website, AREVA is "ranked first in the global nuclear power industry." Dillon's AREVA job description also includes creating and managing Clean Energy Insight (www.cleanenergyinsight.org), a propaganda tool for the nuclear industry.
And what kind of corporate footprint does AREVA have on the environment and human communities where it operates? According to Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), the humanitarian news and analysis service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in Niger, for example, mining operations, owned and operated by AREVA in partnership with the Nigerian government, have contaminated the air, soil and water, resulting in sickness and death for local residents, and have depleted regional groundwater supplies.
And the Paris-based Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD), which specializes in the analysis of radioactivity in the environment, found "serious lapses" in and near AREVA mining sites in Niger. In 2005, CRIIRAD environmental studies found water radiation levels in mining communities up to 110 times higher than the World Health Organization safe drinking water standards for industrial areas. You can read about AREVA's mining impacts in Niger at www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=83706.
Uranium mining corporations profit from environmental devastation and human suffering wherever they operate. J. Carrington Dillon is one of their minions. Consider the source.
Shireen Parsons
Virginia Community Organizer
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
(Nuke response to Shireen's first letter, listed below: "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?"
Response to Parsons' letter (Letter No. 2)
Sep 08, 2009 - 06:47:26 pm CDT I recently read an opinion piece published in the Caswell Messenger titled "What Would Uranium Mining Mean?" written by Shireen Parsons (8/18/09). From the first sentence, I was insulted by Ms. Parsons' total disregard for factual information. Considering my personal and professional background, I felt obligated to provide the readers of the Caswell Messenger a response to Ms. Parsons' ridiculous claims.
I was raised in Ridgeway, Va., and actually spent a couple of my summers playing Dixie Youth baseball in Yanceyville. I grew up witnessing the economic struggles of the Piedmont. I've had family and friends lose their jobs as local textile and furniture mills packed up shop in the past decade or so, and I see possible uranium mining activities as an opportunity for the Piedmont to regain an economic foothold.
I now reside in Charlotte and work in the nuclear engineering field. The people of the Piedmont are important to me, to who I am as an individual and a professional. I feel that they are entitled to the truth from a person who is at least qualified to provide it.
Ms. Parsons is an organizer for the Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund a group of radical environmental class-action lawyers whose goal, according to Ms. Parsons "is to seize local governing authority." (Danville Register & Bee, April 2009) With dishonest statements like these, Ms. Parsons has lost all credibility and respect from even local opponents of Virginia Uranium Inc.
It is important to address local concerns when it comes to uranium mining. But it is also important to address these concerns with facts and not unjustifiable fear tactics. The truth is that facts are stubborn things. By providing nothing but completely made-up and baseless facts in her letter, Ms. Parson proved herself to be grossly unqualified to even participate in this dialogue. What I can offer is a personal concern for the safety and economic prosperity of the local communities and the credibility to do so with facts.
Currently, the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent 18-month study to address concerns of Virginians about safety and economic impacts. This study is being paid for by Virginia Uranium Inc., as opposed to taxpayers and was endorsed recently by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu during a trip to Virginia in which he addressed concerns that have been raised about uranium mining in the area. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated that in "any kind of mining, whether it's uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people. There's a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that we will wait for the results of that study."
In order to provide fact-based information, I would like to shortly address some of Ms. Parson's statements from her letter:
1. "Uranium mining has never been done safely anywhere in the world. It cannot be done safely."
This couldn't be any further from the truth. Uranium mining is closely regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in addition to state-level regulation authorities like the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy.
There are many federal laws and regulations that provide these government agencies with the ability to ensure safe operations. In fact, since these federal regulations came into effect in 1980, there have been zero uranium mining incidents in the U.S.
2. "(Virginia Uranium Inc.) a US corporation, wholly owned by Canadian Corporations."
Actually, 75% of VUI is owned by the Coles and Bowen families (landowners) from Pittsylvania County. 25% is owned by a Canadian company. Furthermore, the Coles and Bowen families have made it clear that they will not proceed with operations in their backyards until it is ensured that local communities will benefit from uranium mining operations.
3. Ms. Parsons has stated that the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an absolutely "huge" amount of land. In her article, Ms. Parsons states that "the Cole's Hill uranium mine would cover an area equal to 55 city blocks."
The Coles and Bowen property is approximately 3,000 acres. Ms. Parsons says that 55 city blocks, or about 220 acres will be mined (about the same size of the Danville Piedmont Mall). This means that only 7 percent of the property will be mined. "Huge" is a subjective term, but law states that the mine must be restored after mining has ended, so it seems to be sort of a moot point anyway.
4. "The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to four billion years."
Although no studies exist to prove her figures to be accurate, Ms. Parsons is likely attempting to use data from radioactive waste coming from enriched uranium used in a nuclear reactor. The uranium taken from the mine will be naturally occuring, not enriched, and will not have been put through a fission reactor. Uranium in its natural form also exists in things like seawater, granite counter tops, and dirt. We come in contact with it everyday of our lives.
5. "What (VUI) doesn'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
This is simply an outrageous statement and even publishing it is questionable.
6. "There is absolutely no doubt that the Bannister and all waterways downstream would be contaminated"
If there is "no doubt," then why is the National Academy of Sciences even attempting to conduct a study into whether uranium mining can be done safely at Cole's Hill?
7. Ms. Parsons also makes several general comments about radiation effects on the local area from uranium mining activities.
Aside from Ms. Parsons' statements being absolutely imaginary, studies completed to determine radiation effects from uranium mining do not back up her claims. A 1980 study completed by the NRC concluded that a person living beside a "cluster" of uranium mines for 15 years will receive an effective radiation dose of 41 millirem. A common chest x-ray at a general physician's office will give you 40 millirem of radiation. Think about that one.
The one thing that Ms. Parsons is correct about in her letter is that the U.S. Constitution guarantees people the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that would come from guaranteed economic prosperity in the form of 500 high-paying jobs. Why should "small-town folk" allow an outside organization like the CELDF come in and stifle economic growth in the name of their own personal agenda?
Imagine a new industry being able to come into the Piedmont and do something that has not been done in quite a while - provide 500 jobs and healthy local spending that stimulates the local economy. Hopefully, the National Academy of Sciences study will conclude that uranium mining at Cole's Hill can be done safely and that the Piedmont can look forward to the ensuing economic growth. Until the study is completed, no one should jump to conclusions by subjecting themselves to radical myths and actions peddled by people like Ms. Parsons and the CELDF.
J Carrington Dillon
Charlotte, NC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments:
Karen wrote on Sep 10, 2009 6:03 PM:
" Someone as tightly connected to the nuclear industry (Areva) as Mr. Dillon is would have to take this position. In this country regulatory agencies have not protected the inhabitants of areas where uranium mining has taken place. The post-mining contamination from tailings, (the residue left from rock and soil after uranium is extracted) exists in U.S. In the western U.S. are contaminated areas that will never be made right. People in our western states are fighting at a grass roots level to keep their land from being made uninhabitable. They are starting with their local governments because rarely does the State want to step in. Big money talks, and Mr. Dillon's affiliation can be found at the following address: www.linkedin.com/in/jcarringtondillon. Right here in Caswell there is a toxic waste dump on Dowdy Lane off Rte. 86 that has been condemned by the EPA and designated a Superfund site. It is not being cleaned up as there is no cleanup money in the Superfund. And there are not enough people screaming about it to move the government.
Would Mr. Dillon label the people of West Virginia radical as he has Ms. Parsons group? Are they radical because they protest their homes rendered worthless, their health jeopardized, their communities flooded, and their children's schools made unsafe by toxic mining sludge? All from mountain top removal mining which blasts off the tops of the mountains, clogging mountain streams and ruining the environment. Why is mining done this way? Because it is more profitable for the corporations indulging in this practice. There is no government agency rushing to the aid of all those whose lives are affected. Look up the track record of Massey Corp. and see what they have done to West Virginia. Then think of the consequences of big money, high contamination, and lack of government intervention. The uranium mining industry has been curtailed in Canada because of the damage done there. Virginia Uranium Inc. does have a large Canadian contingent onboard. The company has a Toronto stock exchange listing. There are many corporation names at this point, holding companies, and more twists and turns in the history of VU Inc. than I can relate. And that is what this company is counting on. That no one will figure it all out. Few people will take the time to do the research to discover how dangerous this venture is. The National Academy of Sciences study that is lulling people into a false sense of security will come back without a means to definitely form an opinion either pro or con. And that ambivalence will open the door. Unless there is resistance. How many people will do the research to discover what this proposal means? "
Doug wrote on Sep 9, 2009 12:48 PM:
" It's easy to label people whom you disagree with as radical, without presenting any evidence. This mining will contaminate the Danville area, not Charlotte. Now let's take a look at government regulators--will they do a better job than they did regulating the pig farms, and peanut butter maanufacturers? "
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Who will protect Virginia from uranium mining? (Letter No. 1)
By SHIREEN PARSONS
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. — a U.S. corporation wholly owned by Canadian corporations — would reap huge profits from mining and milling uranium on more than 2,000 acres in rural Pittsylvania County.
The Coles Hill mine would be merely the first mine in eastern Virginia, as our entire Piedmont is strewn with uranium deposits, and Virginia Uranium’s corporate mandate is to explore and develop them. If, as it surely will, the legislature lifts the moratorium, the Piedmont would become a uranium mining corridor, just as Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are coal mining corridors.
As planned, the Coles 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, all open-pit mines and their waste piles release into the environment heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury, and radioactive materials.
The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to 4 billion years. They are taken up and retained by plants and animals, and they become part of the food chain forever. In animals and humans, 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.
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, 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.
Virginia Uranium’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 according to a regulatory program developed by the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy (DMME).
But monitoring and oversight by our regulatory agencies are inadequate to nonexistent. Since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970, one-third of Americans live in areas with unhealthy ozone levels. Forty percent of our rivers, lakes and tributaries aren’t safe for swimming or fishing. Deforestation, excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers — and a 60 percent increase in the amount of refuse generated in the past 25 years — have further contaminated the soil and water.
Virginia's 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 regulatory agencies to protect us from the catastrophic effects of uranium mining in Virginia?
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.. Virginia Uranium says miners would make $68,000 a year in a county where the 2000 median household income was $35,000, the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent and 12 percent 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 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 Banister River, a source of Virginia Beach’s water, is less than a mile from the Coles Hill mine site, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Banister 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?
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 well-being of their communities and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.
Like Virginia Beach, the Town of Halifax is downstream from the planned uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. In February 2008, the Halifax Town Council voted unanimously to enact the Halifax Corporate Mining, Bodily Trespass and Community Self-Government Ordinance, 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.â€
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 is the Virginia organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Christiansburg.
http://caswellmessenger.com/articles/2009/09/09/opinion/opinion02.txt
Monday, September 14, 2009
Canada urged to pass UN Indigenous Declaration on second anniversary
Comment: The state of Virginia is welcoming a nation (Canada, who will blow up our hills for uranium) that mistreats their native people. Canada needs to sign the UN Declaration now or stop doing business in our state!
First Nations and Quebec Native women urge passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples, on the second anniversary
From the press release below; “The AFN is going to lead the effort to implement the United Nations Declaration through our work here at home and abroad. First Nations are going to put its principles into practice. The AFN is going to support First Nations in implementing our sacred treaties and our constitutionally protected title and rights using clear standards, such as those set out in the Declaration.” From the Open letter [attached in English and French]: ‘If these words [of apology] were truly sincere, then the Government of Canada should have already endorsed the Declaration and thus contributed to improve their relationship with Indigenous peoples.”
OTTAWA, Sept. 11 /CNW Telbec/ - September 13. 2009 marks the second anniversary of the passing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of only four countries in the world to vote against the UN Declaration, and continues to oppose it.
September 13 is a landmark day for the world’s Indigenous peoples, but a black mark on Canada’s international reputation, “ Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo stated. “The AFN is going to lead the effort to implement the United Nations Declaration through our work here at home and abroad. First Nations are going to put its principles into practice. The AFN is going to support First Nations in implementing our sacred treaties and our constitutionally protected title and rights using clear standards, such as those set out in the Declaration.”
The National Chief stated that, in addition to domestic work the AFN will work with its counterparts at the National Congress of American Indians, with the international community and at the United Nations itself to give life to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The AFN Quebec-Labrador region has been a leader in pressing Canada to support the UN Declaration. The AFN Regional Chief for Quebec-Labrador, Ghislain Picard, stated: “The majority of recommendations at Canada’s Universal Periodic Review on its human rights record were directly related to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
This clearly indicates the need for Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The adoption of this UN Declaration would give the message that Canada is serious about bringing to an end its colonial and assimilations policies and practices.
The Declaration could provide us with a basis from which a new relationship could be built on mutual recognition, mutual respect and lead us away from the current state of extreme poverty and dependency resulting from legislation and policies that are anchored in colonialism.”
Regional Chief Picard is also inviting First Nations and all Canadians to sign a petition asking the Canadian government to sign a petition asking the Canadian government to endorse the UN Declaration.
The petition can be found online at http://www.apnql-afnql.com/.
There is high support for the UN Declaration nationally and internationally. In 2008, 100 legal scholars and experts signed an Open Letter calling on the Government of Canada to “… cease publicizing its misleading claims and, together with Indigenous peoples, actively implement this new human rights instrument.”
In April, the Government of Australia reversed its position and now supports the Declaration.
National Chief Atleo stated: “It is time to move forward with the Declaration in all that we do. It is a statement of the principles that should guide our relationship, and it is a way to measure our progress. It is time that we all embrace these principles and act on these principles.”
-30- /For further information: Alain Garon, Communications Officer, AFNQL, (418) 842-5020 (418) 842-5020, Cell (418) 956-5720 (418) 956-5720; Robert Simpson, (778) 991-1407 (778) 991-1407; ChantelleKrish, (778) 990-9544/
UBCIC's Protecting Knowledge Conference site: http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/Resources/conferences/PK.htm
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2009/09/canada-urged-to-pass-un-indigenous.html
First Nations and Quebec Native women urge passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples, on the second anniversary
From the press release below; “The AFN is going to lead the effort to implement the United Nations Declaration through our work here at home and abroad. First Nations are going to put its principles into practice. The AFN is going to support First Nations in implementing our sacred treaties and our constitutionally protected title and rights using clear standards, such as those set out in the Declaration.” From the Open letter [attached in English and French]: ‘If these words [of apology] were truly sincere, then the Government of Canada should have already endorsed the Declaration and thus contributed to improve their relationship with Indigenous peoples.”
OTTAWA, Sept. 11 /CNW Telbec/ - September 13. 2009 marks the second anniversary of the passing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of only four countries in the world to vote against the UN Declaration, and continues to oppose it.
September 13 is a landmark day for the world’s Indigenous peoples, but a black mark on Canada’s international reputation, “ Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo stated. “The AFN is going to lead the effort to implement the United Nations Declaration through our work here at home and abroad. First Nations are going to put its principles into practice. The AFN is going to support First Nations in implementing our sacred treaties and our constitutionally protected title and rights using clear standards, such as those set out in the Declaration.”
The National Chief stated that, in addition to domestic work the AFN will work with its counterparts at the National Congress of American Indians, with the international community and at the United Nations itself to give life to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The AFN Quebec-Labrador region has been a leader in pressing Canada to support the UN Declaration. The AFN Regional Chief for Quebec-Labrador, Ghislain Picard, stated: “The majority of recommendations at Canada’s Universal Periodic Review on its human rights record were directly related to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
This clearly indicates the need for Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The adoption of this UN Declaration would give the message that Canada is serious about bringing to an end its colonial and assimilations policies and practices.
The Declaration could provide us with a basis from which a new relationship could be built on mutual recognition, mutual respect and lead us away from the current state of extreme poverty and dependency resulting from legislation and policies that are anchored in colonialism.”
Regional Chief Picard is also inviting First Nations and all Canadians to sign a petition asking the Canadian government to sign a petition asking the Canadian government to endorse the UN Declaration.
The petition can be found online at http://www.apnql-afnql.com/.
There is high support for the UN Declaration nationally and internationally. In 2008, 100 legal scholars and experts signed an Open Letter calling on the Government of Canada to “… cease publicizing its misleading claims and, together with Indigenous peoples, actively implement this new human rights instrument.”
In April, the Government of Australia reversed its position and now supports the Declaration.
National Chief Atleo stated: “It is time to move forward with the Declaration in all that we do. It is a statement of the principles that should guide our relationship, and it is a way to measure our progress. It is time that we all embrace these principles and act on these principles.”
-30- /For further information: Alain Garon, Communications Officer, AFNQL, (418) 842-5020 (418) 842-5020, Cell (418) 956-5720 (418) 956-5720; Robert Simpson, (778) 991-1407 (778) 991-1407; ChantelleKrish, (778) 990-9544/
UBCIC's Protecting Knowledge Conference site: http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/Resources/conferences/PK.htm
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2009/09/canada-urged-to-pass-un-indigenous.html
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
KSU dubs mining move ‘sell-out’
Comment: No one wants uranium mining except the governments all over the world in bed with the uranium mining corporations!
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Shillong, Aug. 25: The anti-mining lobby in Shillong has begun working overtime to oppose the state cabinet’s decision to allow groundwork for uranium mining in West Khasi Hills.
The powerful Khasi Students’ Union today termed the cabinet’s decision as a total sell-out of the interest of the people to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) and indicated drastic steps to prevent work.
KSU president Samuel Jyrwa said: “Our central executive committee will meet soon to chalk out our action plan to deal with the decision of the cabinet. Our stand is very clear. We are totally opposed to uranium mining and there is no change in our approach.”
He said the state cabinet has taken a hurried decision despite the fact that a majority had opposed uranium mining during the official public hearing held on June 12, 2007, in West Khasi Hills.
The state cabinet yesterday gave its nod to pre-development work to be undertaken by the UCIL at the uranium mining sites with a budget of Rs 209 crore. The cabinet also favoured leasing out around 422 acres to UCIL to start uranium mining.
The government hopes to get a royalty of Rs 20 crore a year once mining begins.
“We feel that these development activities are not for the sake of the people and once the schools and health centres are constructed, they will be taken over by the UCIL and will become their properties,” he said.
“We are not against development, but the aggressive development pattern risking the welfare of the people are not acceptable to us,” Jyrwa said.
The KSU leader said they are also concerned over the heath hazards of uranium mining.
“You cannot buy health with money,” Jyrwa said.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090826/jsp/northeast/story_11406744.jsp
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Shillong, Aug. 25: The anti-mining lobby in Shillong has begun working overtime to oppose the state cabinet’s decision to allow groundwork for uranium mining in West Khasi Hills.
The powerful Khasi Students’ Union today termed the cabinet’s decision as a total sell-out of the interest of the people to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) and indicated drastic steps to prevent work.
KSU president Samuel Jyrwa said: “Our central executive committee will meet soon to chalk out our action plan to deal with the decision of the cabinet. Our stand is very clear. We are totally opposed to uranium mining and there is no change in our approach.”
He said the state cabinet has taken a hurried decision despite the fact that a majority had opposed uranium mining during the official public hearing held on June 12, 2007, in West Khasi Hills.
The state cabinet yesterday gave its nod to pre-development work to be undertaken by the UCIL at the uranium mining sites with a budget of Rs 209 crore. The cabinet also favoured leasing out around 422 acres to UCIL to start uranium mining.
The government hopes to get a royalty of Rs 20 crore a year once mining begins.
“We feel that these development activities are not for the sake of the people and once the schools and health centres are constructed, they will be taken over by the UCIL and will become their properties,” he said.
“We are not against development, but the aggressive development pattern risking the welfare of the people are not acceptable to us,” Jyrwa said.
The KSU leader said they are also concerned over the heath hazards of uranium mining.
“You cannot buy health with money,” Jyrwa said.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090826/jsp/northeast/story_11406744.jsp
Friday, August 14, 2009
Tides Shift Against Nestle as Company Reports Decline in Bottled Water Sales
August 13, 2009
12:14 PM
Tides Shift Against Nestle as Company Reports Decline in Bottled Water Sales
Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter
WASHINGTON - August 13 - “This week, mounting consumer backlash against Nestle became especially apparent when the mega-conglomerate reported that their sales had dipped by 2.4 percent to 5.07 billion Swiss francs ($4.69 billion) from 5.21 billion francs a year earlier. The company’s bottled water division, which packages and sells water under several brands including Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Poland Spring, and Perrier, among others, recorded a 3.7 percent decline in volume.
“Around the world, but especially in the United States, consumers are recognizing that bottled water is an unnecessary burden on their wallets, the environment, and the communities from which it is taken and sold at thousands of times its actual value. Nestle in particular, has gained notoriety over the past several years for profiting on a natural resource while dumping the costs of its corporate imperialism onto society in the form of pollution, over-consumption of oil, and unfair labor practices, to name just a few offenses.
“Communities too, are pushing back against Nestle. Just last month, citizens in Michigan prevailed when a court there turned down the corporation’s request to pump more water from an already depleting spring in Mecosta County. Similar struggles have played out in California, Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Colorado as part of a growing trend to reclaim public water resources from private control.
“While news of Nestle’s loss is certainly the gain of consumers and communities, the fight is far from other. Food & Water Watch will continue to support the work of those working to keep Nestle out of their communities, while applauding those consumers who, in rejecting bottled water, are helping to make it obsolete.”
Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.
CONTACT: Food & Water Watch
Kate Fried (202) 683-2500
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/13-4
12:14 PM
Tides Shift Against Nestle as Company Reports Decline in Bottled Water Sales
Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter
WASHINGTON - August 13 - “This week, mounting consumer backlash against Nestle became especially apparent when the mega-conglomerate reported that their sales had dipped by 2.4 percent to 5.07 billion Swiss francs ($4.69 billion) from 5.21 billion francs a year earlier. The company’s bottled water division, which packages and sells water under several brands including Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Poland Spring, and Perrier, among others, recorded a 3.7 percent decline in volume.
“Around the world, but especially in the United States, consumers are recognizing that bottled water is an unnecessary burden on their wallets, the environment, and the communities from which it is taken and sold at thousands of times its actual value. Nestle in particular, has gained notoriety over the past several years for profiting on a natural resource while dumping the costs of its corporate imperialism onto society in the form of pollution, over-consumption of oil, and unfair labor practices, to name just a few offenses.
“Communities too, are pushing back against Nestle. Just last month, citizens in Michigan prevailed when a court there turned down the corporation’s request to pump more water from an already depleting spring in Mecosta County. Similar struggles have played out in California, Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Colorado as part of a growing trend to reclaim public water resources from private control.
“While news of Nestle’s loss is certainly the gain of consumers and communities, the fight is far from other. Food & Water Watch will continue to support the work of those working to keep Nestle out of their communities, while applauding those consumers who, in rejecting bottled water, are helping to make it obsolete.”
Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.
CONTACT: Food & Water Watch
Kate Fried (202) 683-2500
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/13-4
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Did Toxic Chemical in Iraq Sicken GIs?
Comment: The state of Virginia will not protect us from Uranium Mining, look at the Federal gov't has done to our family members in wars. Pray for our military families! I hope this company people rot in He..!
Published on Sunday, June 28, 2009 by The Associated Press
Did Toxic Chemical in Iraq Sicken GIs?
by Sharon Cohen
Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.
Sgt. David L. Moore during his National Guard service in Iraq in a photo provided by his brother Steve. The guardsman's post-war life was plagued by health problems until he died in 2008 of lung disease at age 42. (By Jared Fawks, AP)James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer.
David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.
What these three men - one sick, one dying, one dead - had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.
These soldiers and hundreds of other Guard members from Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia were protecting workers hired by a subsidiary of the giant contractor, KBR Inc., to rebuild an Iraqi water treatment plant. The area, as it turned out, was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a potent, sometimes deadly chemical linked to cancer and other devastating diseases.
No one disputes that. But that's where the agreement ends.
Among the issues now rippling from the courthouse to Capitol Hill are whether the chemical made people sick, when KBR knew it was there and how the company responded. But the debate is about more than this one case; it has raised broader questions about private contractors and health risks in war zones.
Questions, says Sen. Evan Bayh, who plans to hold hearings on the issues, such as these:
"How should we treat exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals as a threat to our soldiers? How seriously should that threat be taken? What is the role of private contractors? What about the potential conflict between their profit motives and taking all steps necessary to protect our soldiers?"
"This case," says the Indiana Democrat, "has brought to light the need for systemic reform."
For now, dozens of National Guard veterans have sued KBR and two subsidiaries, accusing them of minimizing and concealing the chemical's dangers, then downplaying nosebleeds and breathing problems as nothing more than sand allergies or a reaction to desert air.
KBR denies any wrongdoing. In a statement, the company said it actually found the chemical at the Qarmat Ali plant, restricted access, cleaned it up and "did not knowingly harm troops."
Ten civilians hired by a KBR subsidiary made similar claims in an arbitration resolved privately in June. (The workers' contract prevented them from suing.)
This isn't the first claim that toxins have harmed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; there have been allegations involving lead, depleted uranium and sarin gas.
This also isn't the first challenge to KBR, whose billions of dollars of war-related contracts have been the subject of congressional scrutiny and legal claims.
Among them are lawsuits recently filed in several states against KBR and Halliburton Co. - KBR's parent company until 2007 - that assert open-air pits used to burn refuse in Iraq and Afghanistan caused illnesses and death. (KBR says it's reviewing the charges. Halliburton maintains it was improperly named and expects to be dismissed from the case.)
This case stems from the chaotic start of the war in 2003 when a KBR subsidiary was hired to restart the treatment plant, which had been looted and virtually stripped bare. The Iraqis had used hexavalent chromium to prevent pipe corrosion at the plant, which produced industrial water used in oil production.
It's the same chemical linked to poisonings in California in a case made famous in the movie "Erin Brockovich."
Hexavalent chromium - a toxic component of sodium dichromate - can cause severe liver and kidney damage and studies have linked it to leukemia as well as bone, stomach and other cancers, according to an expert who provided a deposition for the civilian workers.
The chemical "is one of the most potent carcinogens know to man," declared Max Costa, chairman of New York University's Department of Environmental Medicine.
KBR, however, says studies show only that industrial workers exposed to the chemical for more than two years have an increased risk of cancer - and in this case, soldiers were at the plant just days or months.
The company also notes air quality studies concluded the Indiana Guard soldiers were not exposed to high levels of hexavalent chromium. But Costa says those tests were done when the wind was not blowing.
Both soldiers and former workers say there were days when strong gusts kicked up ripped-open bags of the chemical, creating a yellow-orange haze that coated everything from their hair to their boots.
"I was spitting blood and I was not the only one doing that," recalls Danny Langford, who worked for the KBR subsidiary. "The wind was blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. You could just hardly see where you were going. I pulled my shirt over my nose and there would be blood on it."
Larry Roberta, a 44-year-old former Oregon National Guard member, remembers 137-degree heat and dust everywhere. He sat on a bag of the chemical, unaware it was dangerous.
"This orange crud blew up in your face, your eyes and on our food," he says. "I tried to wash my chicken patty off with my canteen. I started to get sick to my stomach right away."
Roberta had coughing spells and agonizing chest pains, he says, that "went all the way through my back. ... Every day I went there, I had something weird going on."
Russell Kimberling, a former Indiana National Guard captain, had severe sinus troubles that forced his medical evacuation to Germany. After returning, he became alarmed one August day in 2003 while escorting some officials to the plant in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
"I jumped out of the truck and I turned around and they (KBR staff) had full chemical gear on," he says. "I looked at some of my soldiers and said, 'This can't be very good.' ... They could have told us to put chemical suits on."
Ed Blacke, hired as plant health, safety and environmental coordinator, says he became worried after workers started having breathing problems and a former colleague sent him an internal KBR memo outlining the chemical's dangers. Blacke says he complained, was labeled a troublemaker and resigned under pressure.
"Normally when you take over a job, you have a briefing - this is what's out there, here's what you need for protective equipment," says Blacke, who testified at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing last year. "There was nothing, nothing at all."
Blacke and Langford were among those whose civil claims were resolved in arbitration.
Kimberling is among nearly 50 current or former Guard members - most from Indiana, a smaller number from Oregon - who've sued. Some soldiers who served with the West Virginia Guard are expected to follow soon.
Mike Doyle, a Houston lawyer representing the soldiers and civilians, maintains KBR knew as early as May 2003 the chemical was there, but didn't close the site until that September.
"Once they (KBR) found out about it, they didn't tell anybody and they did everything to conceal it," he contends. "Their staff was getting reports and soldiers and civilians who were in the field were told ... 'There's nothing to worry about."'
The lawsuit cites minutes of an August 2003 KBR meeting that mentions "serious health problems at the water treatment plant" and notes "almost 60% of the people now exhibit the symptoms."
In a recent Associated Press interview, KBR chairman William P. Utt said the company has been unfairly targeted for its military work.
"People think there's an opportunity here in Iraq, let's paint it on KBR, then we'll worry about making the facts precise or correct later," he said.
As for the water plant, KBR says once it learned of the chemical, it took precautions to protect workers, notified the Army Corps of Engineers and led the cleanup. It says the Corps had previously deemed the area safe.
KBR also points to Army tests of Indiana Guard soldiers that showed no medical problems that could be linked to exposure, as well as a military board review that found it unlikely anyone would suffer long-term medical consequences.
But Bayh and Doyle say those tests were done too late to be valid and note that soil tests were taken after the contaminated area was covered.
Doyle also disagrees with KBR's contention that workers weren't there long enough to have elevated cancer risks.
It can take a long time for symptoms of illness to surface - five to 10 years or more for cancer. But some of those who say they were exposed are already ill.
James Gentry, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Indiana Guard, is in the late stages of lung cancer and the disease has spread to his ribs and spine, according to his friend, Christopher Lee.
Gentry hasn't sued but in a December 2008 deposition he said it was "very disappointing" KBR managers didn't share information soldiers were around cancer-causing chemical.
"I'm dying because of it," he said.
While acknowledging he wasn't 100% certain that's why he has cancer, Gentry - who served a second tour in Iraq - said his doctor "believes the most probable cause was my exposure to this chemical."
The Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon National Guards have sent hundreds of letters to soldiers notifying them of possible contamination and urging them to seek medical attention.
Bayh has introduced a bill calling for a medical registry that would require the Department of Defense to notify all military members of exposure to potential toxins and ensure their medical care. A similar measure that only mandates notification was approved Thursday in the U.S. House as an amendment to the defense authorization bill.
All these steps come too late for 1st Sgt. David Moore.
When he returned from Iraq, his persistent cough escalated into breathing problems, nosebleeds and boil-like rashes, recalls his brother, Steve.
Even when doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong, Moore didn't give up, Steve Moore says.
"He was always upbeat," he recalls. "He said, 'They'll figure it out, they'll figure it out.' He thought that until the last time I talked to him."
Moore died in February 2008. The cause was lung disease. His death was ruled service related. His brother believes it was hexavalent chromium.
Larry Roberta, the former Oregon Guardsman who needed stomach surgery after his return, says he suffers from post-traumatic stress, mood swings, nose polyps, chest pains and debilitating migraines.
"I have 100% disability," he says. "I've got a long laundry list of things that happened to me while I was there. If you add it all up, I'd be almost 200% disabled."
Kimberling, the former Indiana Guardsman, struggles as well.
The father of two young children - he's a pharmaceutical salesman in Louisville - says he hasn't been able to get life insurance because his possible exposure is mentioned on his medical records.
Sometimes, he says, it's hard to separate his ailments - sinus problems and joint pains - from his fears.
"I feel like I'm a 38-year-old in a 60-year-old's body," he says. ... "I'm not sure if it's the anxiety of finding out about it or not. I kind of know and feel it's just a matter of time before it catches up with me."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/28
Monday, June 29, 2009
Underreported Struggles #27
Comment: Everyday all over the world people are fighting for their rights against uranium and gold mining, clean water and just to live on their land!June 29, 2009 at 10:37am
In this Month’s Underreported Struggles:Nak’azdli First Nation goes to court, evicts company; Maya Protesters burn equipment at gold mine; Peru govenrment revokes laws after two months of protest;Australian Indigenous People burn, spear new government policy; Colombia Approves Involuntary Sterilization Program; US Gov FINALLY cleaning uranium on Navajo land
June 29 – UN agency ignores indigenous approach to knowledge protection – Once again, the United Nations has been accused of “shutting out” indigenous people — this time over approaches to protecting and sharing traditional knowledge and biological resources.
June 26 – Nak’azdli First Nation goes to court, evicts company – The Nak’azdli First Nation in British Columbia has filed a petition against the province, in an effort to defend their rights and block a copper and gold mine from being developed on their Traditional lands. The Nak’azdli will also be issuing and eviction notice to Terrane Metals, the company behind the mining project.
June 24 – Canada: Cold War-era radar sites to get $103M cleanup – It has taken nearly 40 years, but 16 abandoned radar sites that were part of the Mid-Canada line set up to monitor the Soviet air threat during the Cold War will be cleaned up over the next six years at a cost of $103 million. (background)
June 24 – US Gov FINALLY getting rid of uranium contaminated homes on Navajo land – The federal government is finally moving on its promise to remove and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death.
June 23 – Statement from Ngobe communities affected by the Chan 75 Hydro dam – The Ngabe speak out against the CHAN 75 Hydro Project, urging the government of Panama to execute the precautionary measure adopted on June 17 by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights which consists of “suspending the construction and other activities.
June 23 – Colombia Approves National ‘Involuntary’ Sterilization Program – The Colombian House of Representatives has approved a program to convince Colombians to submit to sterilization. News of the bill arrives at the same time Peru ’s right-wing government announces it will shelve an investigation into that country’s former sterilization program, in which thousands of indigenous women were sterilized against their will in the 1990s, with help from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
June 21 – Stop devastating the Karanpura Valley! – A unique palaeoarchaeological site dated over 8,000 years old, will be gouged out into 300-feet-deep mine pits running shoulder to shoulder down the Karanpura Valley, rendering the region incapable of supporting human or animal life.
June 20 – Bhutan: Villagers protest mining boom – About 40 indigenous people from various villages in Bhutan are speaking out against new quarries and other developments on their land. Among their concerns, they say blasting is threatening the safety of their children as well as an important religious site.
June 20 – Maya Protesters burn equipment at Guatemala gold mine – A group of Maya Mam villagers set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig, after the Canadian company Goldcorp repeatedly failed to remove the equipment off the community’s land.
June 19 – Peru revokes land laws, but the struggle continues – Yesterday Peru’s Congress overwhelmingly voted against two of the key land laws that sparked two months of protests, which culminated this month in a violent confrontation that left 34 dead and hundreds more injured and missing. Despite this important victory, the struggle is far from over.
June 17 – China: new protest over land development erupts in violence – Violence erupted between police and villagers protesting a land acquisition by the government, leaving around 18 people injured.
June 16 – Celebrity resort threatens isolated tribes – A luxury resort being built on the Andaman Islands in India is threatening the survival of the Jarawa tribe, who number just 320 and have only had contact with outsiders since 1998.
June 14 – Canada: What’s missing in Mining Act changes? The Right to Say NO – In response to proposed changes to Ontario’s Mining Act, Mushkegowuk Council, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation call on the province to respect the right of First Nations to say NO to all aspects of mining from prospecting to exploration to full mine development in their traditional territories.
June 13 – Over 250 indigenous people homeless in Bangladesh arson attacks – More than 250 members of Bangladesh’s indigenous Santal community were left homeless after attacks on their homes. Witnesses reported that as many as 300 men attacked the Santal, stealing and damaging their property, then setting their homes on fire.
June 12 – Australia: Indigenous Protesters burn, spear new government policy – Copies of the Northern Territory Government’s controversial funding policy for remote Indigenous communities have been burned and speared by Indigenous Peoples. Under the plan, funding would be kept at absolute minimum for 500 smaller communities, while they invest millions into 20 large communities with the aim of making them into towns – spelling the end for Indigenous Identity in those regions.
June 12 – NAFTA Tribunal recognizes Quechan sacred site – denies Glamis Gold’s claim – The only good thing to come of NAFTA. The Tribunal sided the with Quechan People and the U.S. Government who previously blocked Glamis Gold (now known as GoldCorp) from going ahead with a mining project on Quechan Lands.
June 11 – Outrage over WWF denial of indigenous rights around the world – Over 70 human rights and environmental groups from around the world expressed outrage at the planned launch of the World Wildlife Fund’s Aquaculture Stewardship Council last month. Influenced by the aquaculture industry, the WWF is completely ignoring indigenous people in six regions around the world.
June 10 – Victory for Tibetans blockading sacred site – Chinese authorities have come to an agreement with Tibetan villagers over a proposed gold mine in Mangkang county, occupied Tibet. The villagers have been protesting the mine since last April, out of concern that the mine would destroy a site they hold sacred. There was a tense standoff on the road leading to the site last month.
June 9 – Thousands of Karen Women and children flee Burmese military assault – Thousands of ethnic Karen have fled their camps in Burma for refuge in Thailand after an assault on their camps by the Burmese junta, according to a spokesman for the Karen and aid groups in the area.
June 9 – Nunatsiavut government refuses to lift uranium moratorium – the Nunatsiavut government in Canada has stated it has no intention of lifting its moratorium on uranium mining. The Inuit legislature put the ban in place one year ago, and it will continue for two more years.
June 8 – Cordillera: Tribes Fight To Keep Out Mining Corporation – Tribal elders in Cordillera, a province in the Philippines, are renewing a peace pact in a common effort to defend their lands from large-scale mining plans.
June 7 – New Mexico to Protect Mount Taylor – The cultural and natural resources of New Mexico’s Mount Taylor will now be protected by the state, ending a yearlong battle between American Indians and landowners concerned about preserving their rights to use the mountain without interference.
June 5 – Police violently attack peaceful indigenous blockade in the Peruvian Amazon – At 5:30 am this morning, the Peruvian military police staged a violent raid on a group of indigenous people at a peaceful blockade on a road outside of Bagua, in northern Peru. The blockade was part of a two-month-old National mobilization involving more than 1200 indigenous communities. Reports later revealed a total of 34 policemen and indigenous people died. Hundreds more were injured, and as many as 200 indigenous men and women were reported as missing.
June 5 – 360 Mískito communities secede from Nicaragua – representatives from 360 Mískito communities declared the secession of the entire Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, also known as the Mosquito Coast. They announced that the area, which accounts for 46% of Nicaragua’s territory and an estimated 11% of the population, would form the independent Nation of Moskitia.
June 4 – Indigenous communities in Venezuela seek land rights – The 12,000-strong Yukpa tribe complains that it is victim to a range of powerful business interests – from cattle ranchers to drug traffickers, fugitive Colombians and mulitinational mining groups. The Venezuela govenrment does little to assist the Yukpa.
June 4 – Doe Run Peru shuts down zinc and lead smelter in La Oroya! – US-owned mining company Doe Run has shut down its zinc and lead smelter, which has operated for the last 82 years. The smelter is located in the Peruvian town La Oroya, which is widely considered to be one of the most polluted places on earth.
June 2 – Ipperwash returned to Kettle and Stony Point First Nations – Today the government of Ontario returned Ipperwash Provincial Park to the Kettle and Stony Point First Nations, bringing an end to a saga that goes back to the 1930s. In memory Dudley George, who was killed by police in 1995 for defending his land, and his Brother Sam George, who passed away soon after this meeting.
June 2 – Ogiek tribe to become “conservation refugees” – The President of Kenya has stated plans to remove the Ogiek from their ancestral lands- in the name of “conservation.” More than 60 Ogiek leaders responded by saying they will resist any attempt at their removal.
June 2 – Baluch natives call to denuclearize Pakistan – With concerns rising over Pakistan’s horde of nuclear weaponry, a Washington-based education and advocacy group for the Baluch People begins a campaign to denuclearize Pakistan and stop the government from conducting further nuclear tests in the once-sovereign Nation of Baluchistan–now a province of Pakistan.
June 1 – Andean indigenous propose int’l tribunal for environmental crimes – Latin American indigenous peoples are proposing the creation of an international court to address actions which harm the environment. The tribunal would depend on the United Nations.
June 1 – Akwesasne Alert — blockade established by police – In the early morning of June 1, the Mohawk community of Akwesasne was blocked off by American and Ontario Police forces on either side of the border – as a result of Mohawk defiance of the order to permit the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to carry lethal weapons.
Videos
Our Concerns About the Lower Sesan 2 Dam – In this video, villagers in northeastern Cambodia express their concerns about the proposed Lower Sesan 2 dam project. Located on the Sesan river in Cambodia’s Stung Treng Province Province, the Lower Sesan 2 will block two of the largest rivers in the Mekong River Basin, forcing tens of thousands of people to relocate.
Indigenous Resurgence and Traditional Ways of Being – Recommended viewing – University of Victoria Professor of Indigenous Governance Gerald Taiaiake Alfred talks about the “Resurgence of Traditional Ways of Being: Indigenous Paths of Action and Freedom.”
Jadugoda The Black Magic – This 10-minute documentary, based on the 2007 study “Black Magic of Uranium at Jadugoda” conducted by the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD Patna chapter), explores the harsh realities of indigenous peoples living near the Jadugoda mine, mill and tailings dam in the mineral-rich Singhbum district of Jharkhand, India.
http://intercontinentalcry.org/underreported-struggles-27-june-2009/
Friday, June 26, 2009
One year later: Uranium threat to Grand Canyon still dire despite emergency action by Congress
Comment: Last year Congress passed a resolution to stop uranium mining around Grand Canyon, well Bureau of Land Management is planning to mine! Resolutions do not work! Resolution did not work with the Grand Canyon! Local areas in Pittsylvania County pass resolutions against harm from uranium mining; well this will not protect us from uranium mining! We demand our local leaders to pass an ordinance to Ban Uranium Mining and Mining in our lovely county now!!Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2009 at 6:48 am
From the Center for Biological Diversity:
A resolution to temporarily protect Grand Canyon National Park by withdrawing 1 million acres from uranium exploration, passed by Congress one year ago, has been ignored by the Bureau of Land Management, leading to an increased risk of contaminating drinking water consumed by millions of people.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, today announced that the House Committee on Natural Resources passed the emergency resolution because spikes in the price of uranium had led to thousands of new uranium mining claims, dozens of exploratory drilling projects, and movement to open several uranium mines on public lands immediately north and south of Grand Canyon National Park.
But despite the resolution, the Bureau of Land Management under the Bush and Obama administrations has continued to authorize new uranium-mining exploration, which drove the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, and the Center for Biological Diversity to file a lawsuit against the secretary of the interior in September 2008. The lawsuit challenges the continued authorization of uranium exploration near Grand Canyon National Park in defiance of Congress’s emergency resolution. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act also gives Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar the authority to temporarily protect the same lands from exploration and claims; however, he has failed to act.
“The Grand Canyon is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders and a crown jewel of our national park system,” said Stacey Hamburg of the Sierra Club. “Radioactive pollution from uranium mining is a threat to Grand Canyon National Park visitors and wildlife, nearby Native American communities, and southwestern cities that get their water from the Colorado River. We need immediate action to protect these important resources from proposed mining activities.”
Read more from the Center for Biological Diversity by clicking here.
http://aquafornia.com/archives/9765
Thursday, June 18, 2009
First Annual Independence Day Celebration and Tea Party
Comment: This is a great Idea, maybe we should join them and inform them uranium is located all over Virginia and the VA Att. telling us our uranium ban will be illegal is threatening our rights. We are tired of the State of VA telling us what to do, we should be able to ban greedy corporations from ruining our homes with uranium mining and milling!First Annual Independence Day Celebration and Tea Party
June 15, 2009 by blueridgeguy
It’s official! The Jefferson Area Tea Party will be hosting their next major event on July 4th at Jackson Park on East Jefferson Street in Charlottesville. The rally will begin at 1 PM and continue until 3 PM.
We are in the process of scheduling a short slate of speakers which will be announced in the coming weeks.
We will also have some entertainment, Lisa Mei Norton singer song writer will be performing her song “A Revolution’s Brewing” as well as some of her other songs.
There will be activities for the younger generation as well. We will also have information tables and announcements of several upcoming events. We are attempting to bring in a couple of food vendors but feel free to bring your own refreshments.
The JATP has had t-shirts printed and will be making them available at the rally for a $15 donation. They are great looking navy blue T’s with the TJ logo on the front and Jefferson Area Tea Party, We The People on the back, printed in white.
Our plan is to celebrate our freedom and discuss ways in which we can work to maintain those freedoms. We look forward to seeing everyone there. More information will be posted as it becomes available. There is a link to a map showing the location of the park in the right hand column.
http://vateaparty.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Pennsylvania Town Fights Big Coal on Mining Rights
Attilia Shumaker, an environmental activist, stands on the porch of an abandoned house that she said was abandoned because coal mining caused the land beneath it to shift, cracking the house's foundation and basement in Blaine Township, Pennsylvania May 12, 2009.Comment: Demand our local leaders for ordinance to ban uranium mining and milling in our county!
Published on Monday, June 15, 2009 by Reuters
by Jon Hurdle
TAYLORSTOWN, Pennsylvania - A small Pennsylvania town is trying to ban coal mining in a battle being played out across the state as rural communities try to assert control over mining, gas drilling and other businesses.
Attilia Shumaker, an environmental activist, stands on the porch of an abandoned house that she said was abandoned because coal mining caused the land beneath it to shift, cracking the house's foundation and basement in Blaine Township, Pennsylvania May 12, 2009.
A small Pennsylvania town is trying to ban coal mining in a battle being played out across the state as rural communities try to assert control over mining, gas drilling and other businesses.
Blaine Township, a community of 600 about 40 miles (65 km) southwest of Pittsburgh, hopes to trigger a legal battle that could determine the rights of municipalities throughout the United States to control corporate activity. Blaine Township, a community of 600 about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, hopes to trigger a legal battle that could determine the rights of municipalities throughout the United States to control corporate activity.
Some legal experts say the township is highly unlikely to win that fight. For now the dispute is in federal district court, where major energy companies have sued the township over three ordinances that would ban coal mining and require companies in any business to disclose their activities to local officials.
Penn Ridge Coal LLC, a unit of Alliance Resource Partners, and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co., a unit of Allegheny Energy, say Blaine's laws violate their corporate rights.
The companies say the ordinances would prevent them from mining 10.6 million tons of recoverable coal beneath the township -- enough to supply electricity for 2 million people for a year.
The township has gone further than any of the 120 U.S. municipalities -- most of them in Pennsylvania -- that have passed ordinances to curb corporate activity such as factory farming or spreading sewage sludge, said its lawyer, Tom Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund [1].
Of three townships sued by corporations over their ordinances, only Blaine has refused to back down, Linzey said.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, towns are resisting efforts by energy companies to extract natural gas from the massive Marcellus Shale formation amid fears that toxic chemicals used in drilling are contaminating ground water and endangering human health.
CREEKS DIVERTED
In Blaine, residents are seeking to prevent coal mining -- which they expect to begin there in 2011 -- because they fear it will ruin their houses and disrupt water supplies, as they say it has in surrounding areas.
They want to block longwall mining, a technique that rips tons of coal from underground without putting anything in its place, causing the land above to sag. The practice, which has been used in coal-rich southwest Pennsylvania since the 1970s, has cracked the walls, roofs and basements of homes and opened fissures in the land, diverting or draining creeks and ponds.
In neighboring Morris Township, Tammy Bowman pointed to a pile of broken wood and concrete -- all that's left of an outbuilding she said was destroyed by shifting ground from mining beneath her 19th century farmhouse.
"It just started to drop and drop," she said. "It got so bad, you couldn't even walk in the door."
One section of her house is held up with mechanical jacks.
Near the village of Graysville, the 62-acre (25-hectare) Duke Lake, once used for fishing and boating, now sits empty after the shifting ground opened a crack in its retaining wall, environmentalists say.
Blaine's three ordinances, passed in 2006, 2007 and 2008, also assert that communities have a right under the U.S. Constitution to control business within their boundaries and that corporations do not have constitutional rights as "persons" to sue municipalities for passing laws that would hurt corporate interests.
"This illegitimate bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations prevents the administration of laws within Blaine Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights guaranteed to the people of Blaine Township," says the township's Corporate Rights Ordinance of 2006.
To implement the ordinances, township supervisors are now campaigning for "home rule," a legal code that transfers some powers from state to local control and is commonly used to raise taxes or increase the number of supervisors on a board.
ESTABLISHING HOME RULE
Blaine supervisors want to use home rule to establish what they say is the township's constitutional right to control corporate activity. Voters on May 19 approved a plan to set up a commission to study the proposal and recommend whether to adopt it.
A third lawsuit has been brought by Range Resources, a natural gas company, asking the court to invalidate Blaine's demand that corporations disclose their activities.
Penn Ridge Coal and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal are asking U.S. Judge Donetta Ambrose of the Western District of Pennsylvania to declare Blaine's ordinances invalid and unenforceable.
In April, Judge Ambrose denied the township's motion to dismiss the case. She is expected to rule late this year.
Linzey predicted the case will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court because it pits energy companies who want to exploit one of America's richest coal seams against residents who are determined to resist what they see as rapacious mining.
He conceded the court is unlikely to overturn more than 100 years of established law that gives corporations rights as "persons" under the constitution, but he said the expected outcome would become a springboard for a popular campaign for a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of those rights.
Blaine's supervisors said they want to establish a principle of local self-government that will inspire other communities.
Some legal experts say the township is highly unlikely to win that fight. For now the dispute is in federal district court, where major energy companies have sued the township over three ordinances that would ban coal mining and require companies in any business to disclose their activities to local officials.
Penn Ridge Coal LLC, a unit of Alliance Resource Partners, and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co., a unit of Allegheny Energy, say Blaine's laws violate their corporate rights.
The companies say the ordinances would prevent them from mining 10.6 million tons of recoverable coal beneath the township -- enough to supply electricity for 2 million people for a year.
The township has gone further than any of the 120 U.S. municipalities -- most of them in Pennsylvania -- that have passed ordinances to curb corporate activity such as factory farming or spreading sewage sludge, said its lawyer, Tom Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund [1].
Of three townships sued by corporations over their ordinances, only Blaine has refused to back down, Linzey said.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, towns are resisting efforts by energy companies to extract natural gas from the massive Marcellus Shale formation amid fears that toxic chemicals used in drilling are contaminating ground water and endangering human health.
CREEKS DIVERTED
In Blaine, residents are seeking to prevent coal mining -- which they expect to begin there in 2011 -- because they fear it will ruin their houses and disrupt water supplies, as they say it has in surrounding areas.
They want to block longwall mining, a technique that rips tons of coal from underground without putting anything in its place, causing the land above to sag. The practice, which has been used in coal-rich southwest Pennsylvania since the 1970s, has cracked the walls, roofs and basements of homes and opened fissures in the land, diverting or draining creeks and ponds.
In neighboring Morris Township, Tammy Bowman pointed to a pile of broken wood and concrete -- all that's left of an outbuilding she said was destroyed by shifting ground from mining beneath her 19th century farmhouse.
"It just started to drop and drop," she said. "It got so bad, you couldn't even walk in the door."
One section of her house is held up with mechanical jacks.
Near the village of Graysville, the 62-acre (25-hectare) Duke Lake, once used for fishing and boating, now sits empty after the shifting ground opened a crack in its retaining wall, environmentalists say.
Blaine's three ordinances, passed in 2006, 2007 and 2008, also assert that communities have a right under the U.S. Constitution to control business within their boundaries and that corporations do not have constitutional rights as "persons" to sue municipalities for passing laws that would hurt corporate interests.
"This illegitimate bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations prevents the administration of laws within Blaine Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights guaranteed to the people of Blaine Township," says the township's Corporate Rights Ordinance of 2006.
To implement the ordinances, township supervisors are now campaigning for "home rule," a legal code that transfers some powers from state to local control and is commonly used to raise taxes or increase the number of supervisors on a board.
ESTABLISHING HOME RULE
Blaine supervisors want to use home rule to establish what they say is the township's constitutional right to control corporate activity. Voters on May 19 approved a plan to set up a commission to study the proposal and recommend whether to adopt it.
A third lawsuit has been brought by Range Resources, a natural gas company, asking the court to invalidate Blaine's demand that corporations disclose their activities.
Penn Ridge Coal and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal are asking U.S. Judge Donetta Ambrose of the Western District of Pennsylvania to declare Blaine's ordinances invalid and unenforceable.
In April, Judge Ambrose denied the township's motion to dismiss the case. She is expected to rule late this year.
Linzey predicted the case will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court because it pits energy companies who want to exploit one of America's richest coal seams against residents who are determined to resist what they see as rapacious mining.
He conceded the court is unlikely to overturn more than 100 years of established law that gives corporations rights as "persons" under the constitution, but he said the expected outcome would become a springboard for a popular campaign for a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of those rights.
Blaine's supervisors said they want to establish a principle of local self-government that will inspire other communities.
"Who dictates how we are going to live here?" asked Board spokesman Michael Vacca. "Should it not be us?"
(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Cynthia Osterman)
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/15-1
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal
Comment: Mining is mining, uranium and coal mining ruins people lives, land and air with the Federal and State gov't approving the mining!Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts. The most recent books she has written are Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. (Duke University Press, 2008) and They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration. (Beacon Press, 2007). She has also recently co-edited The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights/Bajo el manto del carbón: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas del Cerrejón, Colombia (Casa Editorial Pisando Callos, 2007) and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2003).
Chomsky is also a founder of the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, which has been working since 2002 with Colombian labor and popular movements, especially those affected by the foreign-owned mining sector. She just returned from the Witness for Peace delegation (May 28 – June 6) that traveled to two regions devastated by coal mining: the state of Kentucky and to northern Colombia. The Kentucky segment was sponsored by Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC), where participants witnessed the impact of Mountain Top Removal mining and Valley Fills on local communities. In Colombia the delegation met with human rights activists, trade unionists, members of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, and others affected by coal production in Colombia.
Hans Bennett: Having just returned from the Witness for Peace delegation’s trip to Kentucky and Colombia, can you please tell us about your visit to Kentucky, and about the group ‘Kentuckians For The Commonwealth’ (KFTC)?
Aviva Chomsky: KFTC is a community organization working on social justice issues, one of them being local resistance to mountaintop removal coal mining that is destroying lands and communities in Appalachia. I’ve been working with them since last summer, when 4 people from that organization came with us on our delegation to the Colombian coal region. The connections they made between the two regions were amazing. In both, big companies run roughshod over some of the poorest and most marginalized people. People are losing their land, their water, their right to clean air, and their homes to the coal mines. The Kentuckians felt a real link with the Colombian communities, that they were part of the same struggle. Last fall, we worked with KFTC to organize a tour for two Colombian coal union leaders. They spent a week in Kentucky, seeing for themselves the results of mountaintop removal, and speaking to different audiences there. The Colombians were also incredibly moved by the destruction of land and lives in Kentucky. They couldn’t believe that this was happening in the First World. We decided we’d really like to organize a delegation that would visit both regions—and that’s what we did this summer. We spent 3 days in the Kentucky coal region, and then went to Colombia. We also had 5 people from Appalachia, all involved in different aspects of the movement against mountaintop removal, with us on the Colombian part of the delegation.
HB: What did members of the group share with the delegation?
AC: One thing that really struck me was the ways that people in both the Colombian and the Kentuckian coal regions talked about the land. I’m from the city, and have lived a pretty cosmopolitan life. For people in eastern Kentucky, like those in northern Colombia, the land is tied to the essence of their identity. People have generations-long ties to the land, they farm the land, they feel personally connected to the mountains, to the rivers, to the farms. Also, in both regions, people are aware that they are seen as expendable, not only by the coal companies, but by the centers of power. Both regions suffer from a lack of state services, and have been really politically marginalized. But also in both regions, there is a really powerful sense of collective identity that I think has contributed to the strength of the social struggles there.
In one interview a few years ago, a Colombian indigenous leader explained to us that for his people, the earth was “la madre tierra,” mother earth. “It hurts us to see the earth damaged,” he said, pointing to the gaping hole of the mine. People in eastern Kentucky talked the same way about their mountains.
HB: What has been the impact of the coal mining industry, Mountain Top Removal mining and Valley Fills on the local communities?
AC: The impact has been devastating. I’ve never been anywhere else in the United States where you can’t drink the water! But the tap water smells so sulfurous that I was even wondering if it was safe to shower in. People in the region complain of the same kinds of illnesses and reactions that we’ve seen in Colombia—respiratory ailments, rashes and skin diseases, eye diseases—reactions to coal particles in the air and in the water. Rivers that used to run crystal clear have turned into toxic sludge. People’s homes are being surrounded by the various impacts. A mountainous region is being flattened. A way of life and a people are being forced into extinction.
After visiting Kentucky, the Colombian union leaders told us they were shocked by how “irrational” the mining was there. I didn’t really understand what they meant until I saw it myself. In Colombia, there are huge 7-foot seams of coal. The mines there are giant operations that have opened up many-mile long areas. In Kentucky, whole mountains are being felled for little seams that are only a few inches wide! And believe it or not, there seem to be more serious reclamation efforts going on in Colombia than in Kentucky.
HB: After visiting Kentucky, the delegation flew to Colombia, which your flyer explains is “the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the hemisphere, and also the country with the highest levels of official and paramilitary violence, including forced displacement, killings of journalists, trade unionists, and human rights activists.” The flyer asserts that “foreign corporations are some of the major beneficiaries of this situation.” How do the corporations benefit from this? How does US financial and diplomatic support for the Colombian government influence the situation?
AC: Colombia is the poster child for neoliberalism in Latin America. Since the 1970s the United States—and the international financial institutions that it plays a leading role in, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—have been pushing a development model on Latin America that calls, essentially, for governments to act in the interests of multinational capital. Governments are supposed to invite in foreign investment, and provide it with low taxes, low wages, and low regulation. They are supposed to cut back on social spending, and offer state enterprises up to the private sector. And, they’re supposed to quash any popular protest against these policies, using force if necessary. These policies have gone by names such as structural adjustment, the Washington Consensus, the Chicago Boys prescriptions (referring to the role of Milton Friedman and other economists from the University of Chicago), or neoliberalism. The United States has played a key role in the implementation of these policies—from working for the overthrow of elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and their implementation there, to Plan Colombia today, by which the United States provides military and economic aid that goes directly to implementing this economic model and crushing protest.
Union leaders have been some of the most visible victims. In the U.S.-owned Drummond mine in northern Colombia, three union leaders were assassinated in 2001. The company is currently facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly paying a paramilitary force to carry out the murders. Another U.S. company, Chiquita Brands, admitted to making payments for years to the paramilitaries. They claimed that they made the payments to protect their workers, but banana workers—and especially union activists—were the main victims among the hundreds murdered by paramilitaries during the 1990s and early 2000s.
HB: Before we talk about the delegation’s visit to Colombia this month, I’d like to first refer back to our 2007 interview in Z Magazine titled Colombia Solidarity Work, and ask you to please give an update about what has been going on since then, during this two year period since then.
AC: When we visited the Cerrejón mine in the summer and late fall of 2006, the company had taken the stance that it would not recognize or negotiate with the displaced Afro-Colombian community of Tabaco. It also insisted that community issues and union issues be kept completely separate. The union had included a demand about the rights of the communities in its 2006 bargaining proposal, and the company absolutely refused to include this in the contract—although they did agree to a side letter inviting the union to participate in the company’s social programs.
In the summer of 2007, Cerrejón announced that it was forming a Social Review Panel to evaluate its relations with the communities and provide recommendations. The Panel concluded that the displacement of Tabaco was a festering wound, and that the company simply had to rectify this if it wanted to develop any kind of working relationship with the local communities. The company agreed, finally, to engage in collective negotiations with former Tabaco residents, aimed at a resettlement of the community. This was a struggle that had been going on for ten years! In December of 2008, the company signed an agreement with the community defining the terms of the relocation and for compensation for the people who had been displaced. This was a huge victory.
Still, in some ways we were struck with how much has not changed. Although the agreement was signed with Tabaco, the relocation process has not yet begun—so people are still displaced. In the other communities we work with, the company has been engaging in collective negotiations for relocation—but they are still desperately poor, landless, and living in the shadows of the world’s largest open-pit coal mine.
In the Cesar Department, where the U.S.-owned Drummond mine operates, things are even worse. Union leaders there live in daily fear for their safety and lives. We had hoped to return to one community that we visited last summer, Mechoacán—but it had been wiped off the map. We met with the communities of Boquerón, El Hatillo, and Plan Bonito, that are slowly being strangled by the mine. Drummond, unlike Cerrejón, still refuses to recognize any right to collective relocation for these communities, and is simply trying to starve people out in hopes that they will leave.
HB: Okay, now let’s talk about your recent visit to Colombia. Who did you meet with and what did they talk about? What were the key issues addressed?
AC: The main issues we’ve been working on, with our partners in Colombia, are labor rights and community rights, in the areas where the multinational coal mines operate. The coal region in Colombia is in the north, close to the Caribbean coast, in the Cesar and La Guajira Departments. The people who have lived there for decades, in some cases centuries, are mostly Afro-Colombian and indigenous peasants who have survived by farming, hunting, fishing, and day labor on ranches owned by large landholders in the area.
Multinational mining came to La Guajira in the 1980s, to Cesar in the 1990s. These mines are almost unbelievably gigantic operations—Cerrejón claims to be the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, and Drummond is currently undergoing expansion that it says will make it overtake even Cerrejón’s size. Each one employs thousands of workers, some directly, and some through subcontractors.
The main people we spent time with there were the unions at the two mines—including the Injured Workers Association at the Drummond mine—and the communities that have been displaced, or are in the process of displacement. Everyone we met with there seemed to share the belief that getting their stories out to the U.S. public was essential to protecting their lives and their livelihoods. Drummond is a U.S. company, and much of the coal produced by both mines is imported by U.S. power plants. People in Colombia are also acutely aware at the huge influence that the United States has on their country’s policies. Mostly, they want us to tell their stories here in the United States, so that people here will pressure Drummond, the companies that buy the coal, and the U.S. government, to make sure that workers and communities in the coal region have the same rights that we here enjoy—the right to personal safety, the right to clean water, to education, to safe working conditions, to form unions, to be able to provide for their children, to not live in fear of their government or of the companies that operate in their midst.
HB: How does the union organizing in Colombia compare to the organizing in Kentucky, and the US in general?
AC: We were shocked to learn that there are no unionized mines left in eastern Kentucky. Not even in Harlan County. Yet despite a high level of disillusionment with the United Mineworkers among many of the people we met with in Kentucky—because of its weak or non-existent critique of surface mining, and because of the capitulations it has made to industry that people believe are responsible for its demise in the region—people there have an incredibly high level of union consciousness. Nearly everybody we met talked to us about how their fathers, their uncles, their grandfathers, had fought and in some cases shed blood, to bring in the union.
Unions in Colombia—especially those in the coal mines—are extremely militant, and have a strong current of leftist analysis and environmental consciousness that are pretty uncommon among unions in the U.S. today. The union leaders we met with talk about foreign mining companies raping the land and the people, looting their country’s natural resources, lining the pockets of shareholders with coal produced with the blood and the land of Colombians.
In both the U.S. and Colombia, union density has been falling. In Colombia, the main cause has been violence against unions; in the U.S., deindustrialization has played a big role. The AFL-CIO has a checkered history in Colombia, as it does in the rest of Latin America. Historically, the federation has been closely linked to U.S. foreign policy goals through the American Institute for Free Labor Development or AIFLD. I think the AFL-CIO is trying to overcome this past, and the suspicion it has generated in Latin America. Yet it is also struggling with internal conflicts, and now the accelerating economic crisis, and I think it has not made as much progress as it could in the area of trying to develop real international solidarity.
HB: How does the coal mining trade fit into the current global energy crisis and fossil fuels’ effects on the environment, including global warming?
AC: We had an interesting conversation about this during one of our meetings in Colombia. One of our delegates works with the Move America Beyond Coal campaign, and she asked Jairo Quiroz, the president of the Sintracarbón union that represents workers in the Cerrejón coal mine, more or less the same question: don’t we just have to stop mining and burning coal altogether, given its environmental impact? Jairo’s response really challenged all of us, I think. “There is no clean source of energy,” he said. “You in the United States are the ones who use most of the world’s energy resources. What do you propose to use, if we stop mining coal? Petroleum and natural gas are no better for the environment than coal is, and both contribute to global climate change. Nuclear energy also requires mining, and creates waste products even more dangerous than coal’s. Solar energy and wind energy are only viable where those resources are sufficiently available, and they also require production, transmission and storage techniques and equipment that depend on mining (for turbines, batteries, solar panels, etc.) and the use of toxins. So-called biofuels are the worst of all, because they expand the agro-industrial model which has profound environmental effects—from deforestation to desertification to overuse of pesticides and fertilizers—and it also disrupts the whole food chain by channeling agricultural land to the production of fuel instead of food.” Basically, his point was that rather than pointing the finger at coal, we needed to think about the underlying causes of environmental destruction—like our overuse of energy. “As long as you want to keep using that much energy,” he said, “we’re going to keep mining coal.”
There’s always a challenge, in a campaign for social and political change, to choose a target that’s narrow enough that you can effectively organize around it, but making sure that you don’t get distracted from the larger goals by the narrow target. In Salem, we have a coal-fired power plant. Some people argue, from an environmental perspective, that we should shut down the plant. But what are the larger implications of that argument? Unless we are planning to stop using electricity altogether, it just means that we’ll be getting it from another plant somewhere else. It can turn into a kind of NIMBY-ism [i.e., “not in my back yard”]—we don’t want to have to see the impact of our standard of living, we want to displace it onto somebody else. That’s how our system works—and that’s how we’re encouraged to think. We need to think more profoundly about the causes of global warming and environmental destruction if we really want to address them.
This may seem only peripherally related, but one of the communities we visited, in the Cesar Department, was located right next to the trash dump for the city of La Loma. Trash is blowing around, and it smells awful. Also, many of the communities we work with have no running water—thus no real latrines. These issues made me think about the multiplications of our privileges in the First World. We don’t have to see where our energy comes from, and we don’t have to see where our waste goes—we just live in this bubble of plenty and our waste is invisibly whisked away—all of which encourage us to continue abusing and wasting the earth’s resources!
HB: How has the recent election of several leftist and ‘left of center’ Presidents throughout Latin America (most recently in El Salvador) changed US power and influence? How do you think the US is reacting to this? What role with Colombia play in US strategy given that it is one of the last remaining right-wing governments?
AC: The United States is clearly counting on Colombia to play a major role in maintaining and promoting what they call “U.S. interests”—which generally means the interests of U.S. corporations—in Latin America. Ecuador’s new government recently announced that it is not renewing the U.S. lease on its military base in Manta, Ecuador. So among other things, it looks like Colombia will be the site of the new base that will replace Manta.
There are really two things that a leftist government in Latin American needs to accomplish—neither one of them simple. One is to redistribute their countries’ resources internally, to address the region’s devastating social and economic inequalities. The other is to reformulate Latin America’s relationship with the rest of the world, to break out of the pattern established after 1492, in which Latin America provides cheap labor, and cheap resources, for the benefit of Europe and later the United States. These are monumental problems, and the United States government has shown itself pretty committed to keeping the status quo, even if doing so requires violence, murder, invasions, or coups.
Many of the people I spoke with on this trip seemed to feel a lot of hope that we’re entering a new era, in which the United States will choose—or be forced—to accept major structural changes in Latin America. Despite Obama’s diplomatic language, he’s already shown that he’s quite ready to use military methods to further what the U.S. defines as its interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But other factors—the swing to the left in Latin America, the work towards alternative regional economic integration, the economic crisis, and the growing global awareness of the environmental crisis and the planet’s limited resources—could contribute to some real changes.
HB: How can readers best help support the current work of the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, Witness for Peace, and those in Colombia who you recently visited?
AC: We’re hoping to bring one or two community leaders from the Colombian coal region to the U.S. on speaking tours this fall. We are also planning another delegation for next summer. And, we do occasional “urgent action” requests in support of the work our Colombian partners are doing. You can join the Witness for Peace or NSCSC e-lists to get updated information about all of these activities, or write to us directly at nscolombia@comcast.net if you want to get more involved in the planning.
Hans Bennett is an independent multimedia journalist, whose website is www.insubordination.blogspot.com.
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