Virginian-Pilot - SUFFOLK
The City Council added its voice to those of other Hampton Roads cities calling for the continuation of a 30-year ban on uranium mining in Virginia.
By a unanimous vote, the council adopted a resolution Wednesday that opposes the mining and milling of uranium in Pittsylvania County, which it described as a potential threat to the region’s water supply.
The action came in response to an effort by Virginia Uranium Inc. to get state approval to mine an estimated 119-million-pound uranium ore deposit at Coles Hill, about six miles northeast of Chatham. The site is upstream from Lake Gaston, which provides one-third of the drinking water supplied to Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Suffolk buys water from Norfolk through the Western Tidewater Water Authority.
Mining opponents have warned that Virginia’s wet, storm-prone environment is a risky place to process uranium and store its waste, called tailings. Most uranium mining has been done in the arid West.
Opponents say a hurricane or torrential rain could send radioactive tailings into streams and underground aquifers that feed into Lake Gaston and could contaminate nearby farmland.
Company officials have described the Coles Hill site as the largest uranium deposit in the United States and one of the largest in the world, worth between $7 billion and $10 billion. They say a mining and milling operation would create hundreds of jobs and boost the area’s economy by as much as $135 million.
The company is asking the state to lift a moratorium enacted by the General Assembly in 1982.
Gov. Bob McDonnell has created a working group to determine what regulations would be needed for uranium mining should the ban be lifted. Currently, there are none. He asked lawmakers to postpone acting on the moratorium until the study is completed.
The Suffolk council’s resolution said that while the discharge of uranium tailings into the Roanoke River system is unlikely, “the adverse consequences of such a release would be enormous and unacceptable” for the region.
It cited a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences that found “it could not be demonstrated to a reasonable degree of certainty that there would be no significant release of radioactive sediments” downstream.
Any release, it said, “would mean that the Lake Gaston water supply would be unavailable for use… for up to two years.”
“One large, or several small, accidents or releases” of radioactive contaminants resulting from a mining operation, according to the NAS study, “would significantly reverse the economic benefits of the project, even if no serious harm to people or the environment occurred,” the resolution said.
Councils in Virginia Beach and Norfolk adopted similar resolutions earlier this summer. Chesapeake’s council is set to take up the matter Tuesday.
Jeff Sheler, 757-222-5563, jeff.sheler@pilotonline.com
