Put our health and safety ahead of corporate greed

September 5, 2012

The Danville Register and Bee reports, "As it has so many times before, the uranium mining question dominated much of the public comments portion of the most recent meeting of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors The comments Tuesday night were about a resolution on uranium mining and milling on the agenda for the meeting but taken off at the start by Banister District Supervisor Jessie Barksdale."

Progressive Point: Virginia leaders should put our health and safety ahead of corporate profits. Virginia's ban on uranium mining protects our families by keeping our water clean, safe, and drinkable. Eliminating those protections might help big corporate campaign contributors, but at the expense of our families.

Corporate special interests are trying to undo the rules we put in place after learning the hard way, from our broken health care system to the Wall Street meltdown, that cutting corners doesn't create jobs, it kills them. Common sense safeguards protect the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Our Commonwealth will move forward when we focus on creating jobs and not cutting common sense safeguards.

Get the Facts:

• Virginia Uranium, the company seeing to mine uranium in Virginia, has hired over a dozen lobbyists from five different firms and has donated over $150,000 to political campaigns in the last 4 years. (VPAP)


• Del. Donald Merricks, Del. Danny Marshall III, Del. James Edmunds, Del. Tommy Wright, and Sen. Frank Ruff all said in a letter to Virginia's General Assembly that the risk of uranium mining to the people of Virginia and its environment is too great and that the ban should not be lifted. (Virginian-Pilot, January 3, 2012)


• A recent NAS study validated the concern that a flood, hurricane, or earthquake could result in an uncontrolled release at a uranium facility--all three of which Virginia experienced last year. (Cale Jaffe, senior attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center, Keep the Ban, December 19, 2011)


• In 2009, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors called for "a study to determine no harm would come to the county and its residents before the moratorium could be lifted... The resolution being discussed at Tuesday's board meeting stated the NAS study showed Virginia has no experience with uranium mining and there's no guarantee there would be no release of radioactive sediments downstream of the Coles Hill site and, therefore, the criteria of the original resolution in 2009 have not been satisfied." (Danville Register and Bee, September 5, 2012)

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