Catastrophe in the Making: Mining for Uranium Could Begin on the East Coast

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/catastrophe-making-mining-uranium-could-begin-east-coast



We know many of our
tragedies by name; in recent years we have met Andrew, Katrina, Ike, Irene, and most recently, Sandy. They defied our expectations — the lost lives, ruined homes, ransacked communities. There is little comfort looking forward. We’re told to expect more storms, and worse ones. It’s hard to imagine how bad things could get, but then, not everyone has to imagine. Some people may remember Camille.

Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi Gulf coast on Aug. 17,1969, thrashing communities with a tidal storm surge nearly three stories high and winds of up to 200 miles an hour. Or so experts think — it’s hard to say, since the storm destroyed all of the wind recording instruments in the region. When the storm had moved on, many homes were underwater or on fire, and 143 people in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were dead. But Camille wasn’t done.

As the storm moved north, it grew weaker until August 19, when what was left of Camille collided with another system of wet air by the Blue Ridge Mountains. The result was a storm of immense magnitude that took rural Nelson County, Virginia, completely by surprise. Stefan Bechtel explains in his book Roar of the Heavens , small communities in the mountains of central Virginia were inundated with “one of the heaviest rainfalls ever recorded on earth” — in some areas an estimated 31 inches of rain fell in less than eight hours.

“Humans, animals, trees, boulders, houses, cars, barns, and everything else were swept away in a fast-moving slurry, a kind of deadly earth-lava that buried everything in its path,” Bechtel writes. Birds drowned in the trees, people struggling to stay alive had to cover their mouths from the rain to breathe, homes floated away or were crushed by debris. An estimated 2,000 years of erosion of the mountains took place in one night. As rivers rose, flash-flooding occurred all over Virginia, and in Nelson County alone 153 people died, many of their bodies never recovered.

[psychmommy]

1. Great article. thanks.

[CRH]

2. Well written article, ...

And whether you are for or against the nuclear option for the future, the reality modern communities face is dire.

Let's say, you have deposits of a mineral below land that was sold without mineral rights how many years, decades, or centuries ago? Whenever the mineral rights were separated from the land, they were then retained or sold to what now have morphed into multinational corporations.

When the corporations want to mine the minerals, they then put into motion what is happening to rural Virginia now. The corporations literally write the regulations they want, and pass it on to politicians they already have in place, to enact as state law without a vote from the local people most impacted.

excerpted from the OP article, pp. 6

Does this mean Gov. McDonnell is willing to use his political muscle to lift the ban? It’s not clear, but Virginia Uranium and its lobbyists are working hard — and may be seeking an alternate strategy instead of a straight vote on the ban. O’Connor reported for DC Bureau, "Whitt Clement, head of the state government relations team at Hunton & Williams and one of 19 lobbyists employed by Virginia Uranium, told a closed-door meeting of Virginia business leaders in Williamsburg last month that the company is working on legislation that would authorize state agencies to draft regulations to govern mining rather than voting directly on the project."

The Uranium Working Group’s findings were released just this week and it was news that State Senator John Watkins would be introducing legislation during the 2013 session to lift the moratorium. In a news release on December 3 he said, “I have made a request to Legislative Services for legislation that adheres to the principles outlined by the UWG (Uranium Working Group) and intend to be the patron of such a bill.”

end

So the governor appoints a committee, the UWG, and hires a industry sponsored consulting firm to draft regulations for mining, while skipping over the 2011 National Academy of Science report that should have led to an up or down vote on lifting of the mining moratorium.

It will be interesting if the Bill largely written by private consultants and lobbyists even acknowledges the original study. It does seem certain that some of the decisions will be made in committees of the general assembly, beyond the purview of the local people to be most effected. It will also be of interest to see if an entire vote of the assembly will be needed to determine the success of this end run. Will any grass roots actions from small rural local communities be able to compete, with decisions already bought and paid for, in the sham we call democracy?