CHATHAM — Of all the cow pastures in Pittsylvania County, where dairy farms dot the rolling landscape, this one looks no different than the rest.
But it is, as Patrick Wales and his Geiger counter are about to demonstrate. On a blustery November afternoon, Wales walks along a fence line, pointing the device downward.
The Geiger counter begins to tick wildly, indicating that below the ground lies a vast deposit of uranium.
Wales checks the reading: 3,860 counts per minute, about 10 times the normal level of radiation emitted from the earth.
“That’s something you would be interested in,” he said.
Sure enough, lots of people are interested in this cow pasture and adjoining farmland.
Landowner Walter Coles is interested in the billions of dollars buried under Coles Hill, the farm that’s been in his family for five generations. Four years ago, Coles formed Virginia Uranium Inc. and hired Wales to carry out his goal of mining the uranium, an estimated 119 million pounds, to be sold for fuel in power-generating nuclear reactors.
Many more people are interested, too, but for different reasons. Where some see a gold mine, they see a potential public health and environmental disaster.
Do the risks of uranium mining outweigh the benefits? That will soon be a question for the General Assembly, which is expected to decide at its upcoming session whether to lift a 30-year moratorium on the practice.
Opponents say digging up and processing the uranium will create 28 million tons of radioactive waste – enough to fill 145 Super Walmart stores – that could poison local wells and seep into the Roanoke River, contaminating the drinking water for nearly 2 million people downstream of the mine.
The mining leftovers, called tailings, would be stored on the site and maintain their radioactivity for more than 1,000 years.
“Do we want to manage radioactive waste in perpetuity?” asked Cale Jaffe, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Is that the legacy we want for Virginia?”
At least two studies have predicted widespread water contamination in the event of a flood or other catastrophe. Any day now, the National Academy of Sciences is expected to release the most detailed report to date on the issue.
The report, based on nearly two years of research, will not evaluate the Coles Hill site or recommend whether uranium mining should be permitted in Virginia, according to the academy’s website.
Nonetheless, those on both sides of the debate say it will play a key role in determining the future of Coles Hill – and perhaps that of other places.
A natural resource
Uranium, and the radiation it carries, is all around us.
The naturally occurring metal is present in rocks and soil, usually in such low concentrations as to not pose a health risk. Normally, about 260 pounds of uranium can be found in an area the size of a football field and 10 feet deep, according to Bob Bodnar, a geochemistry professor at Virginia Tech.
The 3,500-acre Coles Hill site is far from normal.
If all 119 million pounds of uranium can be mined, it would be the nation’s largest source of yellowcake, as the finished product is called.
Virginia Uranium estimates the deposit to be worth about $7 billion.
The Coles family has known about the underground riches for years, Walter Coles said last month as he stood outside the old plantation home that has graced the property since the early 1800s.
A geologist friend first used a Geiger counter on the property in the 1950s, only to leave thinking his machine was malfunctioning to show such high levels, Coles recalled.
After later tests confirmed the deposit, a company called Marline Uranium Corp. proposed a mining operation.
Uranium had not been mined commercially in Virginia at the time, and the state had no regulations on the practice. In 1982, the General Assembly enacted the moratorium and asked for a study of potential health risks.
Then the price of uranium plummeted, in part because of continued reaction to the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and the company dropped its plans.
Now, with the uranium market on the rise, state lawmakers are being asked to lift the moratorium, which would pump millions of dollars into Pittsylvania County’s depressed economy and make Virginia a major provider in the quest for alternative energy.
Virginia Uranium has spent more than $150,000 on campaign contributions to lawmakers and has flown some of them to France and Canada to tour uranium mines, in anticipation of what’s shaping up as the biggest environmental issue to hit the state capital in years.
The company says mining practices have improved and there’s no reason to keep a ban from the 1980s.
“We are committed to building the safest uranium mine in the world,” said Wales, the project manager for Virginia Uranium. “That’s a bold statement, but we are committed to that.”
Risks vs. safeguards
Byron Motley drives his pickup truck along country roads near the Coles Hill property, just 2 miles from his home, on a guided tour of his fears.
There’s the Banister River, muddy and swollen from recent rains. There’s a low-lying field where floodwaters have reached the tops of fence posts. There’s a patch of wetland. And another.
The point, Motley makes from behind the steering wheel, is that the wet climate here is far different than in the western United States, where nearly all of the country’s uranium is mined in arid conditions.
Motley worries that containment ponds, where radioactive tailings the consistency of sand would be mixed with water and stored for centuries, could be breached by one of the hurricanes or tornados that’s sure to come.
“I personally don’t see any way on earth to contain what they’re going to do,” he said. “I just don’t see it.”
Earlier this year, his concerns were confirmed by a study for the city of Virginia Beach, which draws its drinking water from Lake Gaston – part of the Roanoke River basin that is downstream from the proposed uranium mine. The lake also supplies water to Norfolk and Chesapeake.
If a storm, earthquake or other disaster were to disturb the tailings, toxic runoff into Kerr Lake would lead to radiation levels “many times greater” than what is allowed by the Safe Drinking Water Act, the study found. Kerr Lake, which is directly upstream of Lake Gaston, provides drinking water to three counties and a town in Southside.
Although there would be less contamination in Lake Gaston, the study predicted, it would still take two months to two years for the radiation levels to return to normal.
A second study, released last month by the Roanoke River Basin Association, found the mine could cause “long-term, chronic degradation of water quality” in the area.
Undiluted tailings at the site could contain up to 1,460 times the Safe Drinking Water Act standard for uranium, according to the study.
Wales, of Virginia Uranium, did not dispute that finding. But he questioned its relevance.
“You don’t want to drink uranium mill tailings, so that should not be a surprise to anyone,” he said.
The company says the containment cells, built to comply with strict federal regulations, would be extremely unlikely to fail in the way assumed by the Virginia Beach study. The cells, which resemble large ponds, would be lined with clay and synthetic material to prevent leaks, Wales said.
The storage areas would sit below the land’s natural grade, eliminating the need for dams that might collapse, and above the floodplain, according to Virginia Uranium.
Some of the tailings, no more than half of the 28 million tons, would be placed back into the mine once all the uranium ore is removed.
All things considered, the company figures, the chances of a major failure are one in 10 million.
Problems in the past
Yet things have already gone wrong in the western United States, where all of the nation’s eight or so uranium mines are located, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.
One operation in Colorado has been leaking for 30 years and was declared a Superfund cleanup site, costing anywhere from $50 million to $500 million, the group says. It also cites two cases in Canada where more than 500,000 gallons of tainted water escaped from the mines.
“Everywhere you look, there seems to be contamination with these mines,” said Motley, who lives on a 102-acre hay farm that’s been a part of his family for seven generations.
Another concern is that dust from the operation, possibly carrying radon and other carcinogens, could be carried by the wind to faraway places.
A study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that the dust from uranium mines can spread up to 50 miles, which would include Smith Mountain Lake and parts of the Roanoke Valley.
On his tour of the area, about 5 miles northeast of the county seat of Chatham, Motley drove by roadside signs his neighbors have put up in opposition of the mine.
There are 250 private wells within 2 miles of the Coles Hill property, Motley said, and some people worry that groundwater contamination will force them to move.
“This is my life,” he said of the land around him. “This is my livelihood. I could go someplace else to live, but it would just be a roof over my head. This is home, and you can’t replace that.”
Now or later?
If the National Academy of Sciences study concludes that mining can be done safely, the debate over lifting the state’s moratorium could be one of the most closely watched issues in the 60-day General Assembly session that begins Jan. 11.
Or it could be a battle that is put off for another year.
Virginia Uranium has been laying the groundwork to win the fight. The company has 16 lobbyists from four different firms registered to represent it during the upcoming legislative session. They include Whitt Clement, a former state delegate and state transportation secretary, who is Walter Coles’ brother-in-law.
Virginia Uranium also has paid to fly some state lawmakers to France to tour a reclaimed uranium mining site and tailings facilities and to Canada to visit a working mine and meet with government regulators. Some opponents of uranium mining have criticized lawmakers for accepting the company-paid trips and questioned whether they received objective presentations.
“I walked away with having no reason in my mind to think they were sandbagging me or setting me up or trying to hide anything,” said Del. Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke, about his 2010 visit to Bessines, France.
Ware, a member of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission’s uranium mining subcommittee, also traveled to Saskatchewan in September on a company-funded fact-finding trip. Ware said he also has met with opponents of uranium mining and has not made up his mind on lifting the moratorium.
“I’m still pretty much at the wait-and-see area,” he said.
Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, who also sits on the subcommittee, said the visits to France and Canada were helpful.
“I’m a lot more familiar with it than I was before, and, frankly, I’m a lot more comfortable with it,” Wagner said. “My position would be almost, ‘Tell me why it can’t be done.'”
But even if the scientific study supports lifting the moratorium, some legislators argue that the General Assembly should not make a decision on the issue in the 2012 session.
“What concerns me is that we’re rushing in some ways to put the legislation forward before we fully understand what’s before us,” said Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, whose district includes the Coles Hill site.
Wagner raised the possibility that legislation could be introduced in 2012, then carried over for a year to allow lawmakers more time to consider it. The legislature also could ask state regulators to come up with rules governing uranium mining before taking a vote to lift the moratorium, Wagner suggested. Stanley said he liked the idea.
“This is one of the times where I think it might be better to put the cart before the horse,” he said.
Jaffe, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said a contract for the state-commissioned National Academy of Sciences study calls for a five-month period to allow for public outreach, including public hearings.
“My concern about doing anything in this session is that it’s reneging on that promise to have that five-month period of public review,” Jaffe said.
Gov. Bob McDonnell has said repeatedly that he won’t take a position on lifting the moratorium until his administration evaluates the scientific study. McDonnell has called for aggressive cultivation of Virginia’s natural energy resources and said the Coles Hill uranium deposit could have “substantial” economic benefits for the region and the state.
“But not at the cost of public safety,” he said last Wednesday.
“If it says there is absolutely no risk to uranium mining in Virginia, we ought to do it now,” McDonnell said. “If it has a number of caveats that draw concerns about water, air, land contamination, etc., then it may mean we need to proceed slowly.”
Fuel for the economy
The mother lode of uranium beneath Coles Hill – enough to power Virginia’s nuclear reactors for the next 70 years – could prove especially valuable in today’s push for alternative energy sources.
The United States gets 20percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, yet imports about 90 percent of the fuel from other countries.
Bodnar, the Virginia Tech professor, believes uranium deposits in Pittsylvania County – and perhaps other parts of the state – should be tapped to coincide with growing interest in nuclear power.
Lifting the moratorium “could lead to Virginia becoming the Saudi Arabia of nuclear fuel,” Bodnar wrote in a commentary published earlier this year in the Altavista Journal.
At the same time, it could provide a jolt to the economy in Pittsylvania County, where unemployment hovers above the state average.
A study released last month found that the Coles Hill operation would support more than 1,000 jobs, have an annual net economic impact of about $135 million and generate $3.1 million in local and state tax revenue a year.
The projections account for a “broad array of potential socioeconomic costs,” such as damage to public health and the environment, and “negative stigma” effects on agriculture and tourism, Richmond-based Chmura Economics and Analytics wrote in a report for the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission.
The Coles Hill site could generate nearly $5 billion in revenue for Virginia firms over its projected 35-year period of operations, according to the Chmura report.
Wales said the study “clearly demonstrates the enormous positive economic impact our project will have on businesses, families and communities throughout the Southside region and validates what our company has been all about from the very beginning.”
The report took into account a number of scenarios, including severe environmental damage caused by a mine and a drop in production caused by a lagging uranium market.
But the most-likely outcome, it found, was “modest” impact to the surrounding land, air and water – compared with “substantial” economic benefits.
As Virginia Uranium is quick to point out, the mine would be strictly regulated by state and federal agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But it could take years before it’s known how well those regulations will work, the report cautioned.
“It is fair to say,” it stated, “that the ability of the current regulations to fully and comprehensively protect the environment and public health for the long term remains an open question.”
With so many questions, and so little time to resolve them before the General Assembly convenes, opposition to lifting the ban next year seems to be gaining momentum.
Nearly 30 localities in Virginia and North Carolina, and as many organizations, have supported the mission of Keep the Ban, an umbrella group for opponents.
“Everything I’ve got is at stake,” Motley said. “The future of my family is at stake, and we just feel like we’ve got to fight it.”