Colorado-based Wright
Environmental Services[1] had a big payday on Tuesday as it
hauled in two separate uranium mining related contracts, one from the Virginia
Department of Health and the other to assist the Department of Environmental
Quality (DEQ) and the Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME). The two
contracts were worth $520,000 and $513,000, respectively.[2]
The contract awarded by the Virginia Department of Health is
part of the McDonnell administration’s effort to assist Virginia’s multi-agency
“work group” in their information gathering process to create a “conceptual
regulatory framework” for lawmakers to review in the case of a lift to the
three decades old ban on uranium mining.
The second contract will go towards assisting DEQ and DMME[3] analyze
licensing, permitting, and engineering regulations.
Two teams have been assigned by Wright Environmental Services
to work on the two studies with some overlap expected.
The bottom line, however, is that over $1 million in
additional taxpayer money has been spent on a pair of contracts, the results of
which may never benefit Virginians by way of energy from uranium ore. Why?
Because uranium mining in Virginia is not safe enough to be conducted due to
the lopsided ratio of rainfall to evaporation, among many other reasons.[4]
For one reason or another, proponents of mining uranium in
Virginia have claimed that the process would be safe, but relative to what, on
what grounds has this conclusion been based? Virginians and Americans in
general have seen this movie one too many times. Big natural resource is found.
Big company(s) and their political friends attempt to take financial advantage
of the discovery. Local community and workers adversely affected.[5]
But those incidents were in the past, right? Those incidents
were in another country, or another part of the country, or the technology wasn’t
as “up to date” as the technology which exists today. The same responses have
been given to the same concerns and Virginians therefore have every reason to
be apprehensive.
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