 The Virginia General Assembly is expected to vote next year on whether to lift a 30-year moratorium on uranium mining in the state.
The issue has prompted an expensive lobbying campaign by the company that wants to mine a huge deposit known as Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County and an intense fight by environmentalists who want to stop it. The battle has pitted neighbor against neighbor in the county, in south central Virginia, an area known as Southside.
Two Virginians, each offered money to allow uranium mining on their land, personify the debate that is raging through the state. One accepted. The other declined.
Continue reading Uranium Mining – The Virginia Battleground – Environmental Concerns vs. Corporate Interests
 The Congo is the nexus of corporate greed, corrupt and morally bankrupt leadership and foreign political gamesmanship. Now Peter Eichstaedt, a veteran journalist and author who has real experience on the ground in Africa, has written a book that deserves your attention entitled Consuming The Congo.
Continue reading How You and I Are Consuming The Congo
Acid mine drainage from Spruce Road in Minnesota. Photo: Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness
More than a quarter of a million people a year visit the legendary Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minnesota to hike, camp and canoe its million acres of untouched forests, ancient rocks and fresh water lakes. The natural wilds abound free from the sound of motors, the glare of lamplight, or the views of telephone poles and wires. There are no roads to the inner lakes. It is one of 50 “Destinations of a Lifetime,” according to National Geographic.
Continue reading Midwest Mining Rush Threatens Water: Part VI: Minnesota: This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land
Photo: Royalbroil / Wiki Commons
Among the three Great Lake states, Wisconsin’s mining law is by far the strictest and has essentially halted sulfide ore mining in the state. In 1998, Wisconsin approved a law that requires any mining company seeking a permit for metallic sulfide mining to prove that they have operated a similar mine for 10 years without polluting surface or groundwater either from the mine or from the tailings. The company must also show that they closed the mine and remediated the site and, for at least 10 years after, the water above and below ground remained unpolluted. The law has been slightly weakened by the state’s Department of Natural Resources that has not written administrative rules to apply the law.
Continue reading Midwest Mining Rush Threatens Water: Part V: Wisconsin, the “Prove It First” State
|
Sign up to receive national security and environmental news updates from DC Bureau:
|
