{"id":7049,"date":"2010-06-23T23:08:15","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T03:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=7049"},"modified":"2010-06-23T23:08:15","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T03:08:15","slug":"some-thoughts-about-the-uranium-mining-subcommittee-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/23\/some-thoughts-about-the-uranium-mining-subcommittee-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts about the Uranium Mining Subcommittee meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday night, the Uranium Mining subcommittee of the Coal &amp; Energy Commission held a meeting at Chatham High School where people could comment on the proposed socio-economic study. I was there for Star News to record the early part of the comments, and here&#8217;s a &#8220;random thoughts&#8221; article about what I observed.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I had a bad feeling that even though this was supposed to be about the socio-economic study, it would devolve into people&#8217;s opinions about uranium mining in general. It wasn&#8217;t as bad as I feared, but the anti-mining people were out in full force. Oh well&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Originally, I was pleasantly surprised at the first set of speakers who spoke were in favor of the studies (although that&#8217;s not what the meeting was about). However, it&#8217;s been shown that the deck was stacked. The pro-study group signed up at least 12 speakers before anybody else got a chance to put their name on the list. At a meeting held this time of night, all media is on a deadline so that we can get the story out as quickly as possible. Our coverage consisted of only the first hour of speakers. We had to hustle back to Danville and prepare the video for our 8 to 9 PM hour. As much as I&#8217;d like to laugh at the use of less-than-honorable tactics being used against a group who&#8217;s known to use less-than-honorable tactics, I can&#8217;t do that. I still believe that the scientific study is the best course of action, but this &#8220;stacking the deck&#8221; tactic was dirty and I strongly condemn it.<\/li>\n<li>Regarding this tactic, Karen Maute was referenced in a Register &amp; Bee article as saying &#8220;the move was a corporate strategy to dominate the meeting while the press was covering the proceedings&#8221;. I know some people aren&#8217;t going to believe what I&#8217;m about to say, but she&#8217;s correct. I&#8217;m very disappointed in the Virginia Energy Independence Alliance for orchestrating this tactic and I feel they&#8217;ve set the pro-study faction&#8217;s cause back because of this maneuver.<\/li>\n<li>On the other side of the &#8220;less-than-honorable tactics&#8221; coin, Jack Dunavant yet again played the &#8220;scare tactics&#8221; card by saying that something like of uranium scrap would be lining the banks of the Banister River. As usual, Jack Dunavant is pulling scary so-called &#8220;facts&#8221; out of his butt. Face it, uranium-mining foes&#8230; none of us have any idea what can or will happen if uranium mining is allowed. That&#8217;s what the scientific study is for because you can&#8217;t use data from uranium mining efforts in the past to say that&#8217;s what would happen while using today&#8217;s technology. I&#8217;m honest enough to say I have no idea, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m backing the scientific study.<\/li>\n<li>I was pleased to hear the opinions of Don Merricks, Danny Marshall and Robert Hurt who spoke positively about the studies and how inclusive they should be.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m very disappointed in the closed-mindedness of the elected officials who are strongly against uranium mining before the scientific data is in. If\u00a0 nothing else, the potential economic impact to this region should be enough to keep an open viewpoint. While I can almost excuse this behavior in small-town councils like Halifax that are\u00a0 led by Jack Dunavant, I&#8217;m amazed (and not in a good way) at House of Delegates member James Edmunds&#8217; staunch anti-mining stand. Although he&#8217;s said that he&#8217;s completely opposed to uranium mining even if the government says it&#8217;s safe, I can always hope that he will understand the economic boost that would happen if mining is proved to be safe.<\/li>\n<li>I agree with Halifax Town Manager Carl Espy (and others) who believe that the socioeconomic study should be secondary to the scientific study. I also strongly agree with Halifax County Chamber of Commerce president Nancy Pool who said that $200,000 wasn&#8217;t going to buy much of a study and that the better research groups may not have interest in responding to the study proposal for that relatively small amount of money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So that happened. I learned a lot by listening to the speakers but I&#8217;m still dismayed over the tactics used by the anti-mining group. I have lost a lot of respect for the Virginia Energy Independence Alliance because of their smart yet stupid &#8220;stack the deck&#8221; tactic that they&#8217;ve used. I remain in favor of the scientific study and believe that the socioeconomic study should come afterwards.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday night, the Uranium Mining subcommittee of the Coal &amp; Energy Commission held a meeting at Chatham High School where people could comment on the proposed socio-economic study. I was there for Star News to record the early part of the comments, and here&#8217;s a &#8220;random thoughts&#8221; article about what I observed.<\/p>\n<p> [&#8230;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinioncentral","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-1PH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7082,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/05\/the-latest-anti-uranium-scare-tactic\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":0},"title":"The latest anti-uranium scare tactic","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Every time I think the anti-uranium folks couldn't go any lower, they dig deeper. Crowd spoke truth about mining While I'm very sorry that Frederick Towle died from leukemia as a result of uranium exposure, that has absolutely nothing to do with uranium mining and the technology of today. Nobody\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6107,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/03\/anti-uranium-hyperbole-alert\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":1},"title":"Anti-Uranium Hyperbole Alert!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's Hyperbole! Like This! That Makes! It Easy To Mock! Support for uranium no surprise In this Letter to the Editor (Does the editor really care? Shouldn't they just label these as Personal Opinions anyway?), another anti-uranium nutcase completely misstates Fred Ingram's opinion on uranium mining. Ingram said he's in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7315,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/07\/not-so-fast-walter\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":2},"title":"Not so fast, Walter.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Some of the anti-uranium folks seem to think that I'm in favor of uranium mining. As I've said before, they're quite wrong. I'm in favor of an independent study to determine if uranium can be mined safely. I'm smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to know if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7575,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/24\/gazette-virginian-ethically-impaired-andor-lazy\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":3},"title":"Gazette-Virginian: Ethically Impaired and\/or Lazy?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"If you're going to use a biased article written by a member of a group that has a track record for inflammatory language, you should at least disclose who wrote the article. I don't give a damn what your opinion is on uranium mining is (mine is that I have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Halifax County&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Halifax County","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/halifax-county\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6233,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/20\/sanity-prevails-by-a-4-3-margin\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":4},"title":"Sanity prevails by a 4-3 margin","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors defeated the proposed 20-mile uranium mining ban on Tuesday night. Hooray! Industrial mega park mining ban denied Even though this mining ban proposal would have been Dead On Arrival to the first court of record, it's refreshing to know that the BOS got this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Danville&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6389,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/08\/three-strikes-youre-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":7049,"position":5},"title":"Three strikes. You&#8217;re out!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"February 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The anti-uranium mining foes people picked up yet another strike in their attempts at another preemptive ban. Another try to ban uranium mining at mega park fails Let's see... you just throw together a resolution that \"permanently\" bans uranium mining from a large parcel of land and hope a governing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}