You don’t get the full story at VUI

In response to Glenn Giles’ recent letter, “Take chance to learn about uranium,” (June 20, page A8), I, along with others, did as Giles did and contacted Virginia Uranium Inc. for their “briefing,” as they like to call it.

I also have done little else but study this matter since it was brought to my attention some 18 months ago. I believe it is only sensible to listen to all sides — there are normally more than two sides to any issue — and draw your own intelligent conclusions.

What, exactly, did Giles expect to hear during his visit to VUI’s offices and the Coles Hill site, except the absolute “best case scenario” about uranium mining and milling when there is so much money for them to make?

Did he expect to hear the truth about the illness, destruction and devastation that has been left in the wake of uranium mining and milling throughout the western United States?

Did he think any of VUI’s friendly and professional hosts would even mention — let alone discuss — the thousands of abandoned uranium mine sites in this country, the ones that have leached radioactive waste into the soil and water for years waiting for the federal government to come clean them up at taxpayer expense?

Did he expect anyone to mention that many of the towns associated with mining and milling in other parts of the country have become ghost towns after the mines were exhausted and mills done with processing because of the wide-spread radioactive contamination that can’t be remediated and isn’t conducive to human existence?

Of course not!

VUI is going to give its visitors the nicest, most pleasant and reassuring fairytale of uranium mining and milling its PR firms can dream up. It has to. If it spoke the truth on any aspect of uranium mining (and/or milling) as its been done in this country — or around the world, for that matter — its visitors would flee so quickly, the lovely hosts would see only a blur of flailing limbs. That’s certainly not the reaction VUI needs for its visitors to experience. VUI needs its visitors to leave believing that the planned uranium mine and mill would be the biggest, safest boon to Southside in decades — not that it would be the biggest gamble in the history of Southside, which would use the Giles family’s life (and yours and mine) as the ante. And VUI surely doesn’t want the Giles family (or yours or mine) to know that so far, everywhere in the world where this gamble has been taken, the winners were only a handful of stakeholders and investors. The rest of the folks — those whose lives were the ante — lost big.

No one who has spent any time at all researching the realities of uranium mining and milling could sit still and listen to what sounds like the biggest bunch of self-serving malarkey being served up anywhere in Southside these days. But VUI depends on its visitors to be ignorant of the truth about what it plans to do, not just to Coles Hill, but to Southside. It needs local citizens to be brain-washed by its PR magic and old Southern hospitality so that they won’t want to believe the truth, if they even try to seek the truth. Sometimes fantasy presentations — also known as propaganda — are so cleverly crafted that the truth appears too ugly to be believed, especially when those who speak the truth can offer no wonderful promises except for a healthy environment.

I encourage Giles and those who accompanied him to the VUI briefing to realize that what they heard and saw while being entertained by VUI was just that … entertainment. And I encourage them to spend as much time as they did with VUI in pursuit of the other side of the story, the side that tells the harsh, unvarnished truth about the widespread illness, destruction and contamination of all living things that will ensue should VUI proceed with its plan to mine Coles Hill.

VUI did not show me any sort of plan to mine or mill uranium. Every business owner knows that you must have a plan to implement it to its best and most profitable use. Any question that I asked was answered by the statement, “That is why we need a study.” I believe the company must have a plan, otherwise, how on Earth do they know even a simple thing such as how many people they will eventually hire? Did they pull those figures out of their magical hat or make them up? Why won’t VUI disclose their plans? Why are they keeping everyone in the dark?

I keep remembering the last week of school, when we were under a tornado watch and the county schools wisely kept our children at school where they would be safe and my child did not get home until almost 5 p.m. That night at my home, we received more than seven inches of rain, which overflowed everything — including my swimming pool and goldfish pond. How could that be contained in a VUI holding pond? Would we have the same disaster as they did in Tennessee with the coal sludge pond dam breaking? I am only talking about one incident. What about 30 years’ worth of uncontrollable situations? How many times have we been under flood watch just this year?

Lovelace lives in Gretna, about five miles from Coles Hill.