Diehard opponents of mining uranium in Virginia have not waited for the results of studies currently under way to assess the potential hazards. They have simply assumed the conclusions, or chosen to ignore them.
But then, the same is true of the other side.
Virginia Uranium has not been sitting idle as the studies proceed. Earlier this year vice president Walter Coles Jr. told a group of investors that come January, "we will have a bill" in the General Assembly directing the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to write appropriate mining regulations. "We have a team of lobbyists in the State Capitol," he continued. "We've got a public relations firm. . . . We are taking legislators on trips. . . . So we're not sitting still while the [National Academies of Science] study is going on."
Indeed. Disclosure reports show that Virginia Uranium has retained a who's who of the state's top lobbying shops. The company apparently stands poised to ram a bill through the legislature at the earliest opportunity.
But environmental groups point out, reasonably enough, that even if the studies are completed soon, it will still take time for officials and the general public to digest and critique them. They almost certainly will raise further questions. The 2012 session of the General Assembly could adjourn before those questions are answered, making any legislative effort premature.
In some ways Virginia Uranium may be acting out of prudence. Expectations don't put food on the table — profits do. And profits come from mining, not from talking about mining. What's more, getting a bill through the Assembly might take two full sessions, no matter when the bill is first introduced.
Nevertheless, the massing of forces has about it a Guns-of-August whiff of inevitability. Both sides already have dug in, and are prepared to go to war as soon as the whistle blows. Who's right and who's wrong seems to be — so far as they are concerned — entirely beside the point.
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