Orange opposes uranium mining

BY ROBIN KNEPPER

When a uranium-mining company was signing leases with many Orange County property owners in the late 1970s, Bill and Sandra Speiden said no.

"They said I owned the most radioactive spot in Virginia on my property," Speiden said. "I don't know if that contributed to the prostate cancer I had later in life."

The Speidens declined Marline Uranium Corp.'s offer of a $12,000 sign-up bonus and the $1 a year (later $3 a year) lease on their 1,100-acre dairy farm in the Somerset area of southwestern Orange County.

Instead, they went traveling in the western United States and investigated uranium mining in those semi-arid and sparsely populated regions.

They decided it wasn't safe for the Virginia Piedmont, which was quite different geographically. They and others believed the rainier Virginia climate could cause tailing ponds to overflow into nearby waterways, contaminating drinking-water supplies downstream.

"Uranium mining had never been done in an area like ours with this much rainfall and population density," Speiden said.

In reaction to the threat to the environment and their dairy farm, Sandra Speiden headed up a committee of the Piedmont Environmental Council that eventually grew into a consortium of 260 organizations and localities that fought to prohibit uranium exploration and mining in Virginia.

Those efforts resulted in the state placing a moratorium on uranium mining in 1983.

Now, with oil and uranium prices soaring, the Governor's 2007 Virginia Energy Plan opens the door for uranium mining by acknowledging the importance of nuclear power as a part of the commonwealth's strategy for meeting its energy needs.

But Speiden--and Orange County officials--are standing firm.

Both the county Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission, of which Speiden is a longtime member, voted unanimously last month to support the state's moratorium on uranium mining. The Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District and the Orange County Farm Bureau have done the same.

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Decades ago air sampling suggested there were massive amounts of uranium and other radioactive minerals from southern through central Virginia. So when the price of uranium got high in the late 1970s, the search for the radioactive ore began.

Large landowners in the southwestern part of Orange County soon were approached by Marline Uranium Corp. with offers of leases so the company could look for uranium beneath their cornfields and pastures.

But three factors came together that soon ended the push for uranium mining in Orange.

PRICES FALL, NUCLEAR POWER FEARS RISE Yellow cake, the processed uranium ore, was selling for $43.40 a pound in May 1978 when the leasing effort started. By March 1982, the price was down to $23 a pound. The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had happened in 1979, bringing plant construction to a virtual halt for many years. POLLUTION CONCERNS The state moratorium on uranium mining was set to expire on July 1, 1983. That deadline had activated citizens and officials in many central and Northern Virginia localities that were threatened by the pollution and contamination likely to come from radioactive material unleashed by the exploration, mining and milling of uranium. PITTSYLVANIA EMERGES Marline Uranium Corp. found even larger deposit of uranium, and more agreeable attitudes, in Pittsylvania County.

In 1982, Marline canceled the 40 leases it had with landowners in Orange, Culpeper, Madison and Fauquier counties, closed its office in Culpeper and headed to Chatham, Va.

But no uranium mining was ever done. The price of uranium dropped, the Marline Corp. disappeared and the state moratorium was renewed.

Date published: 12/24/2007

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