Setting the Record Straight on Canonsburg, PA

The letter below appeared in the Danville Register & Bee on April 27, 2008. We'd like to set the record straight on Canonsburg, Pa. Our comments on Canonsburg follow the letter.

It will help our community

To the editor:
Regarding, “We’re no Slope County,” (April 20, page B6), the exhaustive analysis of population-density comparisons in North Dakota and Virginia, the basic assumption is seriously flawed: That uranium cannot be mined safely in densely populated areas.

Uranium has been mined safety in far more densely populated areas than Virginia. For example, well-regulated safe mining and reclamation has taken place for years in villages in France. Closer to home, uranium has been mined safely — and the land fully reclaimed — in Canonsburg, Pa., just a hop and a skip from the major metropolis of Pittsburgh.

The nightmare scenarios of uranium mining during the 1950s and 1960s in the western United States stand as chilling examples of the wrong way to mine anything — including uranium. Today’s intense regulatory environment, plus far more sophisticated techniques in managing and monitoring mining tailings, make uranium mining far safer than countless other activities going on around us all the time.

The letter’s author concludes his analysis by asking why uranium mining is being considered in Virginia. It is being considered because of the huge and positive economic potential for this region as well as all of Virginia. In addition, America vitally needs fresh sources of uranium to reduce its enormous reliance upon foreign sources to fuel our nuclear power plants.

That’s why we need to study the best ways to safely mine the vast deposit in Pittsylvania County — and to conduct the study in ways that will assure residents that it can be done with no harm to people, livestock or the environment.

ROY CRIDER
Chatham

http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/danville_letters/article/april_27_uranium_mining_and_highway_safety/3174/

There was NEVER any uranium mining in or around Canonsburg, PA, often referred to as the most radioactive town in America.

There was a uranium milling facility there that was operated on and off from 1911 until the mid-1950's. There were hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive tailings, most of which were left uncovered and unprotected for years.

"In the early sixties the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] allowed the lagoon to be filled in with tailings. It was an extraordinary decision, since--contrary to regulations--the government did not own the site. Health physicist Robert Gallagher, who performed a preliminary survey there, called the move "incredible." He charged that the AEC approval was either "a special favor or an oversight of gigantic magnitude."[70] As for the fill job, Joseph Swiger, project manager for the dumping, termed it "the worst and sloppiest job I've ever worked on." It was "morally objectionable," he told The Pittsburgh Press, "because the material was hazardous.

In 1967 the site was sold for $130,000 to a local entrepreneur named Vaughn Crile, who was never warned that there might be a radiation problem. Crile built an industrial park on top of the tailings and brought in fourteen tenants along with his family business. The DOE surveyed the site in 1978 and found that the 125 workers there were being exposed to radon concentrations fourteen times above the level officially considered safe.

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO9.html

The site got some federal reclamation money in 1978 and was able to bury some of the worst of the tailings at the site of the actual mill which is now fenced off and posted as radioactive. Other areas in the town are still considered "hot spots". Residents and workers have been the subjects of at least one study on radon and cancer.