A turn in the road? General Assembly to weigh pros, cons of uranium mining
17.05.12
After a 30-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service that included posts in Egypt, Thailand, Jamaica and Russia, Walter Coles Sr. returned to his native Pittsylvania County in 2000 to retire. The Vietnam War veteran planned to raise cattle on the farm his family has owned since 1785 and live in the 1817 Georgian-style brick home that has housed his family for five generations.
But just a few years later, the calls started coming. Uranium prices had begun to rise around the same time a Virginia Tech doctoral student wrote a well-read thesis on two previously discovered uranium deposits underneath the pastures of the Coles farm.
“[Uranium companies] began to arrive in Chatham and would say, ‘We’ve got a deal for you,’ ” says Coles, who received offers to buy or lease his farm for uranium mining operations from mining companies in the U.S., Australia, France and Canada. Eventually, Coles determined a local resident would be a better steward of what are known as the Coles Hill deposits. “I decided rather than lease or sell out, I’d rather form our own company, because we were local and understood the local community,” says Coles. “We thought it could be a local project that could benefit the community.”
Source: Virginia Business Magazine
