In a published response to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Leahy stated, “Uranium mill tailings are uranium ore that has been crushed and pulverized into very fine sand and clay-like particles. Except for the radioactivity and toxic metals content, they are little different from the common sediments that are transported by rainfall and runoff downstream into Kerr Reservoir, through Lake Gaston, and through the Gaston pipeline every day.

“The average annual erosion rate for the upper Roanoke River Basin is 11,000 cubic feet of sediment per square mile of watershed. This is a volume of sediment about the size of two Mount Trashmores each year – all eroded and transported downstream by rainfall and runoff…Even the uranium mining industry has never suggested that rainfall and runoff would not effectively transport mill tailings downstream. Instead, they maintain that they can confine the tailings indefinitely, in sophisticated landfills that will withstand probable maximum precipitation (PMP) storm events.”

For those who live in the Virginia Beach area, “Mount Trashmore” means something. Mount Trashmore Park is 165 acres, 60 feet high, over 800 feet long, and was created by compacting layers of solid waste and clean soil. It was built on a former landfill, and the sediment that flows into Kerr Reservoir equals two Mount Trashmores per year. The Coles Hill mine alone would generate 30 million cubic yards of mill tailings, roughly the volume of 20 Mount Trashmores. The problem, outside of the volume increase created by the mining and milling, is that the Coles Hill sediment will remain radioactive for more than 300,000 years.

Don't spin your wheels developing a scenario for severe weather conditions and what they might mean to the drinking water for Virginia Beach if the proposed mining and milling operation are allowed at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County. Mr. Leahy has done the legwork for the foundation of this study, which is presented in this article.