Attention uranium miners!
The ranching community of
Goliad County has a few words to share with you. It has to do with the South Texas hierarchy and helping you find your place. We understand if recent
expressions of resistance to your scouting out the territory and reopening of old uranium mills may have you out of sorts. Hey, you’ve been gone for decades and we’re only just learning how to bale hay on those grown-over waste pits.
Folks in these parts don’t like to make things too difficult, so see if you can grasp the horns of the following edict:
“Human beings come first, livestock come second, and companies come third.”
The Farm Bureau Association President of Goliad County shared that little nugget with us recently. He also said most of y'all didn’t care for such words. Most of those we met with seemed to concur with it okay.
Of course, state regulators don’t always abide by those values, as the good folks in Kleberg County, involved in their own
mining dispute, are figuring out. However, it’s a dictum worth working toward.
In the process of collecting information about the legacy of uranium mining in South Texas, we came upon not a few obstacles. The chief problem has been the small fact that many significant files for the state are packed away in moving boxes. Seems that the state health department’s radiological folks were
pawned off on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this last legislative session.
The move began more than two weeks before the change was published in the Texas Register, officially opening the comment period, you know: those 30 days reserved for you and I to have our say on the whole affair. So, if you simply must
speak up, you’ve got until Oct. 8.
The stated purpose of the fusion was to improve and tighten oversight of U mining and radwaste disposal. From what we’ve learned of
mining’s toxic legacy, we hope it works.
