Tuesday, November 10 at 6 pm. Our County officials will be discussing changing an ordinance that would allow a Canadian gold mining company to drill in an A-1 agriculturally zoned part of the county. Only the first 20 people will be admitted to the auditorium. You can digitally attend the meeting. The Buckingham Board of Supervisors allow only residents to comment during the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting OR make an email public comment OR a recorded comment at 434-969-5039. Additional contact information may be obtained through the County Administration at 434 969 4242. Send comments to: publiccomments@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
We urge you to contact your Supervisor and Planning Commissioner prior to the meeting. Please request that a vote not be taken until more research has been done and the public has had an opportunity to weigh in. Many residents in the area do not even know about the possibility of this locating near their homes.
The Canadian, publicly traded mineral exploration company, Aston Bay Holdings has been drilling here on Weyerhauser and Buckingham Timber and Land properties without approval—or even awareness of this– by the County for the last 4 years. The company’s disregard and stated opinion of Buckingham Gold mining is evidenced in the statement by the CEO Thomas Ulrich. He told prospective investors in a video recording on his company’s website, that they can expect ‘minimized interference’ regarding the Buckingham Gold Project. The 4,000 acre, Haile, SC open-pit mine is referenced as comparable to what could happen here in Buckingham.
Gold mining impacts on land, water and air are devastating in addition to being highly energy intensive with tons of hazardous waste being produced and emptied into our localized environments. Allowing the exploratory drilling is just the beginning of opening the county doors to open pit gold mining.
Friends of Buckingham feels increasing alarm as the details of open-pit mining are revealed. Mostly, we have a lot of questions that require answers from our local representatives. `FoB is compiling information on this site. Search for gold mining to find all articles. Check out: Gold Mining problems in brief & links to extensive resources
Please contact your local government officials:
Planning Commission Administrator – nedmondston@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
Board of Supervisors Districts:
1: ddavis@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
2: dbryan@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov 3: dmatthews@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
4: jmiles@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov 5: hbryant@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
6: 434-983-2298 7: dallen@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov
Agenda for 11/10 meeting:
http://www.buckinghamcountyva.org/Board%20Packets/2020/NOV%2010,2020%20bd%20pckt.pdf
Watch the meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvjI3oD0A7c
Article written by Hanuman
Gold drilling in Buckingham – Fjord Public Comment
Lakshmi Fjord, District 5:
I ask the Board of Supervisors not only to deny a “zoning text amendment to the list of special use permits in an A1 Agricultural District to allow core sampling for a commercial use.” But, that you also issue hefty fines to Blue Ridge Property’s owners for each of 28+ exploratory core drilling sites, which defied our local ordinances and likely caused nearby wells that share this aquifer to go dry.
There is no economic justification imaginable to instead reward that illegality by overturning our farmland protections’ ordinance to endanger our 100% single source of water, which is illegal under the U.S. Clean Water Act, for the sole benefit of a Canadian gold mining operation.
Because of the mining operations’ location and immense environmental and environmental justice impacts, the Board of Supervisors must instead stop this gold drilling permit process to involve federal and state agencies in required “pre-screening” reviews for the “site suitability” of this project. Your special use permit for the Union Hill compressor station was considered not relevant by the U.S. Appeals Court for the 4th District when vacating the ACP air permit. Why?
Because Dominion had supplied you, FERC, and DEQ with the same poor, incomplete, and deliberately omitted data that led to our lawsuit and its favorable outcome. The judges required DEQ’s and Dominion’s lawyers to place in the record that Union Hill is an environmental justice community, to accept the door-to-door household findings of 84% majority minority from the community household study I designed and led. The other one-half of the basis for the judges’ unanimous decision was the proposed fine particulate matter emissions from gas-fired turbines, which this mining operation will also cause. The Dept. of Transportation-DOT requires environmental justice reviews and reviews of particulate matter in new infrastructure that will use public roads as part of their operations.
Thus, the Board must not for gold mining, as for fracked gas prior, only consult with and accept as “factual,” corporate-provided gold mining environmental science data. Which, like the Coal industry hides their mining operations’ health and mortality hazards, or Tobacco and the Opiod industries’ hiding addiction and health impacts by manipulating data. The billions in fines now for doing so do not bring back the dead.
Instead, the Board must consult open pit mining environmental scientists who are independent of industry ties. Whose methods and findings stand up as replicable by other independent scientists. A National Environmental Policy Act-NEPA guidelines-based environmental justice review will find the same EJ findings and air emissions issues with this site for open pit mining activities. And, the site must be reviewed under the Historic Preservation Act, Section 106 that brings the federal Advisory Council of Historic Preservation-ACHP in to consult, because both Yogaville and Union Hill Rural Historic District are under VA Dept. of Historic Resources review processes.
A new “Gold Rush in Buckingham” will this time leave permanent scars and contaminations with its toxic cocktail of chemicals — degradations that heighten sickness and mortality. We will bring these issues before the courts, too, because preventing health conditions and deaths from gold mining and all forms of toxic polluting air, water, and soil hazards to Buckingham is our mission.
Respectfully submitted,
Lakshmi Fjord, Ph.D.
108 Yogaville Way
Buckingham, VA 23921
Lakshmi.fjord@gmail.com
Cell: 510-684-1403
Submitted by email were technical sources: Fjord Community Study Research Report, the 4th Court’s Final Opinion, Transcript of the Hearing, and the Hydrology Report for this site location.