Letter to the Editor Guide-lines & Samples – Protect Water for Future Generations.
We need to spread the facts about the dangers to our water from uranium mining. Letters to Editors in our newspapers [and letters to our local and national government representatives] from concerned citizens are key in accomplishing awareness of the threat to our water! Let’s tell them Enough is Enough! No Nukes! Water Is Life!
Following you will find some guide-lines and talking points that will help you write your own Letter to the Editor or to your local governments. We have also included many LTE samples that will surely align with your concerns.
We hope you too will write your own letter and submit to your local newspapers.
It is best not to repeat what companies say or to name specific companies. This just gives them free publicity.
An LTE (Letter To Editor) should be 200 words or less.
Include with it your name and contact information, including telephone number. Some papers will not publish your letter before speaking to you in person.
Expect a call from the editor to confirm you wrote the letter and want it printed.
If you don’t receive a call and your letter is not printed, contact the paper again. Sometimes it takes a follow-up contact to get a letter printed.
When you letter is printed, you might care to send an email to the BHCWA, so we can track it as progress, and with permission include a link to it here.
Following is some language and talking points you can use with your own words in your LTE. Please feel free to copy and paste any of the following text in to your LTE.
In situ leach uranium mining must be done directly in a water-bearing aquifer. The mining solution is injected into the aquifer under pressure in order to leach the uranium out of the ground.
Water at an in situ leach uranium mine has never been returned to its original condition.
Pollutants that have been left in the water at in situ leach uranium mines after “restoration” include toxic heavy metals and radioactive materials.
Just one proposed mine — the Powertech Uranium project near Edgemont — would consume over two and a half Billion gallons of water during its lifetime. This is according to the company’s own figures.
Thousands of old uranium operations have been left unreclaimed in the upper Missouri River basin, including about a hundred in the Black Hills. Modern uranium companies employ people who were involved in past uranium operations. Why should we trust them to clean up future operations?
Current, modern, operating in situ leach mines have spilled and leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated water, both above ground and underground. These leaks have entered both above-ground and underground water bodies.
In Wyoming, state regulators didn’t issue a Notice of Violation to Power Resources, Inc. (now Cameco Resources), until they had two three-ring binders full of spill reports.
There are 167 old uranium mines in the Black Hills.
It’s Simply Not Worth the Risk – URANIUM MINING IS BAD!
Mining is, by nature, a boom-and-bust economic activity. Short-term profits for companies are followed by long-term pollution and unemployment in mining areas.
State laws can provide much more protection than they do currently. In Colorado, a company that wants to do in situ leach mining must prove that it can clean up the water after its project is done.
Send your letter to your local newspapers today. Let’s inform our neighbors about these dangers and how we must protect our water for future generations.
If you would like share your recently published LTE, please email us here.