Virginia Uranium Inc. has filed a second lawsuit seeking to lift the state ban on uranium mining, the Chatham-based company announced Wednesday.
“We have made clear that we intend to construct and operate the safest and most modern uranium mining operation in the world,” said Virginia Uranium Inc. President and CEO Walter Coles Sr. “However, the decision by state elected officials to preserve a ban that prohibits us even from applying for a permit to mine uranium has forced us to turn to the courts for remedy.”
Virginia Uranium filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Wise County against Gov. Terry McAuliffe and other officials of the Commonwealth.
The suit requests either lifting the ban on uranium mining or compensation for the taking of the plaintiff’s property. The uranium deposit under the Coles Hill site is worth about $6 billion, according to the company.
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“Our goal is, and always has been, to responsibly tap a natural resource on our own private land as a business enterprise that will reward investors as well as strengthen our regional and state economies and contribute to national security by providing a clean, domestic energy source,” Coles said.
This is the second lawsuit the company has filed against the commonwealth. A federal lawsuit was filed in the Western District Court in Danville by Virginia Uranium in August. After arguments in a November court date, Senior District Judge Jackson Kiser will hear a bench trial on Dec. 14.
The Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Cooper & Kirk is again representing Virginia Uranium. Lead attorney Charles Cooper is a former Assistant District Attorney and has argued several cases before the United States Supreme Court.
“Substantial sums of money have been invested by the plaintiffs in their effort to develop the valuable deposit of uranium beneath their land,” Cooper said in the news release. “Virginia’s ban, however, amounts to an absolute bar to mining uranium, preventing plaintiffs even from taking the basic step of applying for a mining permit. This is a clear, unconstitutional taking of plaintiffs’ private property.”
The lawsuit filed this week in state court relies on the Virginia Constitution’s declaration that the right to private property is fundamental and can be taken only for a public, not a private, use, that only the amount of property necessary to achieve the public use may be taken and that the commonwealth must provide just compensation for the full value of the property taken, according to the law firm.
Metcalfe reports for the Danville Register & Bee.