Phillip Abernathy, Custer banker and president of the Custer Area Economic Development Corporation, says on the Custer Chamber of Commerce website that that his organization will host an informational meeting on Powertech's proposed uranium mining project in the southern Black Hills tonight in Custer:
An informational meeting about the proposed Dewey-Murdock [sic] uranium project will be held at 6:00pm on Wednesday May 22nd at the Fire Hall meeting room. Raymond Johnson from the United States Geological Survey, Dr. James Munro PE, PHD, and Ben Snow Director of Rapid City Economic Development Corporation will all give a presentation on various aspects of the project. This meeting is being put on by the Custer Area Economic Development Corporation [Phillip Abernathy, Custer Chamber Buffalo Bytes, 2013.05.16].
(That's Dewey-Burdock, for those of you Googling at home.)
Johnson and Snow have done a Powertech dog-and-pony show like this before. Munro gets draws a paycheck from Powertech (assuming the company still has the cash to issue paychecks).
Evidently Custer's economic developers aren't interested in including in their program speakers who could address the impact that depleted and degraded water supplies and the release of radioactive material could have on the agriculture and tourism aspects of their economic development. I guess decent folks who see serious risks in permitting in situ uranium mining in the Black Hills and the Cheyenne River watershed will have to raise their concerns with questions from the audience at tonight's Custer meeting.
But be careful: speak up too loudly, and the Custer Emergency Response Office may put you on a terrorist watch list.
Be careful what you wish for. You can be assured that a computer program scans each blog post of yours just in the same way that every text, email and phone call is recorded by the government and checked for certain key words. The IRS has admitted that they use data mining to make sure you are paying what you are supposed to. Their search and computer storage capabilities would astonish any of us if we knew the truth.
That's the Patriot Act at work, plus all sorts of other dilutions of the Fourth Amendment that I don't hear the Tea Party and other lovers of liberty raising a stink about.