Rep. Kathy Tyler (D-4/Big Stone City) is working hard circulating the petition to put a minimum-wage increase on South Dakota's 2014 ballot.
For help, she should enlist uranium profiteer and former Republican legislator Mark Hollenbeck, who gets so busy lobbying for his Canadian paycheck-writers' in-situ leech mining plan that he forgets his local party's line and admits that the current minimum wage isn't a moral wage:
Hollenbeck argues that not only is the project beneficial to American energy independence, it will be an economic boon for the southern Black Hills.
"Any time you add 100 jobs in a rural area in South Dakota it's a big deal," he said. "And these aren't minimum-wage jobs, these are jobs you can raise a family with" [emphasis mine; Daniel Simmons-Ritchie, "Powertech Showdown: Critics Point to Loose Regulation and Contamination at Mines Across America," Rapid City Journal, 2013.09.23].
We could drain and contaminate our West River aquifers for a hundred better paychecks... or we could just raise the minimum wage a buck and quarter. The latter seems much easier, safer, and more neighborly.
Even if Powertech remains solvent workers would have to come from somewhere other than South Dakota to work this mine.
"The Crow Butte uranium mine in Nebraska has received 56 license violations (last time I counted) from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — the federal agency that licenses uranium mines. One violation involved a leak that wasn’t addressed for 2 years.
The nearest town to the mine, Crawford, has seen a 9.94% population decrease in recent years. That means that if Powertech Uranium’s proposed mine is built near Edgemont and Edgemont follows the same pattern, its population can be expected to drop from 774 to fewer than 700 people."
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/opinion/mailbag/in-situ-mining-not-a-boon-for-crawford/article_83976797-3cea-5b56-8c81-ca2be780e976.html
If this goes through, the promise of jobs will turn out to be more like Job Security for the folks in my profession.
I attended the South Dakota State Medical Association SDSMA) meeting on Friday, September 20th. Our District 9 (Black Hills District) presented a proposal asking the SDSMA take a position in opposition to Uranium mining. It unanimously passed and a press release will go out today or Tuesday sometime. The medical community is weighing in on this issue as well.
Thanks, Kevin! Tell SDSMA to send me a copy of the release!
Sure
Got the statement, check your email, Cory.