Following up: here's the key text from a letter by Dr. Daniel J. Heinemann, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association, making explicit the SDSMA's opposition to the in-situ leach (ISL) uranium mining project proposed for the southern Black Hills.
Why would South Dakota doctors oppose this mining project? Oh, maybe testicular tumors, dead kids, and ruined water:
Based upon research presented to our Committee on Medical Practice as well as our Council of Physicians, the SDSMA has taken a position to oppose ISL mining of uranium in the Black Hills. This research indicates that in areas where uranium mining has been performed in the past there is a documented increase of testicular and ovarian cancer, leukemia, childhood bone cancer, miscarriages, infant death, congenital defects, genetic abnormalities and learning disorders in the population living near the site. Further, restoration of an ISL-mined aquifer to pre-mining water quality has been determined by regulatory authorities to be impossible [Daniel J. Heinemann, MD, SDSMA President, letter to Donald Kelley, MD, 2013.09.23].
Hearings on Canadian uranium miner PowerTech's plan to do this damage to the Black Hills began this morning in Rapid City.
My Rapid City Journals seem to arrive in bunches of several days worth. One of them had the start of a special on the Uranium in situ mining. In it was a note that the SD Environmental agency had been banned from regulating Power Tech. I don't know if I found that actual legislation or enacted law or not, but it may be 34-2-126 which "tolls" administrative rules on underground injection wells. The paper said it was the work of a lobbyist for the mining outfit.
I trust NOT the government to make the right choice.
I think government should take proper action and also consider the state people health.