Powertech USA Inc. is embarking on a path of destruction from which there is no return. The company plans to start in situ leach mining in South Dakota's Custer and Fall River counties that will puncture through four aquifers on the Great Plains and endanger a fragile geologic system.
As a result of ISL mining planned at the Dewey-Burdock site – 12 miles northwest of Edgemont – we on the Plains must face the threat of groundwater contamination for generations, while the corporate leaders reside far away in their homelands of Canada and France.
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The opportunity to view the public records of Powertech's 6,000 page application as limited to Internet availability is prejudicial. It assumes that everyone has a computer and Internet access and eliminates untold members of the general public.
Let me be clear, this practice impacts the most vulnerable: The poor and the isolated.
The Dewey-Burdock area is in 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty Territory and in a place sacred to the Lakota People: The Black Hills, the heart of everything that is. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty was ratified by Congress and was never amended. Under international law it is our land.
Our ancestors fought the United States, and many people died, to protect the Black Hills and our homelands. There are hundreds of places in the proposed mining area that have been identified as archeological, historical and cultural sites.
There are tipi rings, stone cairns, graves; there are eagle nests there which need protection. For a corporation to have more rights than human beings is a violation of our basic human rights.
To keep us away from a sacred place is to kill our people and way of life. What kind of government makes such laws that allow a corporation to turn this into a “National Sacrifice Area?”
The laws of the United States, the NRC regulations, and the individuals who sit behind those desks can honor treaty law, the life way of the Lakota, environmental laws, and demonstrate respect for Mother Earth by denying Powertech USA Inc.'s application to mine uranium.
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