Members of the State Agency Component:

We appreciate the opportunity to comment to the state agency component of the work group studying gold mining in the Commonwealth. The Buckingham County Democratic Committee submits the following recommendations related to the state agency component (SAC) statement of task. 

As time constraints  and stakeholder involvement are of the essence we support the draft statement of task presented by the Press Pause Coalition:  Importantly, enabling stakeholders to interact with well-respected experts in the fields required in the  various topics to be covered in HB2213.

Potentially affected community members were the driving force behind HB2213. 

 Interested stakeholders, including potentially affected community members, care immensely about the technical aspects and must be allowed to affect all investigations mandated by HB2213 (e.g., environmental impacts of gold mining and the inadequacy of Virginia’s current regulations). Environmental impacts and other technical aspects affecting  stakeholders are intrinsic to this bill. By assigning all of the real work to the NAS track, which allows for stakeholder involvement in an extremely limited fashion, important stakeholder perspectives will be omitted from the NAS component’s findings. 

Local perspectives and insights from communities and organizations on the ground who would be impacted by industrial gold mining—should it occur in Virginia—are the most important and unique addition that this state agency component can offer. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the state agency component of the work group assembled to study gold mining in the Commonwealth. 

Sincerely,

Maggie Snoddy

Secretary

BCDC