By Amelia Delphos
The Warminster Baptist Church sits on the corner of Warminster Church and Sycamore Creek roads in Buckingham County. The historic Black church was established in 1866; the congregation has worshiped in three different buildings, but never strayed far from the plot of soil where their traditions began.
Across the street, multiple generations of the Wayne family own land and live next to each other, as they have their entire lives. Their family members are buried down Sycamore Creek Road, less than a mile away, where they will one day be buried themselves.
The property that sits directly next to both the Wayne family and the church is owned by Weyerhaeuser, a timber and wood products company that grows and harvests forests. For the past four years, Weyerhaeuser has partnered with Aston Bay Holdings, a Canadian gold exploration company, which has quietly conducted exploratory drilling on the Weyerhaeuser land. The companies are searching for gold deposits beneath the forest.
An extractive gold mining operation could spell trouble for the people and environment of rural Buckingham County. But the area is no stranger to an environmental fight. Last year, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled in part due to the dedicated organizing of Buckingham’s activists. Now, those organizers once again find themselves defending themselves and their environment from big business.
High price
Buckingham County, Virginia, was the leading producer of gold in the United States prior to the California Gold Rush in 1849. A belt of gold and pyrite runs through the foothills of Virginia, from Fairfax, through Buckingham, and down to Appomattox. In the 19th century, gold mining was done with a pickaxe and shovel. Miners dug down until groundwater filled the mine and would move on to the next one.
Things have changed since the 1840s. Today, multinational companies swoop in to areas with historic gold mining success and set up huge mines. Open-pit gold mines look like craters left by asteroids, dents in the earth hundreds of feet deep and hundreds of thousands of feet wide.
Gold mines decimate local ecosystems. A 2017 study conducted by environmental groups found that “Gold mines almost always pollute water—74 percent of operating gold mines polluted surface and/or groundwater, including drinking water.” That’s a particular problem in Buckingham County, where residents are almost entirely reliant on groundwater. The small town of Dillwyn has a water treatment plant, but the rest of the county’s 17,000 residents drink from the deep wells on their properties.
Aston Bay’s exploratory drilling is taking place very close to the James River, which provides drinking water for over three million Virginians.
“All of the streams are heading downstream from that location to the James,” says Chad Oba, president of Friends of Buckingham, a local group of citizens “united to work with our county leaders to attract economic investment opportunities that benefit all of our residents, and that contribute to a sustainable healthy environment.”
Oba’s group first coalesced in opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2014. That project, too, would have had dangerous impacts on local watersheds. If a gold mine comes, “The James, very definitely, would be impacted,” says Oba.
Mining town
A couple years ago, Paul Barlow, a resident of Buckingham County, had two Canadian geologists approach him and ask to take samples from his creek. The geologists were not affiliated with Aston Bay, but had heard there was exploratory core drilling happening nearby, and they hoped to locate the source that had drawn their countrymen. Barlow agreed, and the geologists took samples and sent them back to their lab in Canada.
About eight months later, they told Barlow they found no gold in his creek, but they did find indications that gold could be close to Barlow’s property. Casually, Barlow asked the geologists what would have happened if they had found a deposit on his land.
“‘Would you guys dig a pit? Would you guys tunnel for it?’” Barlow asked. “They both laughed and said ‘Oh no, no, no, it would be an open-pit mine. You would have to move, we would completely destroy your 27 acres, and up your house that you would have to move. All these trees and all these hills would be leveled with huge, open pits.’”
The geologists told Barlow he wouldn’t have to sell or lease his land, but he wouldn’t be able to live there because of the mining operation. It’s a timeworn Appalachian tale: community members presented with a choice to sell their land to the arriving industrialists and have it decimated, or stay, and watch their property value dwindle to nothing.
After Barlow’s encounter with the geologists, he traveled south to learn more about what it’s like to live so close to a gold mining operation. About five hours from Buckingham, Kershaw, South Carolina, contains the largest gold mining operation on the East Coast. The Haile Mine sits three miles northeast of Kershaw, where the Australian company OceanaGold mines between 146,000 and 175,000 ounces of gold per year.
Barlow hoped to talk to the people who lived around the mine.
“I was driving around and it was just empty driveway after empty driveway,” he says. “You could see where a house foundation used to be, and it was just miles of empty driveways.”
Eventually, Barlow found someone who lived close to the mine. In 2012, OceanaGold approached the man and offered to buy his property. The man refused, but his sister, who lived next door, was offered $300,000 for her property, 40 acres and a single-wide trailer. According to local real estate trends, she made a profit.
“The mine will spend a lot of money to displace people.” Barlow says.
Nowhere to go
In 2018, Buckingham’s Warminster Baptist Church’s well went dry. The neighbors down the street began having problems with their well, too. After years of heavier-than-average rainfall, there’s no obvious reason for the wells drying up.
“Our neighbors to the church, [they] can wash one load of clothes and they have no water,” says Deacon Bill Perkins, who is a Wayne on his mother’s side. He’s concerned that more industry nearby could further disrupt the community’s delicate ecosystem.
“If they was to do the mining in the Warminster Baptist Church neighborhood, it would affect the whole neighborhood,” Perkins says “It would affect our water table, our air, and then bring all of this heavy equipment in and it will destroy our roads.”
Should a gold mine be established, it would be difficult for the Wayne family to relocate. The family has been on that land for at least five generations and most of the current residents are elderly. They have grown up together and plan on dying together.
“We have nowhere to relocate to,” Perkins says. “Most of the people who live in this neighborhood have been there all their life. It’s disturbing that they’re doing this, and we have nowhere else to go.”
On top of that, members of the Wayne family and other church family members are buried in a cemetery on Sycamore Creek Road, less than a mile from the church. “I’m concerned about our cemetery,” says Perkins. “It’s real near where they’re drilling at. What would happen to that? They’re not going to drill around it.”
“It’s a problem,” he says. “A terrible situation.”
Laws of the land
The possible gold mine has already led to changes in local law, and could soon bring about change at the state level, too.
State geologists say the current exploration is nothing to worry about. At the moment, Aston Bay Holdings is in Buckingham just to perform exploratory drilling. According to David Spears, a state geologist for the Department of Mining and Mineral Energy, core drilling primarily involves collecting rock samples.
“They drill a hole, they collect the samples, they plug the hole with cement, and then they go away. That’s it,” Spears explained at a November Buckingham County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission work session. A few weeks later, the Buckingham County Board of Supervisors voted to make core drilling allowable by-right on private property designated for agriculture and industry. That means Aston Bay can proceed without any other special permissions.
Friends of Buckingham responded to the board’s decision by working with the Virginia League of Conservation Voters to draft a new piece of state legislation. House Bill 2213, introduced in this winter’s General Assembly session, proposed establishing a commission to study the effects of gold mining in the state and imposing a two-year moratorium on large-scale commercial gold mining in Virginia in the meantime.
“This will extend,” says Oba. “There are 13 counties that the gold-pyrite belt runs through, so, stop it here, you stop it there.”
“Sometimes people think this is an issue that is limited to Buckingham County, and it’s not,” says Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, a Prince William County Democrat and chief patron of HB2213. “So we have the chance to take this question seriously and examine the issue before opening the door for gold mining that could have long-term impacts on our commonwealth.”
On February 5, HB2213 passed the House on a straight party-line vote. After the bill passed, Stephanie Rinaldi, a community member who lives near the potential mining property, stated, “When I heard they found gold a mile from my house, I panicked. A gold mine here would upend my entire life…We at least need to study and understand this industry before permits are issued.”
A week later, an amended version made it out of the state Senate Rules Committee. The revised bill, which will be presented to Governor Ralph Northam for his consideration this summer, includes the work study group but eliminates the proposed two-year moratorium on gold mining.
“It’s really disappointing that some of the bill was removed,” Oba says of the decision, though she’s glad the whole bill wasn’t killed. “There still is the study, which is absolutely necessary to protect our water, our air, our land-use, and our history, not only here in Buckingham, but throughout the state.”
“What’s the big deal? We’re not talking coal mining,” says Democratic Senator Dick Saslaw, one of the members of the rules committee who passed the revised bill, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Barlow lives about two miles from the exploratory drilling site. He and his wife have lived in Buckingham since 2012, and built the cabin on their property themselves. “We’re just so happy out here,” he says. “Nice and quiet. We don’t want anything to change out here.”
Says Perkins, “We love our church, we love our neighborhood, we love everybody that’s in the neighborhood. It’s not a neighborhood that gets a lot of disturbance. It’s a quiet, country neighborhood.”