Home News Latest Good Plume Jr. Resigns from Board

Good Plume Jr. Resigns from Board

Rapid City, SD --Garvard Good Plume Jr. resigned from the Board of Directors of Defenders of the Black Hills after agreeing to do cultural resources work for the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern (DM&E) Railroad's expansion project in South Dakota and Wyoming.

 

Many Board members of the non-profit, environmental organization have been against the DM&E's expansion project into the Cheyenne River Valley for more than a decade. Besides the immediate concerns to the ecology of the region, the health risks to local people, and the destruction of cultural resources, the group now includes the additional effects of radioactive pollution. The coal is laced with uranium and is proposed to be carried out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming by DM&E's Expansion Project. Coal burned in power plants in the Eastern United States emit radioactive pollution which is not controlled or monitored by federal regulations.

Good Plume Jr. was not involved in initial opposition efforts against the DM&E Expansion Project. In order to avoid any conflic of interest, Good Plume Jr. voluntarily resigned from the Defenders' Board on Aug. 24, 2009.

####
For more information, call Charmaine White Face, Coordinator, at 399-1868.

Mission Statement

"Defenders of the Black Hills is a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the environment of the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Territories, Treaties made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation."

Speaking about radioactive fallout, the late President John F. Kennedy said,

"Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some, in comparison with natural health hazards. But this is not a natural health hazard and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby who may be born long after we are gone, should be of concern to us all. Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics toward which we can be indifferent."

July 26, 1963 upon signing the ban on above ground nuclear tests