new York times article, page-3

The article previously cited for which I am including the link to below (once again) actually quotes more than just a single farmer. For those who don't want or don't have the time to read the whole article due to its length, they can read the main points as they relate to GGG below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/w...ng-pristine-land-for-mineral-riches.html?_r=0

In the south, Greenland Minerals and Energy and Tanbreez, two Australian-owned companies, have put forward the two largest proposals of the 24 submitted for active exploration licenses in the municipality. (Greenland Minerals and Energy already has a partnership with the Chinese company NFC for a joint venture once a license is approved.)

Tanbreez has been waiting three and a half years for approval of its exploitation license for rare-earth elements.

“Processes are extremely slow because politics are getting involved,” said Bolette Nielsen, a mining consultant who has worked for the project. Tanbreez officials said they would provide 500 jobs, but the minerals will only be extracted, and not processed, locally.

The Greenland Minerals and Energy project is more contentious because it plans to extract uranium along with rare-earth elements and to create a chemical processing plant on site. Gerhard Schmidt, a German engineer in radioactive waste management, said that this would be the only open-pit uranium mine in the Arctic and that its location on top of a mountain makes it more risky, as dust and water used in the mining could trickle down the slopes and disseminate.

“This would end our picture-perfect environment,” said Ellen Frederiksen, the sheep farmer in Qassiarsuk.

“No one dares put up their hand to bring up the mines because they know it’ll cause mayhem,” Agathe Devisme, a farmer, said. If Greenland Minerals and Energy’s uranium mining project moves forward, she is one of the farmers who will be forced to abandon her land, where she also runs a bed-and-breakfast.

“Here in Greenland, no one owns the land,” she said. She means that literally: Land in Greenland is communally owned. “So my husband and I found out they had granted G.M.E. an exploration license on our farmland, without our permission.”

In a feasibility plan, Lake Taseq, which sits at the center of the grazing area for seven farms, is to be used for uranium mineral tailings. “When I think of the mine, all I see is gray, gray dust covering my life, my region and everything in sight,” Mrs. Devisme said.

But Mrs. Nielsen, the mining consultant, said it was unlikely that the company would be able to begin the exploration phase within a decade.

“With uranium, there are a million more authorizations and processes to go through, and Denmark will have to give permission,” she said, pointing out Denmark’s opposition to nuclear energy.