Political Quotes

“This amendment is very simple. This is an area called the Forty Mile Mining District area in the State of Alaska that has been mined since 1895. There was an attempt by the BLM to go in and stop this mining. These are not large mines. These are mom-and-pop operations, placer operations. They put down ridiculous regulations and reclamation now, and they want them to reclaim the land back to the original state before it was ever mined, not of the disturbance of the mining they were doing. It is amazing to me that they would even think about doing this. I am talking about people who have been there for 20 years, most of them retired. They are really, if I have to say anything, the mom-and- pops of Alaska; they are the spirit of Alaska. All of a sudden, they have a big agency coming in and saying: You have to have a reclamation area, and this is the way that we want it done. Yet, they don't recognize what has been done in the past and how it has worked. What they are proposing is wrong, and it costs a considerable amount of money to these small mom-and-pop miners. One of our big plaques in the State of Alaska is the gold pan. Yet, we have this agency coming in for 140 acres. That is all they are talking about. For some reason, they got an idea that we want to put them out of business. I am just saying, no, they should not impose these regulations. Follow the State mining law, and the reclamation that takes place now works.…”