Amy Klobuchar: “this bill is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the…”

“this bill is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the Boundary Waters, as Senator Smith has explained, but for public lands across our country. I have always supported science-based review, especially a project so close to this cherished Boundary Waters canoe area, and I continue to have concerns about this administration's disregard for science. So as many of my colleagues know, I am the granddaughter of an iron ore miner. My great-grandparents came from Slovenia, and that was the job that my great-grandpa came to do. He died very young from his work, and then my grandpa took it up. He started very, very young in underground mines with a number of brothers and sisters that he took care of when his parents died, married my grandma, and this was his life. And he loved that life. But he mostly also loved the time he had in the outdoors. He loved to hunt. He loved to fish. Every day he would go down 1,500 feet in that cage in that mine and always thought about what he thought about with that black lunch bucket that my grandma packed for him every single day in that little house that they had taken when a mine closed down in Babbitt. They put it on the back of a flatbed truck and they blew a hole with dynamite in the ground and put that house on top of it. That was their life. My grandpa worked most of his life in the mines as did so many friends.”