Jeff Bingaman: “I rise to introduce the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Study Act. This bill authorizes the National Park…”

“I rise to introduce the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Study Act. This bill authorizes the National Park Service, in coordination with the Secretaries of Energy and Defense, to undertake a special resource study to assess the national significance, suitability, and feasibility of designating various Manhattan Project sites and their facilities as a National Historical Park. Specifically, the study will evaluate the historic significance of the Manhattan Project facilities of Los Alamos and the Trinity Site in the State of New Mexico, of the Hanford Site in the State of Washington, and of Oak Ridge in the State of Tennessee. I am pleased that my distinguished colleagues from the States of Washington, Senators Cantwell and Murray, are cosponsoring this bill. The significance of the Manhattan Project to this Nation--and indeed the World--would be difficult to overstate. The project was initiated as a desperate effort in the middle of World War II to beat Nazi Germany to the construction of the first nuclear bomb. The effort was of a magnitude and intensity not seen before or since: in a mere three years, 130,000 men and women went to work on a $2.2 billion mission that furiously pushed science, technology, engineering, and society into a new age. The magnitude of the effort is easily matched by its legacy.”