Political Quotes

“I rise today to introduce the Three Kids Mine Reclamation Act of 2011. My legislation transfers approximately 900 acres of federal land to the city of Henderson to facilitate the remediation and redevelopment of a dangerous abandoned mine site near Lake Mead. The Three Kids mine was originally developed during World War I to provide manganese needed to harden steel used by the U.S. military. The mine and mill continued to support the building of warships and tanks through 1961 after which it was mostly abandoned and used occasionally as a storage site for federal manganese reserves. The Three Kids site was forgotten for decades until the population explosion in southern Nevada put the mine right in people's backyards. The Three Kids Mine site is littered with hazards that include three large mine pits that are hundreds of feet deep, ruins from the mine facility, and a sludge pool of mine tailings made up of arsenic, lead, and diesel fuel. As a result of how the mine was developed and managed, approximately 75 percent of the area is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, and the Bureau of Reclamation, while part of the site is privately owned. Unfortunately, because of the complicated land ownership pattern and the immense cost of clean-up, the Federal Government was never able to initiate the reclamation process.…”