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REDEVELOPING ABANDONED MINE LAND
(Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleague, Mr. Matt Cartwright, once again as cosponsor on the RECLAIM Act. This bipartisan legislation focuses on reauthorizing the abandoned mine land fund, or the AML fund.
My district, Pennsylvania 15, has the most abandoned coal mines in the country, and reauthorizing the AML fund will provide opportunities and funding to clean up the abandoned land, not just in my district, but across the Nation.
Coal mining built America. It powered us onto the world's stage. It helped us win two world wars and brought our Nation into the modern era.
The AML is set to expire this year. While we continue to make progress on environmental restoration, reauthorizing the fund is crucial to support clean-up efforts and spur economic development.
Madam Speaker, Congress has a great opportunity to do right by Pennsylvania and other great coal mining States by reauthorizing the abandoned mine land fund, which is not funded by tax dollars but by a fee that has been placed on every ton of coal mined since 1977. Those moneys are sitting there in the Federal Treasury, and we need to reauthorize that abandoned mine land fund to further the redevelopment of the scars of the water and the land in those abandoned lands.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 50
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