Congressman Ben Ray Luján is highlighting funding made available for the Nacimiento Copper Mine Cleanup Project through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Nacimiento Mine Cleanup Project will receive approximately $1.1 million in funding. The project is what they call shovel ready.His remarks on this project are as follows:
“We are already seeing benefits from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” said Rep. Luján. “The Nacimiento Mine Cleanup Project will be able to begin quickly and provide real economic benefits to Sandoval County, as well as protect land from contamination.”
The Nacimiento Mine a former copper mine in Sandoval County which is located in the Santa Fe National Forest will benefit from the funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Recovery funding will help with reclamation and recovery of the surrounding land.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the work will clean up and restore 25 million gallons of groundwater at Nacimiento Mine near Cuba, New Mexico. As we all know water in the southwest is a valuable asset that should be taken care of and this clean up can only help with improving the quality of life for the voting public in that area of the state. The cleanup will also provide increased economic opportunities and improved quality of life in rural New Mexico by treating the surface and ground water for human consumption as well as for use by small farmers and ranchers.
The Republican Party and their local mouth pieces would have the nerve to criticize our new congressman for the act of protecting the environment while providing new green jobs for our state that are the jobs of the future. They want to see more jobs in the northern part of our state that would require future clean up dollars, would be dead end jobs that would only go away in the future and that would damage the standard of living for the voting public in that area but look who the north voted into office. The Democratic Party can be and is very proud of our new congressman and the hard work he is doing to move New Mexico forward into a future that will protect our environment and provide good paying jobs for New Mexicans. Someone should tell the Republican Party to stop living in the past because our representatives are marching into a brighter future with our drumbeat.
