\u201cI view LWCF as a critical tool for economic recovery,\u201d Lachelt said in a phone interview. \u201cIt puts contractors to work and the people who work for those contractors to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter was also signed by Telluride Mayor DeLanie Young, who said in a news release that \u201cinvesting now in full funding for LWCF will help with a strong long-term recovery for gateway communities and states that rely on visitors to public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, America\u2019s outdoor recreation economy supports more than 7.6 million jobs and contributes more than $887 billion in annual economic output.<\/p>\n
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., spoke about permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund this week on the Senate floor, explaining that outdoor recreation is one of the largest drivers of Colorado\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n The LWCF would \u201ccreate immediate jobs building roads and maintaining trails \u2013 creating the kind of job opportunities that many of our high-mountain towns desperately need as a result of this health emergency and now economic emergency,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n The push to include permanent funding for public lands in Colorado in the next economic stimulus bill has support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, including Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we look to the future, significant investments in our public lands would help the outdoor economy, a critically important sector in Colorado, get back on its feet,\u201d Bennet said in a statement.<\/p>\n Permanent funding for the LWCF would support projects that protect clean water for La Plata County and prevent disasters such as the 2015 Gold King Mine spill into the Animas River, Lachelt said.<\/p>\n A number of Western environmental advocacy groups, including the Western Colorado Alliance, also sent a letter to Congress this week, asking for funding for abandoned mine reclamation and cleanup in the next trillion-dollar stimulus bill.<\/p>\n \u201cThose kinds of projects put people to work,\u201d Lachelt said, and economic recovery from COVID-19 is \u201cgoing to take everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauren Pagel, policy director of the environmental organization Earthworks, said stimulus funds could put people in places like Western Colorado to work immediately, cleaning up the approximately 23,000 abandoned mines across the state.<\/p>\n Almost 3.2 million more Americans filed for unemployment last week, according to data from the Department of Labor, and more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March.<\/p>\n \u201cAn influx of hard rock AML (Abandoned Mine Lands) funds will not only create jobs, it will also help restore polluted landscapes, putting degraded lands into productive use and granting relief to communities currently shackled with excessive costs for water treatment of pollution from abandoned mines,\u201d the letter from Earthworks said.<\/p>\n Under a 148-year-old law still in place \u2013 the General Mining Act of 1872 \u2013 hard rock mines for materials like gold and silver don\u2019t have to pay reclamation fees or royalties, unlike coal mines. That puts the expense of their cleanup on taxpayers.<\/p>\n In states like Colorado, there is a discrepancy between \u201cthe mines they want to clean up versus how much money they have,\u201d Pagel said.<\/p>\n Cleanup for abandoned hard rock mines is part of creating a restoration economy with cleaner water and safer conditions, Pagel said.<\/p>\n Bennet also said Congress should prioritize investments in conservation because it is \u201cgood for the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAn infusion of federal funding could help clean up thousands of abandoned mines across the country, create new jobs and improve water quality for downstream communities,\u201d Bennet said in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n Kelly Fuller, energy and mining campaign director at the Western Watersheds Project, said rebuilding from COVID-19 raises the possibility of fixing long-standing pollution issues in rural mining communities.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t look like the U.S. is going to go back to the way it was before,\u201d Fuller said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n Rural communities that didn\u2019t have the money or enough people to make a difference now have \u201can opportunity to rebuild healthier, vibrant communities,\u201d Fuller said.<\/p>\n Emily Hayes is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leaders in La Plata, San Miguel counties call for healthier communities, job creation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[174,4826,28,29,24,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-88590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environmental-cleanup","tag-gwen-lachelt","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88590"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=88590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}