[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 20102]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     MINING SCHOOLS ENHANCEMENT ACT

  (Mr. HARDY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HARDY. Mr. Speaker, we need more mining engineers. Approximately 
70 percent of the mining industry's technical leaders will reach 
retirement age over the next 10 to 15 years.
  In our mining engineering programs, almost all current faculty 
members will need to be replaced by the coming decade.
  At our Federal agencies, there is already a dangerous lack of 
employees with the necessary technical expertise to carry out their 
essential duties, such as permitting and inspections.
  Mr. Speaker, this is irresponsible, and it can have catastrophic 
consequences like we saw with the Gold King Mine disaster.
  In order to sustain our Nation's mining schools, we need to ensure 
that vital Federal funding is made available for faculty to conduct 
more research and to better educate the next generation of mineral 
scientists and engineers.
  It can be done by using the existing funding streams under SMCRA. My 
bill, H.R. 3734, the Mining Schools Enhancement Act, will accomplish 
this goal.

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