Nevada’s mining industry safe and necessary, Bennett says

The Nevada Mining Association’s interim president says it’s time for the public to sweep away perceptions about mining’s “pick and shovel” imagery in the Silver State.

“It’s really one of those most fun things to talk about,” Dana Bennett told the Appeal. “Nevada is proud of its heritage. You see the pick and shovel, the miner and the ghost are images that the state likes to use. Yet, you’re not going to find that in today’s industry. You can walk onto a mine site, and you don’t find a pick anywhere. The tools have become much more sophisticated.”

Bennett, a lifelong Nevadan, was announced in March as interim president of the NMA to help lead it through its transition after former President Tyre Gray left in February. Bennett had served as its first female president between 2014 and 2020, and she helped to establish its first strategic plan and increase its membership. She now oversees an organization that has grown to more than 500 members and companies and maintains a reputation on a global scale, she said.

“Our purpose for being is the production, extraction and production of minerals, the exploration, the construction and environmental permitting,” she told the Appeal. “We’re providing the nuts and bolts, and there’s lots of ways (organizations) can join with the NMA.”

Bennett said she’s especially proud of the diversity represented in the industry today and in the educational opportunities afforded to discuss its transformation from merely just collecting minerals to one that has become mindful of the safety and regulatory processes in operations that operates on a minimal amount of the state’s land mass, she said.

“There are places around reclamation, and they have provided for wildlife so that habitat can be improved, and it’s important to realize how small mining’s footprint has been,” she said. “The industry’s taking of all the acreage has been less than 1% of the state’s entire land mass. So then you look at the Anaconda Mine (in Lyon County) and you think, ‘That’s a big footprint,’ but you put Anaconda with all the other sites and set them with Las Vegas Valley, and it’s a small footprint.”

According to the NMA’s website, mines operate on approximately .3% of Nevada’s 70.8 million acres, of which a small portion is used for actual mining.

Bennett said she hopes the NMA continues its advocacy and education work with local communities, continuing to watch mining’s legacy as Nevada progresses economically and geologically in its work.

“We also look for opportunities to demonstrate that the industry is an important part of our heritage,” Bennett said. “It’s critical. We can find plenty of articles that talk about how many more minerals we need if we truly want to go to a carbon-free future, and minerals are critical if we want to achieve that.”

As president, Bennett participated on a number of community and state organizations to diversify the work of mining and represent the trade as a whole, which she said was among her favorite work in her role.

“We were meeting with international delegations as a way to tell others there is more to Nevada than the gaming you see on the (Las Vegas) Strip; there’s so much going on,” she said.

Bennett has served on the Nevada Board of Economic Development under former Govs. Brian Sandoval and Steve Sisolak

Bennett said the industry as a whole is well scrutinized under the public eye and anyone is always welcome to ask about how minerals are extracted.

“Most of Nevada — 86% of it — is managed by the federal government, and there’s very little activity that isn’t on public land or near public and federal and state land,” Bennett said. “The association has a very robust process for dealing with any sort of activity near public land, and there is always a public comment process.”

Bennett has more than 30 years of experience in public policy in Nevada, has authored three books and has worked as a consultant for companies that provide business in the Silver State. She also serves as the vice president of the national Mining History Association. Recently, she led the nonpartisan Kenny Guinn Center for Policy Priorities as its interim executive director.

Bennett said she hoped Nevada’s workforce for mining and interest in the field would increase, since the industry remains essential to the state’s success. With an aging workforce and the elimination of mining schools that once offered the specific engineering and metallurgy classes for the craft, she said the impacts on productivity have rippled down in the field.

“I have a little bias, but I would think any Nevada company would hire local folks, but local folks have to have the skill level to do the job,” she said. “We do work closely with the universities in addition to K-12 schools to help grow the workforce.”

She added she was encouraged by current processes put into place for legacy issues that have risen in recent years out of counties needing help with mining issues and said the association does participate.

For information about the NMA, visit www.nevadamining.org.