"Tribes slam Amodei plan to give polluted Nevada land to oil company", 15 May 2018

A Nevada congressman is pushing a bill to give more than 2,000 acres of federal land at a polluted mine site to the multinational oil conglomerate responsible for cleaning it up, despite objections from American Indian tribes downstream from the pollution.  Rep. Mark Amodei...said representatives from the oil company Atlantic Richfield Co., a subsidiary of BP, told him the proposed transfer of...property...would make cleanup of the former Anaconda mine more efficient...[T]he Chairman of the Yerington Paiute American Indian tribe called the bill, H.R. 5347, a “shameful” infringement on tribal sovereignty...Tribal Chairman Laurie Thom said...the bill is a threat to tribal members’ access to cultural heritage sites and future economic development...Torres, whose Walker River Paiute Tribe has more than 3,600 members, said neither Amodei nor anyone else consulted with the tribes about the bill...According to language in the Amodei bill, the company needs access to the BLM land in order to complete the job.  Consultants for the Yerington tribe...say the Atlantic Richfield can conduct the cleanup without owning the land...Rep. Ruben Kihuen,..., whose district includes the land, opposes Amodei’s bill.  “Let’s call this bill what it is, a land grab that robs the Bureau of Land Management of 2,000 acres of public land, reduces access for Nevadans, and ignores the wishes of our tribal communities, all under the guise of environmental remediation,” Kihuen said...A spokesman for BP did not return calls for comment.