National Mining Association

For Additional Information:
John Grasser (202) 463-2651
Karen Batra (202) 463-2651

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 8, 2000

NEW NMA CHIEF CITES "UNITING THE INDUSTRY: AS FIRST MAJOR GOAL: "MINING HAS MORE IN COMMON TO HOLD THE INDUSTRY TOGETHER THAN DIFFERENCES TO DIVIDE"

Spokane, WA -- In a speech before the Northwest Mining Association's 106th annual meeting, National Mining Association's new President & CEO Jack N. Gerard cited unification and "renewed intensity" as major priorities for the mining industry in today's uncertain and unpromising political environment.

"We are capable of winning at critical times and places the attention of most of the Congress," Gerard said. "There is strength in the West and in the East; and the manufacturers bind it all together by spanning many industrial and urban centers. Using this combination in winning ways will require that our different sectors and cultures remobilize and reorient themselves with a renewed intensity."

Mining faces an uncertain future in today's political environment because of a closely divided Congress and a lack of direction. Gerard proposes the industry's priorities rest on the following:

"First, complete the uniting of our industry in our political activities;
Next, find and hold fast to the many concerns we have in common;
Next, hold fast to the friends we have -- help them and also take time to make more friends;
And finally, blend our concerns and our activities in ways that bring into play the full weight of the Senate seats and House districts in which mining is important."

Gerard is hopeful and enthusiastic about the industry's future, despite recent assaults on the industry from a less-than-sympathetic Clinton-Gore administration. "Much of this nation depends on mining and those who deliver the basic stuff that makes modern life possible, even if some political leaders of the moment are engaged in trying to persuade a majority to the contrary," Gerard said. "This is the political landscape over which the American mining industry must seek to move ahead and claim its future."

"We intend to look for and find new and more-effective ways to refute the misrepresentations the movement uses to villanize mining and to vilify miners in the on-going campaigns to discredit the industry," Gerard pledged.

Gerard discussed at length the mining industry's strengths and NMA's strategy for increasing its effectiveness in the future. "For the record, I believe that with your help, and the help of others, this organization can go everywhere and do most everything. My challenge is to build on the tradition and extend the achievement -- to adjust and synchronize this resource with the other strong resources of the industry in anticipation of all that is evolving in politics, in policy and in public opinion."

The National Mining Association's board of directors announced on October 30 that Jack N. Gerard will succeed Richard L. Lawson as NMA's president and chief executive officer.

Gerard was most recently chairman and CEO of the government relations consulting firm of McClure, Gerard and Neuenschwander, Inc., which specializes in representing natural resource and energy clients. In the early 1990's, Gerard managed and organized the Mineral Resource Alliance with 24 mining industry CEOs representing most of the mineral production in the U.S. This effort was focused on reforming the 1872 Mining Law.