The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Lesil McGuire, R-Anchorage, also clarifies ambiguous language associated with the Sustainable Energy Transmission and Supply Fund within AIDEA.

“Senate Bill 99 and other bills like it show the financial markets and the rest of the mining industry that Alaska is open for business,” said Sen. McGuire. “These two projects will give a much-needed economic injection into Southeast Alaska in the same way the SETS fund is helping Interior Alaska with the gas-trucking project the legislature passed last year.”

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, tacked on an amendment that would give AIDEA the authority to use SETS to issue long-term bonds to finance up to US$145 million of the costs to develop the Bokan rare earth element project on Prince of Wales Island.

In April of last year, Alaska State Legislature unanimously voted in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 8, also sponsored by McGuire, stating the Legislature’s support for continued and increased exploration, extraction, processing and production of REEs in Alaska.

SB99, by allowing AIDEA to help secure funding for the Bokan Mountain, furthers this commitment.

REEs are needed to make a wide-variety of items including high-tech military equipment, wind turbines, solar panels, advanced batteries, geothermal steam turbines, plus almost all high-tech consumer goods including flat screen TVs, computers, tablets and cell phones. China currently controls more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, but reduced the exports of those elements by 54-percent between 2005 to 2010, and then another by nearly 50-percent in from 2010 to 2011.

“It poses a huge risk to our national and energy security to be forced to rely on foreign countries for these critical minerals,” said Sen. McGuire. “That’s why as a nation, we need to take a ‘Made in the USA’ approach to developing and producing the rare earth minerals that we have in our own backyard. Closer to home, developing this mine will put our State in the driver’s seat of the REE revolution while creating hundreds of jobs for Alaskans.”

A second amendment to SB99, also introduced by Stedman, would allow AIDEA to issue up to US$125 million in bonds for the development of the Niblack copper-gold-zinc-silver deposit on Prince of Wales Island.

In October of last year, the Alaska development authority and Heatherdale entered into a memorandum of understanding to evaluate whether the authority will help develop a potential mineral processing plant and associated facilities at the Gravina Island Industrial Complex near Ketchikan.

During mine operations, Niblack has the potential to provide 200 full-time jobs, with about two-thirds of workers at the mine site and one-third at the processing facility.

“This bill is just the beginning of what I envision will be the revitalization of Southeast Alaska’s economy which is still reeling from the loss of the Timber Industry at the hands of the Federal Government,” said Sen. McGuire.