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Contact: Bill Adams, 202-366-5580
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
DOT 50-03
U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta today received the American Recreation Coalition’s Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award, the recreation community’s highest recognition. The award recognizes Secretary Mineta’s personal efforts for transportation as both significant and unusually energetic.
“I am honored and proud to receive the Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award,” Secretary Mineta said. “We have worked hard and successfully with many partners to be good stewards of the great and wonderful resources under America’s beautiful, spacious skies. We now look forward to building on these achievements with the President’s new surface transportation legislative proposal, SAFETEA.”
The American Recreation Coalition credited Secretary Mineta for playing a major role in the country’s transportation policies for decades. From 1975 to 1995 he served as a member of U.S. House of Representatives, representing the heart of California’s Silicon Valley.
During his career in Congress he championed increases in investment for transportation infrastructure and was a key author of the landmark Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 that shifted decisions on highway and mass transit planning to state and local governments. ISTEA led to major upsurges in mass transit ridership and more environmentally friendly transportation projects, such as bicycle paths.
SAFETEA, the Bush administration’s “Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003,” is a $247-billion legislative proposal to build upon the principles, values and achievements of ISTEA and its successor, the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century (TEA-21).
The Great Outdoors Award was presented to
Secretary Mineta at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which is
located at the entrance to the Arlington National Cemetery. The award
presentation was one of the events celebrating Great Outdoors Week 2003, June
9-13.
Great Outdoors Week highlights the partnerships that enable outdoor
recreation to contribute to the nation’s health and quality of life and the
efforts of individuals whose vision has established and protected the nation’s
parks, forests, refuges and other protected lands.
The Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award was created in 1989 in honor of the late conservationist and recreation industry pioneer whose six-decade career combined engineering genius and active work on behalf of the great outdoors.
Previous award recipients include President George W. Bush, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and U.S. Rep. James Oberstar.
The American Recreation Coalition (ARC) is a Washington-based non-profit organization formed in 1979. According to its fact sheet, ARC since its inception has sought to catalyze public/private partnerships to enhance and protect outdoor recreational opportunities and the resources upon which such experiences are based.
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