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Michael Heizer’s “City” may not glow in the dark

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Apparently artist Michael Heizer will not be bulldozing ‘City,’ the mammoth Earthwork -- seen in a satellite image above -- that he has been building in the remote Nevada desert for nearly 40 years. In 2004, the Las Vegas Mercury reported that Heizer was concerned about federal government plans to construct a nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. That meant the so-called Caliente Corridor -- a rail line to haul the radioactive waste -- would skirt the edge of ‘City’ and its 30-acre sprawl:

[Heizer] told his neighbors that if the Caliente Corridor becomes reality, he will use his bulldozers to completely bury the ‘City’ project and that he will walk away from it ... .

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Now the Associated Press is reporting that President Obama’s first budget red-pencils nearly all funding for the Yucca Mountain dump. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described the move as a ‘significant victory’ in efforts to block the toxic waste site.

The reclusive artist has mostly kept ‘City’ under wraps. Additional pictures of the project, which is said to include massive structures whose origins came from the artist’s visit to the Mayan temples at Chichen Itza, Mexico, can be found here. Another Google aerial map is here.

-- Christopher Knight

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