Feds veto remote Alaska copper, gold mining plan
EPA: Region provides salmon bounty ‘unrivaled anywhere in North America’
JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday effectively vetoed a proposed copper and gold mine in a remote region of southwest Alaska that is coveted by mining interests but that also supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.
The move by the agency, heralded by Alaska Native tribes and environmentalists who have long pushed for it, deals a potentially devastating blow to the proposed Pebble Mine and comes while an earlier rejection of a key federal permit for the project remains unresolved.
Pebble Limited Partnership CEO John Shively in a statement called the EPA’s action “unlawful” and political and said litigation was likely. Shively has cast the project as key to the Biden administration’s push to reach green energy goals and make the U.S. less dependent on foreign nations for such minerals.
The Pebble Limited Partnership, the developer behind Pebble Mine, is owned Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.
Tuesday’s announcement marks only the 14th time in the roughly 50-year history of the federal Clean Water Act that the EPA has flexed its powers to bar or restrict activities over potential impacts to waters, including fisheries.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said his agency’s use of its so-called veto authority in this case “underscores the true irreplaceable and invaluable natural wonder that is Bristol Bay.”
The veto is a victory for the environment, economy and tribes of Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, which have fought the proposal for more than a decade, said Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The mine would have jeopardized the region’s salmon fishery, which brings thousands of jobs to the area and supplies about half the world’s sockeye salmon, Reynolds said.
“It’s a victory for science over politics. For biodiversity over extinction. For democracy over corporate power,” Reynolds said.
The Pebble deposit is near the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, which supports a bounty of salmon “unrivaled anywhere in North America,” the EPA has said.
The agency, citing an analysis by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said discharges of dredged or fill material to build and operate the proposed mine site would result in a loss of nearly 100 miles of stream habitat, as well as wetland areas.
The Pebble partnership has maintained the project can coexist with salmon. The partnership’s website says the deposit is at the upper reaches of three “very small tributaries” and expresses confidence any impacts on the fishery “in the unlikely event of an incident” would be “minimal.”