Proposed Pebble Mine looks kaput, this time for good, as EPA moves to protect Bristol Bay

The Unit­ed States Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, mov­ing to end a fif­teen year bat­tle, is maneu­ver­ing to block a giant, square mile-sized open pit cop­per and gold mine pro­posed in two water­sheds that are spawn­ing grounds for salmon runs of Alaska’s Bris­tol Bay.

“Bris­tol Bay sup­ports one of the world’s most impor­tant salmon fish­eries: Two decades of sci­en­tif­ic study show us that min­ing the Peb­ble Deposit would cause per­ma­nent dam­age to an ecosys­tem that sup­ports a renew­able eco­nom­ic pow­er­house and has sus­tained fish­ing cul­tures since time immemo­r­i­al,” the EPA’s new Region 10 admin­is­tra­tor (and for­mer Seat­tle may­oral can­di­date) Casey Sixkiller said in a statement.

Although a court chal­lenge is expect­ed, the EPA’s action – tak­en under sec­tion 404(c) of the Clean Water Act – may dri­ve a spike through the heart of the project. It would also end an epic bat­tle that pit­ted one resource that dri­ves Alaska’s econ­o­my against anoth­er. The U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers has already denied a per­mit to the pro­posed mine, which back­ers want to build in South­west Alas­ka between Kat­mai and Lake Clark Nation­al Parks.

The EPA’s action rep­re­sents a win for the tenac­i­ty of Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, who began fight­ing the Peb­ble Mine project in 2011 and pushed the fed­er­al agency into a three-year study of the project’s impacts.

The EPA found that the mine would impact any­where from twen­ty-four up to nine­ty-four miles of water­ways and endan­ger forty-eight to six­ty-two miles of riv­er should its reten­tion of tox­ic tail­ings be released. An esti­mat­ed 2,800 acres of wet­lands would be dam­aged or destroyed. The region is an earth­quake zone.

“The sci­ence is clear: Peb­ble Mine would poi­son the frag­ile Bris­tol Bay water­shed, destroy­ing mil­lions of salmon and the thou­sands of jobs that rely on them,” Cantwell said in a state­ment last week, applaud­ing the EPA’s action.

Allow­ing for polit­i­cal hyper­bole, Cantwell was on the mark flag­ging the project. The pro­posed mine would be 2,000 feet deep, require con­struc­tion of an eighty-two-mile ser­vice road through wet­lands as well as a 165-mile nat­ur­al gas pipeline. It would require con­struc­tion of a 270-megawatt pow­er plant, and a port in Iliamna Bay.

Using fig­ures from 2019, the EPA val­ued the annu­al Bris­tol Bay salmon fish­ery at $2.2 bil­lion, the vast major­i­ty being a com­mer­cial and native salmon fish­ery that sup­ports 15,000 jobs and is val­ued at $2 bil­lion. It gen­er­ates near­ly $1 bil­lion worth of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty in Alas­ka, but also sup­ports about 1,000 licens­es of fish­ers who trav­el north from Washington.

The project has been cham­pi­oned by a Cana­di­an firm, but North­ern Dynasty Min­er­als has increas­ing­ly lacked for company.

A quar­tet of major min­ing firms – Anglo-Amer­i­can, Mit­subishi, Rio Tin­to and First Quan­tum Min­er­als – have with­drawn from the Peb­ble project in recent years.

The Peb­ble Deposit is “of rare mag­ni­tude and qual­i­ty,” said Anglo-Amer­i­can, which nonethe­less pulled out after judg­ing invest­ment and risk as too high.

In 2020, Mor­gan Stan­ley dumped its shares in North­ern Dynasty.

The pro­posed Alas­ka megapro­ject has gen­er­at­ed a mul­ti­fac­eted oppo­si­tion dur­ing the past decade.

• Five lead­ing retail jew­el­ers, includ­ing Ben Bridge and Tiffany,gave the project thumbs down and said they would not fash­ion jew­el­ry out of gold tak­en from the mine. “For Tiffany & Co., and we believe many of our fel­low retail jew­el­ers, this means we will look to oth­er places to source gold,” said Michael Kowal­s­ki, Tiffany’s CEO.
• Lead­ing chefs decried the Peb­ble Project for its poten­tial dam­age to wild salmon runs. A “Stop Peb­ble Mine” mes­sage was pro­ject­ed on the wall of Seattle’s Palace Kitchen. “We have &@#$ed up every com­mer­cial fish­ery that we’ve had down here in the states. All forty-eight states, so this is the last fron­tier and this is the last one avail­able,” in the words of Seat­tle celebri­ty chef Tom Douglas.
• An out­fit called the Envi­ron­men­tal Inves­ti­ga­tion Agency, pos­ing as Hong Kong investors, got Peb­ble Part­ner­ship exec­u­tives to boast of their influ­ence with Alas­ka politi­cians. CEO Tom Col­lier said U.S. Sen­a­tors Lisa Murkows­ki and Dan Sul­li­van might sound crit­i­cal but were ready to go along with the mine. Murkows­ki might make hos­tile nois­es, said Col­lier, but “when it comes time to do some­thing, she nev­er does any­thing to hurt Peb­ble. Nev­er.” Exit Tom Col­lier. Both Alas­ka sen­a­tors denied back­stage sup­port for the mine and sub­se­quent­ly found seri­ous flaws in Pebble’s per­mit application.
• The Trump regime pulled back on plans to use the Clean Water Act and appeared for a time lean­ing toward Army Corps per­mit­ting of the project. It turned out, how­ev­er, that pres­i­den­tial sons Don­ald Jr. and Eric Trump are patrons of lux­u­ry sport fish­ing lodges in the region. Curi­ous­ly, nativist FNC pun­dit Tuck­er Carl­son also denounced the project.

The last line of advo­ca­cy, for Peb­ble Mine devel­op­ers, is that cop­per from the mine would aid in con­struc­tion of tur­bines, solar pan­els and elec­tric vehi­cles, all com­po­nents in the Biden administration’s cam­paign to curb glob­al warm­ing. It has, how­ev­er, not been list­ed as a crit­i­cal min­er­al by the fed­er­al government.

The EPA’s deter­mi­na­tion of impacts under the Clean Water Act would pro­hib­it any enti­ty from dump­ing mine relat­ed waste with­in a 308-square mile region around the site of the pro­posed mine.

Dur­ing the 2020 cam­paign for the White House, Pres­i­dent Biden pledged to “lis­ten to the sci­en­tists and pro­tect Bris­tol Bay… It is no place for a mine.”

The EPA will accept pub­lic com­ments until July 5th, and expects to pub­lish a final legal deter­mi­na­tion lat­er this year.