The State of Alas­ka has tak­en its case direct­ly to the Unit­ed States Supreme Court, the bench where Samuel Ali­to cur­rent­ly sits, in an eleventh hour effort to res­ur­rect a giant, open pit cop­per and gold mine, pro­posed for land in west­ern Alas­ka that flanks two of Bris­tol Bay’s renowned salmon spawn­ing watersheds.

Alaska’s beau­ti­ful Bris­tol Bay, pho­tographed by Jim Klug

Alas­ka Attor­ney Gen­er­al Treg Tay­lor acknowl­edged that the peti­tion is “extra­or­di­nary” but claims his state has a “sov­er­eign right to reg­u­late its own lands.” The U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency ruled last year that the Peb­ble Mine pro­pos­al vio­lates the Clean Water Act by imper­il­ing the world’s great­est sock­eye salmon fishery.

Min­er­al extrac­tion is, argues the state’s brief, “crit­i­cal to the con­tin­ued well-being of Alas­ka, which has long relied on its resource-rich lands to fund the state and local gov­ern­ments.” But the salmon runs of Bris­tol Bay sup­port 14,000 jobs and yield an annu­al income aver­ag­ing $1.5 bil­lion. An aver­age of 57 mil­lion sock­eye have returned annu­al­ly in the past decade.

The EPA was urged by Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, to use the Clean Water Act and care­ful­ly assess impacts of the pro­posed open pit.

The fed­er­al agency concluded:

“Dis­charges of dredged or fill mate­r­i­al to con­struct and oper­ate the pro­posed mine site alone would result in the per­ma­nent loss of approx­i­mate­ly 8.5 miles of anadro­mous fish streams, 91 miles of addi­tion­al streams that sup­port an anadro­mous fish­ery, and approx­i­mate­ly 2,108 acres of wet­land and oth­er waters.”

The pro­posed mine has drawn oppo­si­tion from com­mer­cial fish­ers, Bris­tol Bay native cor­po­ra­tions, sport fish­ing lodges and envi­ron­men­tal groups.

Even the late Sen­a­tor Ted Stevens, Alaska’s pre­mier boomer politi­cian, who was­n’t very fond of Cantwell, was sus­pi­cious of the project. A close friend of Stevens owned a home near­by at the gate­way to Lake Clark Nation­al Park.

The Trump regime appeared ready to have the Army Corps of Engi­neers green-light the project, only to meet oppo­si­tion from fam­i­ly and cronies of the 45th pres­i­dent. Two sons of his, Don­ald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump, have stayed at the lodges. Even ex-FNC host Tuck­er Carl­son came out against the mine.

Don­ald Trump, Jr., post­ed a pic­ture of him­self and son hoist­ing a salmon with the mes­sage: “The head­wa­ters of Bris­tol Bay and the sur­round­ing fish­ery are too unique and frag­ile to take any chances with the Peb­ble Mine.”

The Supreme Court, in a 6–3 rul­ing ear­li­er this year, restrict­ed the EPA’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect the nation’s waterways.

But the high court has a con­flict of its own.

ProP­ub­li­ca recent­ly dis­closed that Ali­to took a pricey Alaskan vaca­tion to the King Salmon Lodge, locat­ed in the Bris­tol Bay watershed.

Ali­to did not report the jun­ket, tak­en on a pri­vate jet owned by hedge fund bil­lion­aire Paul Sign­er, a trip that would have set the jus­tice back at least $100,000 had Ali­to cho­sen to foot the bill. Ali­to was host­ed at the lodge by anoth­er major Repub­li­can donor, Robin Arkley II. Leonard Leo, head of the con­ser­v­a­tive Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, arranged the trip.

The mine pro­pos­al is the brain­child of Van­cou­ver-based North­ern Dynasty Min­er­als and its Peb­ble Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship. Two of the world’s largest min­er­al con­glom­er­ates, Anglo Amer­i­can and Rio Tin­to, long ago pulled out.

Lead­ing jew­el­ry firms, notably Tiffany and Ben Bridge, have opposed the mine. So have such promi­nent chefs as Seattle’s Tom Douglas.

Three years ago, two activists of a group called the Envi­ron­men­tal Inves­ti­ga­tion Agency posed as poten­tial Hong Kong investors and made videos of two top Peb­ble exec­u­tives boast­ing of their back­stage influ­ence over Alas­ka politi­cians. They also spoke of expect­ing a $1.5 bil­lion state sub­sidy of the giant mine.

Of Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska, Peb­ble exec­u­tive Tom Col­lier observed: “She says things that don’t sound sup­port­ive of Peb­ble, but when it comes to vote, when it comes to do some­thing, she nev­er does any­thing to hurt Peb­ble, O.K.?”

The blow­back was instantaneous.

Sen­a­tor Murkows­ki fumed at the hint of duplic­i­tous behav­ior and came out against the Corps issu­ing a per­mit for the mine.

Sen­a­tor Dan Sul­li­van, R‑Alaska, then engaged in a tight reelec­tion race, tweet­ed: “I oppose Peb­ble Mine. No Peb­ble Mine.”

The Bris­tol Bay Defense Fund, a coali­tion oppos­ing the mine, described the state’s lat­est law­suit as “lit­tle more than a pub­lic­i­ty stunt filed on behalf of an unscrupu­lous min­er­al com­pa­ny, Peb­ble Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship, (that) has repeat­ed­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed its record and mis­led reg­u­la­tors, its investors, Con­gress and the gen­er­al public.”

The Puget Sound region has skin (or scales) in this game.

An esti­mat­ed 1,100 Wash­ing­ton fish­ers have license to cast nets in Bris­tol Bay. Wash­ing­ton is a major cen­ter for fish processing.

Sen­a­tor Cantwell has fought the mine for more than a decade, stress­ing that Bris­tol Bay is an enor­mous eco­nom­ic as well as nat­ur­al resource.

The legal bid to revive Peb­ble comes as the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion faces a dicey deci­sion on anoth­er major min­er­al deposit. Ambler Met­als has esti­mat­ed there is $7.5 bil­lion worth of cop­per in a deposit north of the Arc­tic Cir­cle in the Brooks Range. A mine would pro­duce met­als need­ed to make bat­ter­ies and wind tur­bines, and oth­er ele­ments of the administration’s “green” agenda.

Yet, the mine would require con­struc­tion of a two hun­dred and eleven mile haul road. It would cut through pris­tine wilder­ness, cross eleven major rivers, and cut across the migra­to­ry paths of thou­sands of cari­bou. The road would trav­el twen­ty-six miles through Gates of the Arc­tic Nation­al Park and Preserve.

Due west of the mine site is Kobuk Val­ley Nation­al Park.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion has sided with fish­eries and con­ser­va­tion groups in defense of the Bris­tol Bay fish­ery. It has halt­ed log­ging of old growth trees and new road con­struc­tion in the Ton­gass Nation­al For­est of South­east Alas­ka. And it has halt­ed new oil and gas leas­ing in the Arc­tic Nation­al Wildlife Refuge, west of Prud­hoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope.

At the same time, the admin­is­tra­tion has okayed Cono­co-Phillips’ ambi­tious Wil­low project, an oil and gas devel­op­ment west of Prud­hoe Bay.

Envi­ron­men­tal groups have bit­ter­ly opposed Wil­low, argu­ing that it will be a major emit­ter of green­house gas­es at a time when the Arc­tic is warm­ing at a pace faster than the rest of plan­et Earth.

The impacts of glob­al warm­ing are vis­i­ble in The Last Fron­tier. Melt­ing per­mafrost has forced clo­sure of the road across Denali Nation­al Park.

So-called “drunk­en forests” can be seen across north and cen­tral Alas­ka, trees lean­ing in all direc­tions due to per­mafrost melt.

No longer pro­tect­ed by an ear­ly-form­ing ice pack, coastal vil­lages are being bat­tered by fall and win­ter storms off the Bering Sea.

The state’s great tide­wa­ter glac­i­ers are in rapid retreat.

The Muir Glac­i­er no longer reach­es Muir Inlet in Glac­i­er Bay Nation­al Park. The Portage Glac­i­er is no longer vis­i­ble from the Portage Bay Vis­i­tor Cen­ter south of Anchor­age. The Colum­bia Glac­i­er, in Prince William Sound, has calved ice­bergs into the path of oil tankers leav­ing Valdez.