The Biden administration will take action on Tuesday to protect one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, by effectively blocking the development of a long-disputed gold and copper mine there.
The Environmental Protection Agency will make a final decision under the Clean Water Act banning the disposal of mine tailings in a portion of the Bay Watershed approximately 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Streams in the watershed are critical breeding grounds for salmon, but the area also contains deposits of precious metal ores believed to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
A proposal to mine those ores, called the Pebble Project, was supported by some Alaska lawmakers and indigenous groups because of the economic benefits it would bring, but opposed by others, including tribes around the Bay and environmentalists who say it would be irreparable. harm the salmon population.
Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, who has long opposed the mine, called the decision “a real moment of justice for us”.
She said the tribes had long been told that “we just had to get in line” and that the mine was inevitable. “Thank God our tribal leaders didn’t accept that,” Ms. Hurley said. “We will celebrate this decision for decades to come.”
Michael Regan, the EPA’s administrator, said Monday the decision came after an extensive review of two decades of scientific and technical research. “We are committed to making science-based decisions within our regulatory body that provide sustainable protection for people and the planet,” said Mr. Regan.
The company behind the mining project, Pebble Limited Partnership, called the EPA action illegal and unprecedented.
The environmental agenda of the Biden administration
“The Biden EPA continues to ignore due process and due process in favor of politics,” John Shiveley, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “This preemptive action against Pebble has no legal, technical or environmental support.”
The determination fulfills a campaign promise from President Biden to protect the bay. The sockeye salmon fishery there is the largest in the world, employing about 15,000 people and harvested 60 million fish worth an estimated $350 million last year. The economic benefits of fishing also extend beyond Alaska, particularly Washington State.
In addition, Bristol Bay salmon is the basis for a thriving sport fishing industry in Alaska and is a traditional subsistence food for many of the region’s natives.
Mr Shively said the company would likely appeal the determination. And there is the possibility that a future presidential administration that favors the development of a mine could try to overthrow it in some way.
Provisions like this, based on the Clean Water Act of 1972, are rare, with only three issued in the last 30 years, Mr Regan said. This one, he said. was based on ‘very solid science’.
“Obviously a final decision could be challenged in federal court and we cannot predict what future governments will or will not do. But what we can assure everyone is that there is a very solid track record here.”
The final provision will change little from a “recommended” provision submitted in December. In it, the agency said the Bristol Bay watershed, including streams that the salmon use to spawn, was a “significant source of global conservation value”.
The agency said removing material from the mine’s construction and operation would destroy 100 miles of streams and more than 2,100 acres of wetlands. It said a previous environmental impact statement prepared during the Trump administration, which found that these losses would not affect fish populations, “did not represent an accurate and thorough assessment of likely impacts.”
First proposed nearly two decades ago, the Pebble mining project has had a rollercoaster existence, and its outlook has shifted from bright to bleak over the years.
In the late 2000s, it received support from then-Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, a pro-development Republican. But the EPA in the Obama administration decided to block the mine in 2014, citing the Clean Water Act and the risks to the salmon fishery.
The agency under President Trump then reversed the Obama-era ruling and gave the project a new lease of life. Late in the Trump administration, however, after opposition from some Republicans, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., an avid sport fisherman, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the project a critical permit.
The Pebble partnership has appealed the Corps’ decision. Radhika Fox, the assistant EPA administrator for water, said that if the company were successful in the appeal, the Corps would still not be able to approve the project given the EPA’s determination unless it was somehow amended and the new proposal “does not have the similar adverse effects of this proposal.”
Washington Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell, one of the first lawmakers to oppose the project, said she was “ecstatic” about the EPA action. Washington state residents hold about a quarter of the commercial licenses to fish for sockeye in Bristol Bay, and much of the harvest passes through the state’s ports.
“This is such a big economic impact on salmon and on the economy and lifestyle of the Northwest,” she said. ‘This is no coincidence an Alaskan issue.”
The proposal for the Pebble project calls for an open-cast mine on a square mile of land, eventually excavated to a depth of about 1,500 feet. Tens of millions of tons of rock ore would be removed annually and processed to extract gold and copper, as well as molybdenum, which is used to strengthen steel in alloys.
The project also includes the construction of a power station and a pipeline for the gas to feed it, as well as an access road and port.
In 2020, Pebble executives were recorded saying they were expecting the project to grow much bigger and operate much longer, than originally outlined. The executives, who were recorded by members of an environmental protection group posing as potential investors, said the mine could operate for 160 years or more beyond the proposed 20 years. And it could quickly double its output after the first two decades, they said.
The comments eventually led to the dismissal from the company’s then CEO, Tom Collier.
The EPA determination is the final blow to the project. In December, the Conservation Fund, an environmental conservation organization, purchased easements to preserve 44,000 acres of land owned by a village indigenous company near Iliamna Lake, about 20 miles south of the proposed mine site and area covered by the EPA. statement falls.
The easements effectively block development and would make construction of an access road more difficult.