Saving Seafood

Ninth Circuit Revives Fight Over Mining Plans in Pristine Alaskan Bay

June 18, 2021 — Home to the greatest wild salmon fisheries in the world, Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska also lies near prized natural resources long sought by a mining enterprise. To protect the pristine Alaskan frontier, the Obama administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sought to restrict a proposed mining operation in 2014 — a move later dumped by the Trump administration.

Conservationists sued, but a federal judge found the Trump EPA’s decision unreviewable and dismissed the case.

On Thursday, a Ninth Circuit panel ordered the case remanded to determine if the EPA’s about-face was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or contrary” to federal law.

The legal history surrounding this pristine slice of Alaskan wilderness stretches back to 2014, when the EPA announced it would seek to restrict mining operations in Bristol Bay under the authority of the Clean Water Act. The proposed Pebble Mine operation would extract copper, gold and other minerals and would be the largest of its kind in North America. The operation’s toxic waste pits could sit at the headwaters to Bristol Bay, and any type of collapse would likely contaminate the region’s watershed.

But in 2019 the Trump EPA withdrew its proposed determination. Several lawsuits followed including a complaint filed by Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit advocacy group, in the District of Alaska. The group challenged the agency’s withdrawal decision as a violation of the Clean Water Act and the implementing regulations.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Pebble: Appeals Court revives case challenging EPA’s removal of watershed protection

June 18, 2021 — A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit aimed at blocking construction of the Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska.

The lawsuit, filed by environmental groups, tribes and other mine opponents, challenged a 2019 Environmental Protection Agency decision to remove protection for the Bristol Bay watershed.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled last year courts could not review the decision because the Clean Water Act did not specify what legal standard applied. The appeals panel agreed the law did not include that standard — but said EPA’s regulations do.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Court revokes general permit for Washington shellfish growers

February 16, 2021 — A court in the state of Washington ruled in favor of a lawsuit to revoke the Clean Water Act general permit for the state’s shellfish farmers last week, shooting down an appeal by Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association (PCSGA).

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers last year, and in October of 2019 a federal court upheld the lawsuit, ruling the Corps’ Issuance of Nationwide Permit (NMP) 48 for shellfish farming unlawful.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Mine developer to appeal US decision to reject Alaska permit

December 21, 2020 — A mine developer says it will appeal a Trump administration decision denying a permit to build a copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska.

Northern Dynasty Minerals President and CEO Ron Thiessen said in a statement Thursday that the government’s rejection was “without precedent in the long history of responsible resource development in Alaska,” the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the company a permit in November, saying its plans to develop the mine were against the public’s interest and did not adhere to the Clean Water Act.

The proposed mine would have been built on state-owned land in the Bristol Bay region, near the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Northern Dynasty to Appeal US Army Corps’ Pebble Decision

December 21, 2020 — Northern Dynasty Minerals (TSX: NDM; NYSE: NAK) said on Thursday its unit, Pebble Partnership, was preparing an appeal after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a key water permit for the proposed Alaska mine.

The company’s shares cratered nearly 50% last week after its US-based subsidiary received formal notification that its application for permits under the Clean Water Act and other federal statutes was denied.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Bristol Bay Fishermen Thank USACE for Pebble Mine Permit Decision

November 27, 2020 — In an unexpected turn, the Army Corps of Engineers has denied a Clean Water Act permit for the proposed Pebble Mine, an open-pit copper extraction project located near the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. The Pebble site contains one of the largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits in the world, and its backers have signaled their intention to appeal.

“In its record of decision, USACE determined that the applicant’s plan for the discharge of fill material does not comply with Clean Water Act guidelines and concluded that the proposed project is contrary to the public interest,” the agency’s Alaska District said in a statement.

Pebble Partnership’s share price fell from $0.87 to $0.40 within hours of the announcement. The project’s opponents hailed the decision as a recognition of the Pebble Mine’s risk to the billion-dollar-per-year Bristol Bay fishery.

“A permit denial from the Army Corps is a triumph for the people of Bristol Bay who have fought tirelessly against Pebble mine for well over a decade,” said Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC) president and CEO Jason Metrokin. “We thank the Corps for acknowledging this reality in its decision.”

“Sometimes a project is so bad, so indefensible, that the politics fall to the wayside and we get the right decision. That is what happened today,” Tim Bristol, the executive director of SalmonState, which represents Alaska’s salmon fishing industry.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

Pacific Seafood reaches settlement with EPA over Clean Water Act violations

June 22, 2020 — Pacific Seafood has reached a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over Clean Water Act violations at their crab and shrimp processing plants in Westport, Washington, according to an EPA press release.

More than 2,000 violations had been recorded by the EPA during an unannounced inspection in 2017. Among them were discharge limit violations as well as incorrect sampling and incomplete or inadequate reporting.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

North Carolina Fisheries Reform Group Set to Take Legal Action Against Commercial Fishing Leaders

June 1, 2020 — The North Carolina Fisheries Reform Group (NCCFRG) filed a 60-day Notice of Claim under the Federal Clean Water Act (CWA) targeting the state of North Carolina and members of the commercial shrimp industry.

“We have tried every remedy possible to start reform talks with both the Executive and Legislative Branches of North Carolina, and we were outright dismissed or completely ignored. They had their chance to discuss the issues,” said Joe Albea a spokesperson for the NCCFRG. “We are going to take legal action against the State of North Carolina in Federal Court, and we intend to name leaders in the North Carolina commercial fishing industry as co-defendants, too.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

Trump Administration Lessens Clean Water Protections For Streams, Wetlands

January 24, 2020 — The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a significant cutback on water protections, a move critics say could make it easier for companies to pollute potential sources of drinking water.

Under the final rule, named “The Navigable Waters Protection Rule,” many streams, wetlands and other waterways will no longer qualify for federal protections against pollution under the Clean Water Act.

“After decades of constant litigation and uncertainty, the Trump administration’s navigable waters protection rule brings regulatory certainty to American farmers, landowners, businesses and the American public, and should significantly curtail the need to hire teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on a call with reporters. “Our rule protects the environment and our waterways while respecting the states and private property owners.”

The plan is a part of the Trump administration’s goal to repeal and replace a 2015 rule from the Obama administration that expanded the types of federally protected waterways. Republicans criticized the rule, saying it would regulate ditches and puddles. The regulation specifically exempted puddles, but the rhetoric reflected a larger concern about federal overreach among some farmers, businesses and landowners.

Read the full story at U.S. News

Fishing companies fined $1M for dumping oil into New Bedford harbor

December 17, 2019 — Two fishing companies will pay a combined $1 million in fines and face five years of probation for two separate oil spills in the busy New Bedford harbor, a federal judge ruled Monday as he admonished the company’s owner at the hearing.

“Let me make myself clear — it is not enough to come in here and plead guilty and then go out and say, ‘the government is big and strong and we had to do this as a cost of doing business,’” federal Judge William Young told owner Barry Cohen at U.S. District Court. “These are crimes — they were meant by Congress to be crimes.”

Sea Harvest Inc. and Fishing Vessel Enterprises, Inc., the operators and owners of the two commercial fishing boats, respectively, which spilled the oil, pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Clean Water Act, which criminalizes oil spills in U.S. waters and shorelines.

Crew members for the fishing vessel Enterprise, which fished for surf clams, pumped out water, putrid clam juice and “some amount” of oil from the boat’s engine room in September 2017, lawyers for the companies wrote in a filing earlier this month. The dumping created a sheen on the water in the New Bedford Harbor, which was noticed by local authorities immediately, the filing said.

Read the full story at The Boston Herald