Saving Seafood

Northern Dynasty’s U.S. unit denies report Alaska mine project to be blocked

August 24, 2020 — The U.S. unit of diversified Canadian miner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd on Saturday denied a media report that said the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump plans to block its proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska early next week.

Politico reported here earlier on Saturday that Trump was planning to block the proposed Pebble Mine, which environmentalists argue would damage the surrounding salmon-rich habitat, and the people and wildlife that depend on it.

“We firmly believe that the implication pushed by Politico that the White House is going to kill the project is clearly in error, likely made by a rush to publish rather than doing the necessary diligence to track down the full story”, Pebble Limited Partnership said in a statement.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) office in Alaska is planning to hold a conference call on Monday with groups connected to the proposed mine to discuss its decision, Politico reported, citing people familiar with the plans.

Read the full story at Reuters

GINA FRICCERO: Why risk the crown jewel of Alaska’s fisheries?

August 20, 2020 — This year has left a lot of us starving for good news. Well, I’ve got some: Once again, for the sixth year in a row, more than 50 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay, eclipsing any other wild salmon run on the planet.

What could be better than wild salmon that return in numbers vast enough to sustain the health of thriving Yup’ik, Alutiiq and Dena’ina communities; a $1.5 billion a year commercial fishing industry with 14,000 jobs; world-class sportfishing that people travel from around the world to experience; and a bear viewing industry that injects more than $34 million into the economy each year — especially since, if we can only prevent the destruction of the watershed that makes it possible, those benefits could last forever?

For generations, my family has been blessed to benefit from this incredible natural wonder. I started tendering in Bristol Bay in the summer of 1975. That was the year Limited Entry was going on the ballot. I got lucky and found a boat and permit for a good deal. I met my husband in 1980, we started fishing together in ‘81, and he has been running a boat in Bristol Bay every year since way back then. This season, he, our daughter and the rest of the Bristol Bay fleet again worked tirelessly to provide for our family and for America’s food security.

Read the full opinion piece at the Juneau Empire

Gold vs. Salmon: An Alaska Mine Project Just Got a Boost

July 24, 2020 — From the air it looks like just another tract of Alaska’s endless, roadless tundra, pockmarked with lakes and ponds, with a scattering of some of the state’s craggy mountains.

But this swath of land, home to foraging bears and spawning salmon about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, has been a battleground for years.

The fight is over what lies just below the surface: one of the richest deposits of copper, gold and other valuable metals in the world. It sets two of the state’s most important industries, mining and fishing, against each other.

A mining company plans to dig a pit, more than a mile square and a third of a mile deep, over two decades to obtain the metals, estimated to be worth at least $300 billion.

Supporters say the project, known as the Pebble Mine, would be an economic boost for a remote region that has missed out on the North Slope oil boom and other resource-extraction development in the state over the past half century. It would employ nearly 1,000 people, and the Canada-based company, Northern Dynasty Minerals, would pay for infrastructure improvements in some Native Alaskan villages and provide cash dividends totaling at least $3 million to people in the area.

Read the full story at The New York Times

ALASKA: Pebble signs deal with Bristol Bay village corporations for transportation, support services for multi-billion-dollar mine project

July 7, 2020 — Developers of the Pebble project near Lake Iliamna announced an agreement July 6 with Alaska Peninsula Corp. for transportation services related to development or operations of the mine planned by Pebble Ltd. Partnership.

APC is an Alaska Native village corporation formed by the merger of five small Bristol Bay village corporations, in Port Heiden, South Naknek, Ugashik, Kokhanok and Newhalen.

A Memorandum of Understanding signed with Pebble Partnership would have APC form a consortium of village corporations to operate all transportation services for the mine, Pebble Partnership said in a press release.

A contract would include managing operations at a planned Cook Inlet ore terminal, maintaining an access road from the port to the mine site north of Lake Iliamna and providing trucking services between the port and road.

Pebble is a large undeveloped copper, gold and molybdenum deposit 18 miles north of the community of Iliamna. The developer, Pebble Ltd. Partnership, is a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, which owns the prospect.

Read the full story at The Frontiersman

Anti-Pebble group asks SEC to investigate possible ‘insider trading’ involving project owner

October 23, 2019 — A conservation group on Monday asked federal regulators to investigate possible insider trading involving the owner of the Pebble copper and gold mine and an analyst who tracks the company’s stock.

Earthworks believes securities analyst John Tumazos “received and disclosed insider information” to investors in the weeks before the Trump administration in July released a decision favoring the project, according to a complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The value of Northern Dynasty Minerals’ stock rose sharply following the July announcement. Northern Dynasty Minerals is based in Canada and owns the Pebble Partnership, the company aiming to develop the mine.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Pruitt’s EPA puts brakes on Pebble Mine proposal in Bristol Bay, Alaska

January 31, 2018 — Activists fighting a proposed gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska breathed a sigh of relief on Friday, 26 January, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upheld an Obama-era declaration that the proposed Pebble Mine, which would sit in the watershed for the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run, could cause irreversible harm to area fisheries.

Fishermen, native groups, and conservationists fought against the mine proposal for years, and won a temporary victory with a 2014 EPA ruling that stated mining could lead to “significant and irreversible harm” to local fishing grounds. But after years of eyeing the site, the project’s main backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, filed for its first federal application in December 2017, just a month after President Donald Trump was elected, and fanned fresh concerns with activists opposing the mine.

EPA head Scott Pruitt issued a statement Friday that the order does not block the mine outright, but does shelve the permitting process until further environmental impact reviews can be conducted.

“It is my judgement at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” Pruitt said in the statement. “Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection. Today’s action allows the EPA to get the information needed to determine what specific impacts the proposed mining project will have on those critical resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source