Saving Seafood

EPA head says he’s ‘proud’ of decision to block Alaska mine and protect salmon-rich Bristol Bay

August 30, 2023 — The nation’s top environmental official said he fully supports his agency’s decision to block a proposed gold and copper mine in Alaska’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay, even as the state of Alaska has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that action.

“Let me be clear, we are very proud of our decision to really evaluate the Pebble Mine project and do what is necessary to protect Bristol Bay,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday as he began a four-day tour of Alaska, starting in a Bristol Bay village.

The EPA in January vetoed the proposed Pebble Mine, citing concerns with possible impacts on the aquatic ecosystem in southwest Alaska that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The region also has significant mineral resources.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

ALASKA: State asks U.S. Supreme Court to reverse EPA’s veto of Pebble Mine

July 27, 2023 — The state of Alaska is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the proposed Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The state attorney general, with the help of a private law firm on contract, on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to repeal a January decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that in essence vetoed the mine.

Pebble would be a massive open-pit copper and gold mine on state land. The deposit is located upstream from Bristol Bay, Alaska’s most productive sockeye salmon fishery. The company hoping to develop it, Pebble Limited Partnership, says their mine design would ensure contaminants don’t degrade the fishery.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Pebble stock investors settle a lawsuit with mine developer for $6.4 million

June 13, 2023 — A group of shareholders and the developer of the proposed Pebble mine in Southwest Alaska have reached a $6.4 million settlement to resolve investors’ complaints that they had been misled by the company.

The investors had claimed in federal court that they were harmed when the stock price of Northern Dynasty Minerals collapsed following several blows to the project in 2020, including the release of secretly recorded video calls of Pebble executives discussing the project. They asserted that the company and executives made misleading statements about Pebble before a federal agency denied a permit for the project that year.

The Pebble copper and gold prospect is located in the Bristol Bay region, on state land about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. An array of tribal, fishing and conservation groups have long opposed the mine, arguing it will destroy the valuable wild salmon fishery in the region. Northern Dynasty, which has worked to develop Pebble for two decades, has said it can safely be built.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

In Rose Garden address, Biden celebrates with Alaskans opposed to Pebble mine

May 14, 2023 — President Joe Biden celebrated his conservation achievements Thursday with a Rose Garden address. The No. 1 item on his list? Blocking the Pebble mine, a proposed open-pit gold and copper mine upstream from the sockeye-rich waters of Bristol Bay.

“Bristol Bay is an extraordinary place, unlike anywhere in the world,” the president said. “Six rivers meet there, traveling through 40,000 miles of tundra, wetlands and lakes, collecting freshwater and salmon along the way … making this the largest sockeye salmon fishery on all the earth.”

Biden announced no new developments in the ongoing Pebble saga. His speech cited scores of sanctuaries and safeguards his administration created, from the mountains of Nevada to the Pacific Ocean. But the primacy he gave to this one part of Southwest Alaska shows how committed Biden is to stopping Pebble, and how he sees it as a centerpiece of his environmental record.

United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley was invited to Washington, D.C., to introduce the president. In a blue print kuspuk, she spoke of how her salmon-centered community has lived with a threat looming over them for 20 years.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Army Corps to revisit parts of Pebble’s permit application, but opponents say mine can’t move forward

May 7, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reconsider certain aspects of the Pebble company’s permit application to build a large gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The 81-page report comes just three months after the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the mine in a separate process.

“It’s a bit surprising and a bit confusing,” said Dennis McLerran, who worked as the regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration.

The EPA in January determined that the mine would have “unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” Using its powers under the Clean Water Act, it essentially vetoed the mine plan, and any future plan that would have a similar impact on the same waterways. Many opponents of the project hailed that as the final blow.

McLerran said the EPA decision nullifies any permit the Army Corps could issue.

Read the full article at the b Bristol Bay Times

ALASKA: Army Corps to revisit parts of Pebble’s permit application, but opponents say mine can’t move forward

May 1, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reconsider certain aspects of the Pebble company’s permit application to build a large gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The 81-page report comes just three months after the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the mine in a separate process.

“It’s a bit surprising and a bit confusing,” said Dennis McLerran, who worked as the regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration.

The EPA in January determined that the mine would have “unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” Using its powers under the Clean Water Act, it essentially vetoed the mine plan, and any future plan that would have a similar impact on the same waterways. Many opponents of the project hailed that as the final blow.

McLerran said the EPA decision nullifies any permit the Army Corps could issue.

Read the full story at KYUK

Army Corps to reconsider Pebble Mine permit denial

April 28, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will review its 2020 permit denial of the Pebble Mine plan, potentially giving the project a longshot chance at survival.

After an appeal by the Pebble Limited Partnership, the agency’s reviewing officers issued an 81-page report April 24 that faulted some aspects of the permit decision by the Corps’ Alaska District. The administrative finding means the issue will be remanded back to the district for further consideration.

The Corps in 2020 rejected the Pebble partners’ application for permits to build an open-pit gold and copper mine upstream from tributaries to Bristol Bay, famed as the world’s most productive wild salmon fishery grounds, where activists for a decade had opposed mining.

The fortunes of Pebble backers have swung back and forth through three presidential administrations. In January 2023 the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration found the mine proposal to be incompatible with the federal Clean Water Act, precluding mineral development that would affect those salmon streams.

The Pebble Limited Partnership continues its legal appeals, but faces other barriers alongside the EPA decision. In December the Pedro Bay Corporation and Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust finalized land conservation easements that would effectively block the Pebble developers’ preferred road route to the mining site.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Army Corps to review its denial of key permit for Pebble project

April 27, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will review its denial of a key federal permit for the proposed large Pebble mine project in southwest Alaska, the agency announced April 25. Brig. Gen. Kirk Gibbs, Division Engineer at the corps’ Pacific Ocean Division, said he found certain parts of an appeal to the denial by Pebble Partnership Ltd., the developer, to have merit.

Gibbs’ decision sends the matter back to the corp’s Alaska District for reconsideration. The Alaska District had denied a U.S. Clean Water Act Section 404 dredge and fill permit for Pebble Partnership Ltd., which hopes to develop a large copper, gold and molybdenum deposit near Iliamna, southwest of Anchorage.

It its appeal, Pebble Partnership said the corps’ evaluation was flawed and showed factual inconsistencies with data compiled in a Final Environmental Impact Statement done by the agency for the Pebble project.

“My decision to remand permit application back to the Alaska District is not a permit authorization,” Gibbs said in a statement. “The (Alaska) District has been asked to re-evaluate specific issues with the administrative record to ensure the decision is well-supported.”

Read the full story at The Frontiersman

Three Alaska tribes sue over permits for Donlin Gold Mine

April 11, 2023 — Three tribes in the Kuskokwim River region of Southwest Alaska filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, challenging federal agency permits for the Donlin Gold Mine, billed as potentially the world’s largest open pit gold mine.

Project backers NovaGold and Barrick Gold Corp. began working in 2012 for permits to open a mine 10 miles north of the Kuskokwim River. In echoes of the Pebble Mine project vetoed in January by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Donlin opponents say the planned mine and its rock waste would pollute salmon spawning streams that flow into the Kuskokwim River.

Tribes suing to halt the proposed project are Orutsararmiut Native Council, Tuluksak Native Council and the Organized Village of Kwethluk, represented in court by the nonprofit environmental law group Earthjustice.

“Citing three fundamental flaws in the environmental and subsistence analyses and authorizations for the project,” according to a statement from Earthjustice, “the lawsuit challenges key authorizations of the massive open pit mine including a federal permit allowing thousands of acres of wetlands to be filled and a federal authorization granting access across federal lands for a 316-mile pipeline from Cook Inlet to the mine site.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Mining Company Seeks Permit Near Pebble Deposit

March 16, 2023 — The Alaska Department of Natural Resources announced last week that Stuy Mines has applied for a hardrock exploration permit along Kaskanak Creek, southwest of the Pebble deposit The Stuy Mines company, registered in Washington state, is proposing a multiyear hardrock exploration program, which would include 12 holes a year The activity could start after the state issues a permit and continue through 2027. To access the site, the company has plotted a pathway that it says mostly follows existing gravel bars along Iliamna Lake and that it would grade existing gravel only where necessary.

Stuy Mines’s primary owner is a company called Love and Above. Manager Greg Ellis has also worked as a screenwriter and a home developer in Washington state, according to his Linkedin profile.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com