June 9, 2021 — The road to Pebble Mine is getting rougher.
Pedro Bay Corp., a Native organization in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, announced late last month that nearly 90 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of conservation easements for more than 44,000 of the corporation’s 92,100 acres of land in southwest Alaska. The agreement would make the land off-limits to development, including Pebble Corp.’s proposed mining road.
June 8, 2021 — U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski visited Dillingham last week.
She said the primary reason for her visit was to gather ideas for permanent protections against developments like the proposed Pebble Mine.
Murkowski used to chair the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and has historically supported resource development. For years, she declined to support or oppose Pebble, saying it was important to wait for the federal permitting process to play out.
As the Army Corps of Engineers neared its final perit decision last year, and undercover tapes emerged of Pebble leaders doubting she’d take a stand against the project, Murkowski did just that.
In Dillingham, Murkowski met with people from the commercial, subsistence and recreational fisheries. She also held a closed meeting with select community leaders at the Dillingham Middle/High School.
June 3, 2021 — Every summer, thousands of commercial and sport fishermen, seafood processors and sport fishing guides — many of them Oregonians — migrate to western Alaska for the remarkable annual return of tens of millions of wild sockeye salmon to Bristol Bay.
Bristol Bay’s salmon have sustained the Indigenous people of Bristol Bay for millennia, and today they remain the backbone of the bay’s local communities. These salmon also support a thriving, renewable industry that feeds Alaska’s economy and provides income for families like ours in the Pacific Northwest.
In recent years, Bristol Bay’s salmon generated 15,000 American jobs and created $2.2 billion in renewable annual revenue. Half of all the sockeye salmon sold in global markets comes from Bristol Bay.
And yet, since the late 1980s, Bristol Bay’s rare and sustainable fishery has been threatened by plans for a colossal open-pit gold and copper mine — the Pebble Mine — that a Canadian mining company would blast out of the bay’s pristine headwaters, irreparably disrupting the watershed and leaving behind significant toxic mining waste that must be stored in perpetuity.
May 28, 2021 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday it could take more than a year to weigh an appeal by a developer seeking to build a copper and gold mine in a region that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.
The corps’ Pacific Ocean Division in Hawaii is handling the appeal by the Pebble Limited Partnership, which was denied approval of a key permit for the project in Alaska‘s Bristol Bay region by the corps’ Alaska District.
A November decision signed by the district commander determined the proposed Pebble mine was “contrary to the public interest.”
The Pebble partnership in January filed an appeal request.
April 19, 2021 — My camera lens is pressed against the window of the small floatplane as it flies below a thick ceiling of clouds. The mist clings to the hillsides of a temperate rainforest that descend steeply to the rocky coastline of southeast Alaska.
The plane banks, and a tiny village comes into view. A scattering of houses are built on stilts on the water’s edge. We circle and I see fishing boats tied up next to a large dock and a floating post office. The pilot throttles down and the pontoons skim across the glassy water inside the bay. We taxi to the public dock and I step out in front of the Point Baker general store.
Life along the Alaska coast is economically and culturally dependent on fishing. Each summer, millions of salmon — after maturing in the ocean — begin their journey back to the rivers in which they were spawned. Fishermen, along with whales, eagles and bears, share in the abundance.
Alaska is home to five species of Pacific salmon. These fish are anadromous; they begin their lives in freshwater rivers and lakes and eventually make their way down rivers and into the ocean. Depending on the species, salmon may spend between about one and seven years in the ocean before beginning their journey home to the freshwater where they were born.
The ability of salmon to find their way home is one of nature’s greatest miracles. Among other navigational aids, salmon can detect a single drop of water from its home stream mixed in 250 gallons of saltwater.
April 12, 2021 — Salmon advocates, including members of the Congressional Wild Salmon Caucus, held a briefing Thursday laying out a number of strategies governments can take to incentivize mining companies to make environmental impacts a higher priority.
“We can’t say we’re anti-mining, we are for safe mining,” said U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, co-chair of the salmon caucus.
Thursday’s briefing focused on ways the provincial government of British Columbia can improve financial assurance laws and make companies take the risk of environmental impact more seriously.
The caucus co-chaired the briefing with Salmon Beyond Borders, a salmon advocacy group working for better protections of salmon habitats. Advocates said one of the major issues impacting salmon habitats is mining pollution in waters that flow from one country into another, in this case from Canada into the U.S. Many of these transboundary rivers are home to salmon habitats that play a critical role in the culture and economy of the Pacific Northwest, advocates said, and companies need to be held responsible for the impacts their industry creates.
April 8, 2021 — On Wednesday, 50 investors representing $105 billion sent a letter calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress to permanently protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay against large-scale mining.
The signatories are concerned about the long-term social and environmental impacts of the Pebble mine, a massive open-pit gold and copper project in the Bristol Bay headwaters proposed by Canadian junior Northern Dynasty Minerals (NYSE: NAK).
On Tuesday, Northern Dynasty announced it had written to the recently confirmed Administrator of the EPA Michael Regan with a status update on the Pebble project and had urged the new Administrator to support a full and fair process for the project.
The investors said that while recognizing the importance of natural resource development to support economic growth, they are concerned waste from the proposed mine would threaten the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, located in the Bristol Bay area.
April 7, 2021 — The following was released by the Natural Resources Defense Council:
Fifty investment firms representing more than $105 billion called on EPA and Congress to permanently protect Alaska’s invaluable Bristol Bay from the destructive Pebble Mine.
Led by Trillium Asset Management, investors released a letter urging EPA to “use its authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to immediately restrict mine waste disposal in wetlands, rivers and streams within the Bristol Bay watershed.” The letter also urged Congress to “enact legislation to establish a National Fisheries Area to provide permanent federal protection against large-scale mining within the Bristol Bay watershed.”
The letter echoes the formal requests from United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay (CFBB), and Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jared Huffman asking EPA to use its Clean Water Act 404(c) authority to protect Bristol Bay from the threat of the proposed Pebble Mine. NRDC also sent a letter to EPA urging permanent protection.
March 22, 2021 — A report titled “The Economic Benefits of the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery” shows the fishery’s economic benefits exceeded $2.2 billion in 2019, generating more than 15,000 jobs while feeding hundreds of thousands of people. Produced by McKinley Research Group and released by the Bristol Bay Defense Fund, the recently gathered data will help quantify the importance of protecting Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine.
Bristol Bay produces 57% of the world’s sockeye salmon catch and is a $990 million economic engine in Alaska alone. Economists estimate the induced impacts for the Pacific Northwest at $800 million.
March 16, 2021 — Advocates for protecting Bristol Bay welcomed the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Michael Regan as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on 10 March.
The appointment hopefully marks a return to Obama-era policy on the proposed Pebble Mine and water quality, according to United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley.