Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Army Corps denies appeal from Pebble mine backers

April 17, 2024 — The Army Corps of Engineers on Monday doubled down on its decision to deny federal water permits for a controversial proposal to build a massive gold and copper mine in Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay watershed.

The agency rejected an appeal from the mine’s developers, the Pebble Limited Partnership, to reconsider its decision in 2020, under the Trump administration, to deny the project a federal water permit over concerns about potential impacts to salmon fisheries in the area.

In early 2021, developers appealed to the Army Corps through an administrative process within the agency. Last year, the Army Corps said it would take a fresh lookand reconsider part of its decision. But Col. Jeff Palazzini, who commands the Army Corps’ Alaska district, concluded in a record of decision posted to the agency’s website Monday that the appeal was ultimately being denied.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Federal courts face another Groundhog Day in the Pebble mine saga

March 26, 2024 — It’s Groundhog Day all over again in the federal court system over the fate of a proposed copper, gold and molybdenum mine in an area of Southwest Alaska abutting the Bristol Bay watershed.

A Canadian mining company intent on building a copper, gold and molybdenum mine abutting the Bristol Bay watershed, having spent increasing millions of dollars in defense of a project, maintains that their project will provide hundreds of jobs and boost regional and state economies, all in harmony with the world’s largest run of wild sockeye salmon.

Opponents of the project reiterate it’s a mistake for Northern Dynasty Minerals and the state of Alaska to continue to pursue development of what could be the largest open pit mine in North America near headwaters of Bristol Bay’s wild sockeye salmon fishery, the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. These sockeyes, says the Bristol Bay Native Corp., support a commercial fishery that provides over $2 billion in economic value annually and more than 15,000 jobs, and Pebble is the wrong mine in the wrong place.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: CERAWEEK-Alaska’s governor calls on Biden to update mine permit process

March 21, 2024 — Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy called on President Joe Biden on Wednesday to update and streamline the U.S. mine permitting process in order to boost domestic production of critical minerals and reduce dependence on foreign nations.

The push echoes calls from the mining industry for clarity on how permits can be obtained for mines that produce copper, lithium and other energy transition minerals. Executives have long complained the U.S. process can be complex, expensive and opaque due in part to a federal mining law enacted in 1872.

“Our message to the Biden administration is, ‘Do everything you can to do everything here in America. Get your permitting processes streamlined,'” Dunleavy told Reuters on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

It is “somewhat nonsensical,” the governor said, that Biden has pushed for greater adoption of electric vehicles – which require far more critical minerals to build than internal combustion engines – but has blocked Northern Dynasty’s Pebble copper and gold mining project.

Read the full article at Yahoo Finance

Controversial mine project sues over EPA veto

March 18, 2024 — In a statement Friday, the Pebble Partnership alleged the EPA’s veto was issued before the completion of the permitting process.

Rather than waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) permitting process to conclude, the EPA made its decision under a provision of the Clean Water Act that allows it to restrict mining activity in the Bristol Bay watershed.

The bay contains the world’s single largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Read the full article at The Hill

Supreme Court won’t consider Pebble Mine appeal

January 11, 2023 — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge by the State of Alaska to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s block of the Pebble Mine project.

The state sought to go directly to the high court and overturn the EPA’s January 2023 decision to veto the mine project based on the federal Clean Water Act and the danger of open-pit mining damaging the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon fishery.

 Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy in July filed the lawsuit, arguing that the agency decision against the mine and its effect on Alaska economic development warranted an immediate top judicial review.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Supreme Court denies Alaska’s bid to revive the copper and gold Pebble Mine proposal blocked by EPA

January 9, 2024 — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Alaska’s bid to revive a proposed copper and gold mine that was blocked by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The justices did not comment in turning away the state’s attempt to sue the Biden administration directly in the high court over its desire to revive the proposed Pebble Mine in the state’s Bristol Bay region.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Debate over Pebble mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region moves to dueling Supreme Court briefs

November 16, 2023 — The company trying to build a huge copper and gold mine in the salmon-rich Bristol Bay will keep fighting for the project, despite a decision by the federal government to keep the proposed development site off-limits to large-scale metals mining.

John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Limited Partnership, made that vow in a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage.

He said the Pebble mine had the potential to transform the economy and improve lives in the rural Bristol Bay region, just as he said the Red Dog Mine, one of the world’s biggest zinc producers, has done in Northwest Alaska.

“That’s why we’re still fighting this. The resources are there. We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere,” he told the convention audience in his presentation on Thursday.

The company’s fight is backed by the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy. At his direction, the state in July filed a lawsuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to overturn a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency that bars permitting for any Pebble-type mine in key areas of the Bristol Bay watershed.

Dunleavy, in brief remarks earlier this week at the miners’ convention, expressed pride in his support of the controversial project.

“I was told if I supported Pebble, I would never win another election. Well, I don’t know. I’m here. I’m still here,” he said on Tuesday, drawing applause from the audience. The Republican governor was handily reelected last November.

The EPA decision invoked a rarely used provision in the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands permit for the project. The agency determined that the Pebble mine posed an unacceptable risk to the Bristol Bay watershed, essential to a region with the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs and with major fisheries and wildlife populations that depend on that salmon.

To help reverse that decision, the Pebble Limited Partnership and its owner, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., in September filed an amicus brief in support of the state’s Supreme Court effort. Filing supportive briefs, too, were the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and numerous Alaska and national resource-development groups.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

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