A legal settlement reached between the Environmental Protection Agency and a Canadian mining firm that hopes to build a massive mine in the Bristol Bay watershed would allow the company to begin alloying for federal permits.
The settlement, announced on May 12, reverses a previous EPA decision to stop the mine on grounds that it would have extremely adverse impact on the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agreement will not guarantee or prejudge a particular outcome, but would provide Pebble “a fair process for their permit application and help steer EPA away from costly and time-consuming litigation.
The settlement will allow the Pebble Limited Partnership, a wholly owned subsidiary of a large Canadian mining firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, to apply for a Clean Water Act permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before EPA moves forward with its Clean Water Act process to specify limits on how certain mine materials may be disposed of.
Pebble in turn agreed to drop lawsuits and requests for fees against the EPA, and EPA will be allowed to use its scientific assessment regarding the Bristol Bay watershed without limitation.
The settlement does not guarantee or prejudge any particular outcome to this process, but does ensure that the process will be carried out in a fair, transparent, deliberate and regular way, the EPA said.
The Pebble Partnership has hailed the agreement as a major step forward for the project, one that removes a major stumbling block to attract new investment in the copper, gold and molybdenum mine, Pebble officials said.
Pebble officials said the project represents the potential for billions of dollars of investment, thousands of long term, high paying jobs and potential for significant economic activity, while providing revenue for local, state and federal governments.
In a news conference at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, said the Trump administration “is making an appalling mistake, siding with these Canadian miners over American fishing jobs.
“What is the obsession with gold that is so important that you are not taking into consideration salmon and the 20,000 jobs that exist here in the Pacific Northwest,” Cantwell said.
The senator noted that in 2014, the EPA found in its science assessment that the Pebble mine posed a direct threat to Bristol Bay salmon and thousands of fishing families in Washington State would be impacted. “The subsistence culture and foundation of Alaska Native people in Bristol Bay would be impacted,” she said. “And that’s because the mine could destroy up to 94 miles of spawning streams and devastate up to 5,000 acres of wetland,” she said.
Bristol Bay leaders meanwhile expressed their outrage over the EPA settlement with Pebble in a news teleconference from Dillingham.
“You might recall the process of the original 404 (c), said Norm Van Vactor, president and chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp.
“There were literally dozens of public hearings. Thousands of people in Bristol Bay testified. Tens of thousands of people in the state of Alaska spoke. Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. spoke. Compare that to what appears to be happening in the last couple weeks closed door meetings between bureaucrats and foreign mining executives.
“Closed to all of us, and a decision that will affect our livelihoods and our homes.,” he said. “We will do whatever it takes to protect Bristol Bay.”
Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, said he was keenly disappointed by the settlement. “Backing away from the agency’s painstaking work and analysis of the 404 ( c) issue following years of work to carefully construct a position that was not only supported by a number of tribes in the region, but once again the majority of the people in the region,” he said. “The people of the Bristol Bay region do not need this kind of stress hanging over our heads continuing on year after year.”
“We will continue to fight Pebble for as long as Pebble wants to build a mine in Bristol Bay,” said Robin Samuelsen, a veteran Bristol Bay harvester ad chief of the Curyung Tribal Council in Dillingham.
“Pebble may have its short term victory today,” said Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay. “But we as indigenous people, have been on this land for over 10,000 years, and we’re not going anywhere.
“Our region couldn’t be more united in our effort to protect Bristol Bay from the Pebble mine,” she said.
