Advocates of a copper, gold and molybdenum mine in southwest Alaska, an area best known for its world class Bristol Bay sockeye salmon runs, have begun the several years long process of filing for federal and state permits required to build the mine.
The Pebble Limited Partnership filed electronically with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Dec. 22 for a U.S. Clean Water Act 404 permit, initiating the process under the National Environmental Policy Act. The 365-page document, plus a 5,800-page report on wetlands and additional wetlands spreadsheets, were submitted electronically, said PLP spokesman Mike Heatwole. A decision is anticipated within three to five years, he said.
Response to the PLP announcement came swiftly from mine opponents in the Bristol Bay region, who maintain that it’s the wrong mine in the wrong place, because of potential adverse impact to critical salmon habitat.
Meanwhile the PLP plans to begin hiring more staff after the first of the year, but what positions will be filled and how many will be hired has not yet been determined, he said.
The decision to file came on the heels of news that a new mining partner had been found.
The PLP is a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, a small mining development firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hunter Dickenson, a diversified global mining group, also headquartered in Vancouver.
On Dec. 18 Northern Dynasty announced a framework agreement with First Quantum Minerals Ltd., which provides for future rights for that partner to acquire a 50 percent interest in the Pebble partnership for a further investment of $1.35 billion.
Buoyed by an initial $37.5 million early option installment payment from First Quantum, the PLP then began the permitting process.
Northern Dynasty released a statement noting that the mine footprint, including the tailings storage pit, at about 5.9 miles in size, would be substantially smaller than previous planning iterations, and that cyanide would not be used in the mineral recovery process.
PLP chief executive officer Tom Collier said the company’s objectives for 2017 included resolving issues with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the Clean Water Act, finding a long-term investor to navigate the permitting process, and filing a permit application with the Corps of Engineers to initiate the federal review process for the project.
Once the Corps has determined the sufficiency of Pebble’s application package, a detailed project description will be available for public review on the PLP’s website, pebblepartnership.com, he said.
Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, said the permit applications do nothing to change the opposition to the mine.
“As regulators evaluate the ‘smaller’ project the partnership recently introduced as an apparent last-ditch effort, they should bear in mind the even more catastrophic scale of watershed mining that the company has pushed to investors for more than a decade,” Edgmon said.
“Exhaustive scientific research has already demonstrated that acid drainage mining would be devastating to the Bristol Bay watershed. This research, spanning more than 10 years, has always borne out that Pebble is the wrong mine in the wrong place.”
“Given the overwhelming scientific knowledge we already possess about our region, we know the permitting process will confirm that the mine will not work in Bristol Bay,” said Robert Heyano, board president of United Tribes of Bristol Bay.
Norm Van Vactor, chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp., also in Dillingham, said “the bar is set very low indeed if merely filing an application is cause for celebration. Bristol Bay fishermen file paperwork for their permits every single year, without fanfare. And here in Bristol Bay, we will choose our sustainable commercial fishery that generates thousands of jobs over a short-term development project.
