Army Corps of Engineers to deliver final environmental report on Pebble mine

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said the final environmental impact statement for the proposed Pebble mine in Southwest Alaska would be published today, July 24, in the Federal Register, but offered few details on what the report would include.

David Hobbie, chief of the Regional Regulatory Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, noted that completion of the final EIS did not constitute any final decision on a permit for the mine. “It does not say they get the permit,” he said.

Opponents of the mine meanwhile reiterated their contention that Pebble is still the wrong mine in the wrong place, just as it was a decade ago. “Clean energy is not clean energy if it comes from dirty mining — certainly not if it comes from a proposed mine that endangers the greatest sockeye salmon run on the planet,” Salmon State’s Mary Catharine Martin said. “The Pebble Partnership’s recent flurry of press releases is a clear and desperate attempt to drum up some capital before this underfunded, dangerous, scientifically-lacking hack job of a mine, which 62 percent of Alaskans oppose, runs out of money.” 

Bristol Bay Native Corp. meanwhile has made clear in recent statements that it will not grant right-of-way access through its privately owned lands, nor has the BBNC village corporation at Pedro Bay, which also opposes the mine.

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