The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took an unusually strong step Jan. 31 and blocked a proposed Alaska mine heralded by backers as the most significant undeveloped copper and gold resource in the world. The EPA based its veto on concerns over the mine’s potential environmental damage to Alaska lands and waters that support the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.
The move, cheered by Alaska Native tribes and environmentalists and condemned by some state officials and mining interests, deals a heavy blow to the proposed Pebble Mine. The intended site is in a remote area of southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage.
In a statement, Pebble Limited Partnership CEO John Shively called the EPA’s action “unlawful” and political and said litigation was likely. Shively has cast the project as key to the Biden administration’s push to reach green energy goals and make the U.S. less dependent on foreign nations for such minerals.
The Pebble Limited Partnership is owned Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals.
The minerals deposit is near the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, which supports a bounty of salmon “unrivaled anywhere in North America,” according to the EPA.
The announcement marks only the 14th time in the roughly 50-year history of the federal Clean Water Act that the EPA has flexed its powers to bar or restrict activities over potential impact on waters, including fisheries. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said his agency’s use of its so-called veto authority in this case “underscores the true irreplaceable and invaluable natural wonder that is Bristol Bay.”
The veto is a victory for the environment, economy and tribes of Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, which have fought the proposal for more than a decade, said Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The mine would have jeopardized the region’s salmon fishery, which brings 15,000 jobs to the area and supplies about half the world’s sockeye salmon, Reynolds said. The 2022 harvest was more than 60 million fish, state officials reported last year.
“It’s a victory for science over politics. For biodiversity over extinction. For democracy over corporate power,” Reynolds said.
The EPA, citing an analysis by the Army Corps of Engineers, said discharges of dredged or fill material to build and operate the proposed mine site would result in a loss of about 100 miles of stream habitat, as well as wetlands.
The Pebble partnership has maintained the project can coexist with salmon. The partnership’s website says the deposit is at the upper reaches of three “very small tributaries” and expresses confidence any impacts on the fishery “in the unlikely event of an incident” would be “minimal.”
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the EPA’s veto was a dangerous precedent that could affect future development in the state, while state Attorney General Treg Taylor called the agency’s action “legally indefensible.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she opposed the mine, but added that the EPA’s veto shouldn’t be allowed to jeopardize future mining operations in the state. “This determination must not serve as precedent to target any other project in our state and must be the only time EPA ever uses its veto authority under the Clean Water Act in Alaska,” Murkowski said in a statement.
Tribes in the Bristol Bay region in 2010 petitioned the EPA to protect the area under the federal Clean Water Act. Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, said that to call the EPA announcement “welcome news is an understatement.”
Tim Bristol, executive director with the group SalmonState, lauded the EPA’s decision, saying it “may be the most popular thing the federal government has ever done for Alaska.”
The EPA’s decision is the latest in a yearslong back-and-forth over the project that has spanned administrations.
Leila Kimbrell, executive director for the Resource Development Council for Alaska, called the decision “a dangerous abuse of power and federal overreach.” The National Mining Association, citing high demand for minerals and fragile global supply chains, said domestic mining has “never been more important.” It said EPA’s decision is “in stark contrast to national and global realities.”
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