The Environmental Protection Agency has blocked development of the Pebble Mine project in a corner of the Bristol Bay watershed, a vast and pristine swath of southwest Alaska that sustains the greatest sockeye salmon runs on the planet.
The EPA decision made public Tuesday placed a key portion of land surrounding the Pebble deposit off-limits for use as a disposal site.
The decision follows years of legal jousting and regulatory twists and turns for the mine in what emerged as an epic Alaska resource battle. It could still continue as developers are likely to challenge the EPA decision in federal court.
The project proposed by The Pebble Limited Partnership ignited passionate opposition from a coalition of Alaska and Northwest fishers, environmentalists and many Bristol Bay region natives who fear the salmon resource would be undermined by an open pit mine forecast to yield 1.3 billion tons of ore over two decades of operations.
“This is fantastic news,” said Harry Moore, a lifelong Bristol Bay fisher. “Science prevailed. People prevailed and more importantly salmon prevailed.” Moore, largely raised in Seattle and residing in Alaska, joined in protests against the mine in a grassroots organizing effort.
The Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Canada-based Northern Dynasty Ltd., calls the Bristol Bay deposit “one of the greatest stores of mineral wealth ever discovered,” including gold, copper, silver and molybdenum. Partnership officials have argued the mine could tap into mineral deposits needed for the transition to cleaner forms of energy, boosting the Alaska economy without harming salmon.
In a statement, John Shively, CEO of The Pebble Partnership, blasted the EPA action as unlawful and unprecedented.
“This preemptive action against Pebble is not supported legally, technically or environmentally,” Shively said. “As such, the next step will likely be to take legal action to fight against this injustice.”
The EPA, in the project determination made Monday, found that discharges resulting from mine’s 20-year development plan would have unacceptable and adverse effects on certain areas within the Bristol Bay watershed.
“The final action demonstrates the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to safeguarding our nation’s indispensable natural resources and protecting the livelihood of those who depend on the health and well-being of these magnificent waters,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a news conference Monday.
Alannah Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, also took part in the conference. “From the beginning of this battle almost 20 years ago, our people have stood strong against the threat of the Pebble Mine,” said Hurley, who called the EPA action “historic progress” that honors “the nation-to-nation relationship with our tribal governments.”
The EPA’s decision puts a zone around the Pebble deposit that is off-limits to disposal of rock, soils or other materials. It also designates a bigger area as restricted, where the EPA could opt to nix disposal plans from Pebble or other potential mine sites located near that deposit.
The decision was based on a December recommendation from Seattle-based regional administrator Casey Sixkiller.
The Seattle EPA regional office, in a document detailing the recommendation, stated that the mine discharges would result in losses and changes to 8.5 miles of streams used by salmon and another 91 miles of waterways that support the salmon streams as well as 2,108 acres of wetlands and other waters.
The mine project would include a 270-megawatt power plant, milling and processing facilities, and a water treatment plant. The EPA regional office found it was “reasonably foreseeable” that the mine would eventually be expanded and continue operations for more than 78 years.
“These would represent extraordinary and unprecedented levels of anadromous fish habitat losses and degradation, dramatically expanding the unacceptable adverse effects identified in the 2020 plan,” the document stated.
Once the mine closed, long-term water management and monitoring would need to last for centuries, the document stated.
The Pebble deposit is in an area that straddles the Nushagak and Kvichak drainages, two of the most productive drainages for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon that last year stormed back from saltwater rearing grounds in record numbers.
The salmon spawn in a huge expanse of lakes, streams and rivers, with their offspring rearing in freshwater before heading out to sea to forage for food. The commercial fishery generated more than $350 million in 2022, and the EPA cited a study that put the total economic value to the nation of the bay’s salmon resources, including subsistence and recreation uses, at more than $2.2 billon.
In Congress, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., emerged as a vocal mine opponent who urged the Obama administration to use the Clean Water Act to block the mine. Cantwell, in an interview, called this one of the biggest environmental battles of her Senate career.
Washington fishers hold more than 700 permits to harvest salmon from Bristol Bay, and many of Alaska’s processors are based in Seattle. But Cantwell said she initially got a lot of pushback from those who thought this was Alaska’s business, not hers.
“In the early days, we had to show people why there was such concern and impact in what the mine could do,” Cantwell said. “We just went to Ballard, I don’t know how many times. We kept holding news conferences with … fishing industry people.”
In 2014, the EPA’s Seattle office first proposed putting areas off-limits to mine-waste disposal under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, which triggered a lawsuit from the mine developers that halted the process.
In 2019, during the Trump administration, the EPA withdrew that proposal. That spurred legal action from 20 environmental, tribal and fishing groups and resulted in the EPA reconsidering the prohibition on mine-waste disposal.
The EPA decision this week follows another blow to Pebble development announced in December.
After a $20 million fundraising effort, The Conservation Fund and the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust secured permanent protection for more than 44,000 acres in the Bristol Bay drainage through easements. These easements include an area where the Pebble Mine Partnership had proposed a transportation route.
“I am never going to say when you are talking about this project that you are at the end of the road, but we do believe that this, in combination with the 404(c) decision, would make it extremely difficult to do,” said Tim Troll, executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust.
The easements were granted by the Pedro Bay Corporation, which was vested with Bristol Bay drainage land through the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
Dennis McLerran, who served as EPA regional administrator in Seattle from 2011 to 2017, said the EPA’s action was vindication of work done by the agency during the Obama administration.
If Pebble was permitted, McLerran said, it would set the stage for other projects to move forward.
“It would be death by a thousand cuts. You would have a lot of smaller mine projects that would be developed,” said McLerran, a Port Ludlow resident who works for Cascadia Law Group.
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