It's a fight that's been dragging on for years, the proposed Pebble Mine, some 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. What makes the open-pit mine so controversial is its location: on the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a body of water that's home to the world's largest run of wild salmon.
Cornichon wrote about this in November of 2009, to quote:
"A wealth of minerals lies beneath the tundra, and Pebble wants it. Gold, copper, molybdenum silver, rhenium, palladium. The land was opened to mining in the waning days of the Bush administration, and the project had the enthusiastic support of Alaska's former governess, Sarah Palin. Trouble is, getting at the riches would require a vast open-pit mine, the world's biggest, on the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The pit would measure 15 miles across; the dam to hold back the mine's toxic tailings would be 700 feet high and 4.5 miles across, the world's most massive, bigger than the 3 Rivers dam in China, and built on a seismic fault."
In Seattle, chefs from several restaurants responded by promoting salmon from Bristol Bay, even as right-wing politicians representing the mine owners cast the usual aspersions.
But today, for the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in.
"Extensive scientific study has given us ample reason to believe that the Pebble Mine would likely have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed and its abundant salmon fisheries."
Technically, the EPA's review puts on hold whatever permit applications the US Army Corps of Engineers may be considering for the mine to discharge waste water into Bristol Bay, A clear case of bureaucracy at work, but, in this case, a good thing. Not the end of the battle, but a turning point to be welcomed.
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