Wednesday February 1, 2023
The Seattle Times —
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.