The area in and around Bristol Bay in Alaska, which has been the focus of a planned mining development, is home to fisheries that produce half of the world’s wild sockeye salmon.
Photo: handout/ReutersThe U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is poised to insist on additional mitigation measures at the Pebble Mine development in Alaska before allowing the project to proceed, according to a senior Trump administration official.
The Army Corps plans to issue a letter Monday saying the mine would cause “significant degradation” and that its developers will need to take additional steps to protect the Bristol Bay area where the mine is located, the administration official said. Salmon fishing is a major economic driver in the region.
The determination is one of the most severe demands the Army Corps can make, said Tom Collier, chief executive of the project owner, Pebble Limited Partnership, who said government officials have briefed him on the letter. It will require the project, which is more than half the size of Manhattan, to find an area to mitigate that is as large as the project itself and in the same watershed, Mr. Collier said.
Mr. Collier said his team is working on a new mitigation proposal he expects to be finished within a few weeks and lead to a resolution with the Corps before Election Day.
Corps officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Politico earlier reported that the Trump administration is planning to block the project. The White House declined to comment.
The Corps is taking this stance after two years of steady support from the Trump administration, and with the project at the final step before it gets federal permits it has been seeking for most of the past decade. Just last month the Corps’ final environmental assessment concluded the project posed no serious risk.
Since the Corps’ environmental statement came out, however, some of President Trump’s most prominent supporters have mounted a last-minute push for the president to intervene personally and reject approvals for Pebble Mine.
The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., joined former top White House aide Nick Ayers in tweeting at the president asking him to block it. And Tucker Carlson, a host on Fox News, which the president regularly watches, aired a segment Aug. 14 questioning the project.
“As a sportsman who has spent plenty of time in the area I agree 100%,” Mr. Trump Jr. said in his tweet. “The headwaters of Bristol Bay and the surrounding fishery are too unique and fragile to take any chances with.”
The Washington Post reported last week that officials may delay Pebble’s approvals because of that opposition campaign, which it said also included an in-person appeal from Mr. Trump’s son and a major political donor at an early-August fundraiser.
At stake are gold, copper and other deposits previously estimated at $300 billion to $500 billion in value. But the reserves sit under a remote wilderness and a labyrinth of streams, rivers and marshes that feed Bristol Bay in the Bering Sea. Its fisheries produce half of the world’s wild sockeye salmon, a draw for tourists and anglers and sustenance for Native Alaskan communities.
A June 2019 protest in Juneau, Alaska, against the Pebble Mine development.
Photo: Becky Bohrer/Associated PressThe project’s owner, a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., has long faced widespread opposition from all kinds of environmental groups; sportsmen have taken an especially prominent role in recent weeks. Trout Unlimited has helped marshal opposition from prominent Republicans, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has been airing commercials on Fox News.
The recent pushback caught company leaders by surprise, and they have been planning to counter with their own ads on Fox News. The spots will point out that former President Obama and Joe Biden, Mr. Obama’s vice president and the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee for the coming election, both opposed the mine.
“To take a shot at the project because you like to go someplace and fish…it’s just absurd,” Mr. Collier, the Pebble executive, said Friday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I do not see President Trump returning to Obama-like political influence in permitting. That’s what discourages economic development in America.”
The company, which has no other significant assets, also needs a larger partner, if not several, to help develop Pebble Mine, Mr. Collier said. He said that those talks are ongoing and that he is optimistic, but he said Pebble will only be able to attract a mining partner once Pebble receives approval for a federal permit. Without approval, his team may have to sue or redesign part of the project, he said.
Recent polling from opposition groups suggests that changes the developers made to reduce the mine’s risk haven’t eased concerns. Likely voters statewide oppose the project by a 2-1 margin, according to polling from June commissioned by a coalition of local and national opponents. Nearly half the 500 people had a “very unfavorable” view of the project.
One of the groups that conducted the poll is the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, which represents more than 80% of the region’s population. Fifteen federally recognized tribes in the region formed the coalition to fight mining developments like this, a fight that goes back more than 30 years, said Alannah Hurley, the group’s executive director.
Even a smaller mine is likely to transform the region, bringing roads, power plants and other industrial development, she added. And the tribes fear it will open the door to more mines on other deposits in the area, and further expansion of Pebble itself.
“It’s a camel’s nose into the tent,” Ms. Hurley said Friday. “It would transform Bristol Bay from salmon country into a toxic mining district.”
If Pebble Mine gets federal approval, it still needs 60 more state permits to proceed. That would likely mean another two to three years before construction begins, Mr. Collier said.
Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com
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Army Corps to Ask for More Environmental-Protection Measures for Pebble Mine Project in Alaska, Official Says - The Wall Street Journal
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