Proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska could threaten worlds largest salmon fishery

[Judi Lynn]

by ANNE THOMPSON and DAVID DOUGLAS
FEB 3 2018, 6:08 PM ET

DILLINGHAM, Alaska — As a January snow fell on this remote Alaskan fishing town, time seemed to stand still. An occasional car drove down the main road in the city of just 2,300 people. The quiet belies the hum of boat engines and busy docks found here each summer, as commercial and sport fishermen haul in millions of sockeye salmon. Last year’s catch tipped the scales and records with a haul of some 60 million fish.

However, many here believe the economic engine that buoys their rural way of life is under threat by a proposed copper and gold mine a 120 miles to the northeast. The fear is that it could poison the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

In late December, those worries gained traction when a mining company filed for a permit to develop an open-pit mine atop one of the world’s largest unmined sources of copper and gold. Discovered in the late 1980s, the so-called Pebble deposit may contain as much as 80 billion pounds of copper and 107 million ounces of gold. On Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected engineering firm AECOM to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement that will aid regulators reviewing the permit application.

The permitting process will likely take years, though Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier believes he can navigate it within two — a prospect that seemed impossible after a 2014 Environmental Protection Agency report called the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment. It looked at three different mine sizes and determined they posed significant risks to the fishery both in everyday operations and in the event of a mining accident.

More:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/proposed-pebble-mine-alaska-could-threaten-world-s-largest-salmon-n844431

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. untrustworthy Pruitt

It wouldn't surprise me if Scott Pruitt speeds up the mining permission process when the news is turned elsewhere.