Pebble Mine Company Announces Plans to File Federal Permit Application

WASHINGTON — The Pebble Limited Partnership today announced it intends to file a federal permit application tomorrow for the proposed Pebble Mine, a controversial project in Alaska’s Bristol Bay that would threaten the most productive wild salmon ecosystem in the world.

More than 80 percent of the people from Bristol Bay — and 65 percent of Alaskans — oppose the proposed Pebble Mine. And the opposition is increasing. Bipartisan opposition to the project includes leaders from business, government, communities and tribes. Bristol Bay leaders have repeatedly said that they “will never support a Pebble mine in Bristol Bay.” Former EPA Administrators from the Nixon, Reagan, and both Bush Administrations last week joined the opposition. 

If fully developed, the Pebble Mine would generate an estimated 10 billion tons of mining waste that would be stored forever in an active earthquake zone at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed. This would threaten not only the subsistence culture of the region but a sustainable commercial fishery that, this year, generated almost 60 million wild salmon – the economic engine for the entire region, estimated at $1.5 billion annually and 14,000 jobs.

Following is a statement from Joel Reynolds, Western Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and director of its Campaign to Stop the Pebble Mine:

“This is the wrong mine in the wrong place, and the people of Alaska don’t want it. There is simply no way to ensure that the world’s greatest wild salmon ecosystem will be protected from contamination caused by a toxic open pit copper and gold mine in the pristine headwaters of Bristol Bay. EPA scientists have already concluded that unavoidable and potentially catastrophic harm will come to this incomparable fishery if Pebble Mine is built. The only reasonable response is to reject this application. And we’ll continue to fight until this project is dead.”

Resources:

• Ruckelshaus, Reilly, Babbitt, Whitman Say No to Pebble Mine by Joel Reynolds
• Pebble Mine’s December Press releases:  Read the Fine Print by Joel Reynolds
• First Quantum Minerals Invests in Controversial Pebble Mine by Taryn Kiekow Heimer
• Dear Pebble Mine: No Still Means No by Taryn Kiekow Heimer

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