Protect Bristol Bay’s Rivers from Mining

Grizzly bears on Naknek Lake in Katmai National Park. | Paxzon Woelber, Cinders to Sea Expedition

Bristol Bay’s Nushagak and Kvichak rivers, including tributaries such as the Koktuli, Mulchatna and Talarik rivers, are home to one of the last great wild salmon runs in the world, and host world-class rainbow trout, steelhead and other freshwater fish. Returning salmon have fed indigenous families for thousands of years through subsistence harvest. The Bristol Bay commercial fishery supports 14,000 sustainable American jobs worth $1.5 billion annually. These rivers also sustain two of the last intact, sustainable, salmon-based cultures in the world and provide clean drinking water for several thousand rural residents.

Unfortunately, livelihoods, native culture and this priceless resource are once again threatened by the Pebble Mine. This project could create 10 billion tons of waste, consume 35 billion gallons of freshwater per year, and include a 4-mile long dam taller than the Hoover Dam. Recently, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed direction from the previous administration to allow the project to go through the permitting process.

Please join us in asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to defend indigenous peoples, commercial fishermen, wild salmon and clean water by rejecting Pebble’s mining permit application.

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“Protecting Bristol Bay’s fisheries is critical to support the economy and culture of Alaskans. I am writing to request that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reject the permit application for Pebble Mine. American Rivers has included the Rivers of Bristol Bay in its report of America’s Most Endangered Rivers® of 2018, due to the Pebble Mine’s potential impact on fisheries, wildlife, tribes and local communities.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should protect Bristol Bay, and the businesses and communities these waters support, by considering the following during permitting for the Pebble Mine:
 
1) This application is incomplete. The Army Corps should not issue a Draft Environmental Impact Statement without more information from the Pebble Partnership. There is no baseline information for significant parts of Pebble’s proposal, including the proposed transportation corridor, port or use of Lake Iliamna. Any baseline data Pebble has supplied is more than 10 years old and does not provide a reasonable basis on which to analyze environmental impacts.

2) The Pebble Partnership should be required to provide an independently-prepared economic feasibility analysis. This is routinely done for other mines, and without it evaluation of the project is based on a hypothetical mine. To proceed with the environmental review process under these conditions is a waste of government resources and of the people’s time.

3) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that a mine smaller than what Pebble is currently proposing would pose, “significant and irreversible harm,” to Bristol Bay’s waters and would result in, “a complete loss of fish habitat.” Pebble’s current plans will permanently destroy 4,000 acres of wetlands and more than five miles of migratory fish spawning streams— levels that exceed EPA’s proposed restrictions on the mine. The Army Corps must compare Pebble’s plans to the EPA’s analysis before moving forward with permitting.

4) The Army Corps should use a realistic scope of Pebble Mine to assess its impacts. Pebble has asked the Army Corps to limit the review to an unlikely short-term 20-year mine, while it touts to potential investors that the mine can operate for 200 years and produce 11 billion tons of ore. The Army Corps must look at the full extent of mining the Pebble deposit, and not ask the public to participate in a process that is founded on a permit application that is lacking realistic development plans.   
 
I am asking you to support the tribes, local communities dependent on a healthy river and bay ecosystem for their livelihoods, and the millions of Americans that understand the value of these waters. Please reject Pebble’s permit application as incomplete. To even begin to consider a project that could have such vast environmental impacts, the Army Corps must require environmental and economic baseline data and other information needed to assess the massive amount of impacts inherent in the construction and operation of a fully developed Pebble Mine.
 
Sincerely,
"