EPA Rejects Proposal for Pebble Mine

On Tuesday July 15, I had the privilege of attending my first hearing on Capitol Hill. I got there early to take it all in, and was the first one in the audience by a good fifteen minutes. Clean Water Action assigned me to listen and report on the hearing, held by the House Sub-Committee on Water Resources and Environment, a Subcommittee of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

The hearing was about Section 404c of the Clean Water Act, which authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “restrict, prohibit, deny, or withdraw the use of an area as a disposal site for dredged or fill material if the discharge will have unacceptable adverse effects on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas, wildlife, or recreational areas.” This means that EPA can even revoke a Clean Water Act discharge permit that has already been issued if it is determined that it will have unacceptable impact.

Six panelists provided testimony on this provision of the Clean Water Act. Much of the opposition asserted the possibility of investor hesitation in the face of potential permit revocation. Ranking Member Tim Bishop (D-NY) noted that this hesitation doesn’t appear to have been a problem during the Act’s 42-year old history, and that the provision has only been exercised twelve times. Eight times appeals were brought to the Supreme Court, which upheld EPA’s decisions. Announced last Friday, the EPA plans to reject developing Alaskan mining project called Pebble Mine, after research indicated mining the area would be destructive to one of the major salmon fisheries in the region and the world. In an interview with the Seattle Times, EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said that the science is clear, “that mining the Pebble deposit would cause irreversible damage to one of the world’s last intact salmon ecosystems. Bristol Bay’s exceptional fisheries deserve exceptional protection.”

Bristol Bay provides one of the largest salmon fisheries in the world and is a huge resource for thousands of jobs in the Washington state fishing industry.

There are multiple development scenarios that Pebble Project had in mind, but all of them include the destruction of vast sections of the bay that have a known salmon presence, and mining what they think "may be the largest undeveloped copper deposit in North America."

We applaud EPA for denying the permit for this destructive proposal and applaud Rep. Bishop (D-NY) and other lawmakers who stand up for the Clean Water Act.