The on-again, off-again Pebble Mine venture in Alaska is facing a day of reckoning, with the future of the nation’s largest salmon run, which can exceed 40 million fish, hanging in the balance, according to FERN’s latest story by Paul Greenberg, in collaboration with Mother Jones. Both sport and commercial fishermen depend on the Bristol Bay fishery, valued at more than half a billion dollars, and for years they have been fighting a proposed mining venture that would develop a deposit containing billions of tons of copper, gold, and molybdenum in the same headwaters where all those salmon get their start.
“There has been a good deal of back and forth over the strike in the last decade, but it now seems we are reaching a critical moment, where the mine may finally move forward or be scrapped once and for all,” Greenberg writes. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been waffling between salmon fishing interests on the one hand and the mining industry on the other — both camps include enthusiastic Republicans. While the project itself inches forward in the government approval process, investors have been fleeing, leaving the venture in limbo but also very much alive.
In the story, Greenberg charts the history of the venture as well as attempts to stop it. A proposed Environmental Impact Statement by the Army Corps of Engineers faces a Friday deadline for comments, and a court case in Alaska may also play a role in the mine’s future. Pruitt, meanwhile, has made conflicting statements that have left many puzzled about his intentions for the venture.