Pebble Mine: Citing EPA Veto, Army Corps Re-Affirms Permit Denial

The new year has begun badly for Northern Dynasty Minerals and its universally condemned Pebble Mine project proposed for the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery. In early January, the United States Supreme Court rejected Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s “Hail Mary” pitch for original review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA’s”) January 2023 veto of the destructive project. 

This week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“Army Corps”) re-affirmed its November 2020 denial of Pebble’s application for a federal Clean Water Act permit. It did so to address the implications of the EPA veto on the Corps’ legal jurisdiction and specifically the fact that EPA’s action forecloses, as a matter of law, the Corps’ authority to issue the requested Clean Water Act permit.

According to the Army Corps’ decision this week, signed by Commanding Colonel Jeffrey Palazzini:

USACE FINAL AGENCY DECISION: Upon review of the applicant’s final 2020 Mine Plan permit application in full consideration of the EPA’s 404(c) determination, I have determined that because the mine site falls within the EPA’s Defined Area of Prohibition and Defined Area of Restriction, the EPA’s determination is a controlling factor that cannot be changed by a USACE decision maker and the application is hereby denied without prejudice. (Emphasis added.)

Although Pebble may now choose to challenge this latest administrative denial in federal court, it is also possible, even likely, that the cash-strapped company will instead focus its lawyers on its pending lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Alaska, seeking to overturn EPA’s veto. That agency action is, after all, the overriding bar to advancing the Pebble Mine (or any project like it) in the specific area of geologic interest in the upper Bristol Bay watershed.

The reality is that Northern Dynasty Minerals, which has no other assets than the Pebble Mine, will never retreat from its single-minded pursuit of profit at the expense of the world’s greatest wild salmon fishery and the people, communities, and wildlife the fishery has sustained for millennia. Ultimately, the solution required is congressional legislation that protects the region permanently by prohibiting large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed. Oil development has been prohibited there for decades.

Protection from large-scale mining has always been the goal of the people who live there. That protection has always been the focus of NRDC’s engagement and support. And, when all is said and done, that protection will be achieved no matter how long it takes. The unprecedented coalition of opposition to this “wrong mine in the wrong place” will never give up.