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SLIPPERY SLOPE: The Environmental Protection Agency may be stepping back from the brink of preemptively killing a proposed mine project in Alaska, but the agency’s latest plan still would set a dangerous precedent

Alaska mine developers plan to fight EPA’s crippling restrictions



While the Environmental Protection Agency appears to be backing off its push to pre-emptively kill a proposed copper and gold mine in Alaska’s bush country, the agency is pitching an array of conditions that could stifle the project.

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Friday’s proposed list of restrictions, subject of a public comment period through Sept. 19, could severely limit development of the proposed Pebble Mine project, an operation that developers say would create 1,000 direct jobs, and thousands more indirectly, and as much as $180 million in state revenue for Alaska. Dennis McLerran, regional administrator for the EPA’s Region 10, said while the agency has opted not to invoke a provision under the Clean Water Act that would effectively shut down the mine before a plan is submitted, the dangers of even a smaller mine in the Bristol Bay region’s “fragile ecosystem” would be devastating. He told reporters the EPA is trying to protect the world’s largest salmon fishery, where half of the world’s sockeye salmon population is said to live, from what would be “one of the world’s largest open pit mine developments ever conceived of.” Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier in a statement said while the developer is pleased the EPA has pulled back its threatened pre-emptive veto of the mine proposal, the agency does not have the authority to impose conditions on Pebble, or any development project anywhere in Alaska or the United States before a plan is submitted and the chain of state and federal regulatory review is followed. Pebble is suing the EPA for what it sees as a massive government overreach. More...


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