Eleven days after his father’s administration paved the way for the progression of a huge copper and gold mine in the Alaskan desert, Donald Trump Jr. has called for his arrest.
“The resources of Bristol Bay and the surrounding fishery are too fragile to take risks,” he tweeted on August 4.
On Monday he fulfilled his wish.
Pebble Mine, one of the most debatable progression proposals in Alaskan history, did not pass the scrutiny of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And he didn’t qualify for a Clean Water Act permit.
In a press release, the military, which oversees the Corps, said the Trump administration supported the mining industry for its jobs and minerals, but that the allocation “would likely have significant adverse effects on the aquatic formula or the human environment.”
As proposed, the mine would eventually become an open pit mine the length of 460 football fields, with relaves stacked on 2,800 acres more than 10 miles of dams. Intensive pumping and a remedy in perpetuity would be required to ensure that infected drainage water never reaches Bristol Bay, where the world’s highest elevation of red salmon is located.
The mine would “cause inevitable negative effects” on more than 3,800 acres of wetlands, open water and streams, david Hobbie, the Corps’ leading officer in Anchorage, wrote in a letter to Pebble Limited Partnership on Thursday.
Just a month ago, the Corps concluded that the mine “should have a measurable effect on the number of fish” and indicated that it planned to continue licensing.
The renovation is a last-minute victory for Alaskan native organizations and fishermen in Bristol Bay, where the salmon fishery maintains 14,000 jobs and generates $1.5 billion in annual profits.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who heads the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said the proposal is complete.
“After years of extensive clinical processes and studies, federal officials have made the decision that the Pebble project, as proposed, does not meet the top bar for large-scale progression in Bristol Bay,” he said. “I understand, respect and this decision. I recognize that a permit deserves not to be issued.
In his letter, Hobbie told the mining company that he could continue if he instituted a “compensation mitigation in kind” near the Koktuli River basin.
But environmentalists and other conflicting parties to the assignment said they saw how this would be possible.
The Koktuli, a world-class fly fishing river, is a pristine painting that has no imaginable degradation to mitigate, said Taryn Kiekow Heimer, lead counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“It’s intact there, ” he said. “I don’t think Pebble can propose credible mitigation that meets the needs of the Clean Water Act.”
Brian Kraft of Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge downstream agreed.
“It’s a formula that works perfectly,” said Kraft, who takes consumers to the branches of Koktuli, where they fish for rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, Arctic shade and the five species of Pacific salmon. “There is no industrialization or habitat loss. This raises the question of what you’re going to do.”
Dennis McLaren, an environmental lawyer and former senior official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the concept of strengthening an unaltered ecosystem is “ridiculous.”
McLaren led the EPA’s Seattle under the Obama administration when he conducted a peer-reviewed three-year review of the mining proposal that led to restrictions on the project.
Last year, the EPA said it would not veto the assignment, leaving the force to make a decision on whether the proposal complied with the Clean Water Act. The Corps issued a definitive environmental effect on 24 July that concluded that the allocation “should not […] lead to long-term adjustments in the suitability of advertising fisheries.”
McLaren said Monday’s announcement was “a normal change.”
The fact that the military made this announcement was also unusual, given that the Corps was in the rate and relations with the controlled media in its two-year review. None responded to assembly requests on Monday.
In a press release Monday, Pebble Limited Partnership said the Corps’ letter was no surprise, adding that it planned to submit a mitigation plan within a few weeks. Shares of Pebble’s Canadian parent company, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., fell 38% in Toronto on Monday.
Tom Collier, Pebble’s executive leader, quoted in the press release that the letter “has nothing to do with recent tweets about Pebble” and “unilateral” news broadcasts.
“The White House has nothing to do with the letter, nor with the spectacularity described by many in the media,” he said.
President Trump has never publicly endorsed the bill, however, his was largely accepted after his administration reversed the restrictions imposed under President Obama.
Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, fished in Bristol Bay and tweeted like an athlete.
Politico reported Saturday that two of Trump’s political donors, wealthy Andrew Sabin and Johnny Morris, leader of Bass Pro Shops, were pressuring the president to turn down the mine.
Environmentalists said the ad hoc, personality-oriented nature of management policymaking motivated trust.
Heimer said the parties to the conflict need science, not political, for the final results of the authorization decision.
“What the Corps had done so far was not science,” he said. “So if this is an attempt through the Trump administration to prevent this process, it’s welcome.”