Pebble environmental impact statement published

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the large Pebble copper, gold and molybdenum mining project Feb. 20. The document appears on the project website maintained by the corps, agency officials said.

Pebble would be a large mine near Lake Iliamna about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, in south Alaska. If built, it would employ several thousand in construction and several hundred in production.

Release of the DEIS is a major step in the federal regulatory process for the project. It will begin a period of review and public hearings to be held in Alaska communities near the proposed project, the corps said in a Feb. 20 announcement. A 90-day public comment review period will begin March 1 and conclude May 31.

Public hearings will be held in nine communities, according to Shane McCoy, the corps’ Pebble program manager.

The DEIS considers environmental impacts and a range of alternatives including a possible “no build” option, McCoy said. The current schedule calls for a Final Environmental Impact Statement to be signed in February 2020 and a Record of Decision 90 days later, he said.

The Record of Decision will also issue major federal permits for Pebble including the Clean Water Act Section 404 dredge and fill permit as well as other federal authorizations, McCoy said. Pebble Partnership has yet to file for state of Alaska permits, however, the company has said.

Pebble is a large deposit primarily of copper and gold but also containing molybdenum. Pebble Partnership Ltd., the developer, estimates the deposit holds about 4.6 billion tons of measured and indicated as well as inferred metal resources. The company proposes a large surface mine with concentrates to be shipped by barge and truck to an ore loading terminal planned on the west side of Cook Inlet, south of Anchorage.

“Our preliminary review of the DEIS shows no major data gaps or substantive impacts that cannot be appropriately mitigated. We see no significant environmental challenges that would preclude the project from getting a permit and this shows Alaska stakeholders that there is a clear path forward for this project that could potentially generate significant economic activity, tax revenue and thousands of jobs,” said Tom Collier, CEO of Pebble Partnership.

“I also commend the Corps for their comprehensive, efficient and transparent management of the process thus far,” he said.

However, the release of he DEIS also brought criticism:

Taryn Kiekow Heimer, deputy director of the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Nature Program, said “This is a rushed and—at best—a superficial review of the largest ever proposed mine in Alaska.

“The Army Corps is ignoring major red flags here—rushing towards rubber stamping a project that would threaten the greatest wild salmon fishery on the planet, not to mention fishing jobs and thousands of years of subsistence culture.”

Pebble Partnership is wholly-owned by Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. a Vancouver, B.C. based exploration company. Northern Dynasty is seeking partners to develop the mine but three mining companies previously involved in Pebble, Rio Tinto, Anglo American and most recently Toronto-based First Quantum Minerals, withdrew from participation due to regulatory obstacles and intense political opposition from fishing and tribal groups in Alaska.

The controversy stems mainly from the location of deposit in uplands adjacent to watersheds with salmon bearing streams that feed into Bristol Bay, which supports the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery.