The EPA has issued a final decision to block a large proposed gold and copper mining project in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, the site of one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries.
Boats on the Naknek River, which flows into Bristol Bay, in Alaska in July 2019. Photo: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imagesto block a large proposed gold and copper mining project in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, which is home to dozens of Alaska Native villages and communities and is the site of one of the most valuable wild salmon fisheries in the world.
It found that the discharge of the material "will have unacceptable adverse effects on anadromous fishery areas" in watersheds that drain into two of the largest rivers in the Bristol Bay watershed, the Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers. "By prohibiting and restricting the discharge of dredged or fill materials associated with developing the Pebble deposit in certain areas of the Bristol Bay watershed, EPA prevents unacceptable adverse effects on important wild salmon habitat, and in doing so also helps safeguard the critical Bristol Bay ecosystem,"The agency said this was its third time invoking this specific authority in the Clean Water Act to block a project in the last 30 years and its fourteenth time in the...
The other two projects it blocked through the authority were the Spruce No.1 Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, and the Yazoo Backwater Area Pumps Project in Issaquena County, Mississippi, according to an EPA spokesperson. The region's Indigenous people have long opposed the proposed mine, filing a lawsuit along with commercial fishing organizations
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