The E.P.A.’s decision was based on over a dozen years of transparent review, including extensive peer-reviewed science, broad public participation and public comment — and vigorous engagement in the process by Northern Dynasty and the Dunleavy administration. Having compiled this comprehensive record, the agency concluded that the Pebble Mine would violate the Clean Water Act and cause the watershed’s globally important aquatic resources to suffer “unavoidable adverse impacts.”
The state’s complaint, on the other hand, is high on rhetoric and low on substance. It attacks the veto as a strike “at the heart of Alaska’s sovereignty” and asks the court to find that the E.P.A. has taken state “property without just compensation.” It cites no actual language to support its claim, and it ignores the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2019 decision that, in Alaska, “state, Native and private land (and waters)” do “of course remain subject to all the regulatory powers they were before, exercised by E.P.A., the Coast Guard and the like.”
Bizarrely, the state asserts with emphasis that “there is nothing the State can now do with these lands for economic purposes.” The annual salmon runs are an economic engine that generates half of the world’s sockeye salmon, yielding more than $2.2 billion a year in revenue and supporting over 15,000 jobs. The Bristol Bay watershed’s staggering economic value and job creation, all generated by the streams and waters where the salmon spawn, are exactly what the E.P.A.’s veto is intended to protect.
The E.P.A.’s action is consistent both with its legal authority and with what Alaskans have requested and overwhelmingly support. The Dunleavy administration has a right to appeal through the established appellate process for review of complex, fact-based agency action. But its attempt to bypass that process — and to get the Supreme Court to ignore its own precedent — should be rejected.
The state’s lawsuit highlights the need for federal legislation to permanently protect Bristol Bay from the mining company that has relentlessly stalked the region’s communities for a generation. Despite all prior efforts to preserve the unparalleled generosity of the region’s sustainable fisheries, the only future certainty for the communities of Bristol Bay is the inevitable pressure for catastrophic large-scale mining in its headwaters. That is, unless Congress provides permanent protection for this national treasure, unruined.
Carl Safina is a marine ecologist and professor of nature and humanity at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His most recent book is “Alfie and Me: What Owls Know and What Humans Believe.” Joel Reynolds is a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he directs the organization’s efforts in the American West.