Grizzly Catching Salmon Credit: Brigitte Werner
We won.
Well, actually the magnificent natural landscape of Alaska’s Bristol Bay and all the wildlife and plants that call it home have won a big victory.
One of the world’s largest Mines, the Bristol Bay project, has suffered a fatal blow.
The US-EPA finally did something good and essentially denied mining permits citing laws protecting Clean Water. If approved those mining permits would have allowed landscape size wholesale destruction of a near pristine wilderness; in the same neighborhood as the famous Grizzly Bears who catch salmon in mid-air as they rush upstream. The proposed mine area is across Cook Inlet West of Anchorage, near Katmai in an area with no road connecting to the “mainland.”
“The science EPA reviewed paints a clear picture: Large-scale copper mining of the Pebble deposit would likely result in significant and irreversible harm to the salmon and the people and industries that rely on them.”
Bristol Bay Watersheds showing where Mining Tailings would be left to destroy salmon habitat. Credit: US-EPA
They project isn’t dead yet, but now has such severe restrictions (due to EPA discovering a law they had forgotten about called the Clean Water Act) that the Mining Corp would have to leave the place as clean as it is today. Something no mining company has ever even tried. Can you spell “Hit-and-Run Mining.”
Thanks are due to Trout Unlimited, Alaska Conservation Foundation, and everyday Alaskans — commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, sport fishing guides, lodge owners, local businesses, Alaskan Native subsistence fishermen, citizens and local environmental groups.
and I want to thank the amazing Erin and Hig of Ground Truth Trekking who first informed me about this awful project while writing about their 4,000 mile year long “walk” along the Pacific Coast from Seattle to Anchorage and on to the Aleutian Islands!!!
First off was not sure what the above number thing was about. But anyways am glad that a small victory was won in Bristol Bay. Am from Virginia and right now in the lower part of my state, Dominion Power Company wants to run a 450 mile pipeline. This line will bring fracked gas from W.Va. It will cut through some of the most beautiful parts of our state. It will cut through state and national forest ,through watersheds, even through the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is a ecological disaster. The people of the southern part of the state who make their homes and lively hoods in the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mt.s are fighting back. But our newly elected Governor has sided with the power company. Hopefully with enough out cry from Virginians this pipeline won,t go through.