Calling the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft Bristol Bay watershed assessment inadequate, rushed and inaccurate, the Pebble Partnership (PLP) submitted comments and technical data last month to the agency charging that the assessment is incomplete and fails on a scientific and regulatory basis.
Materials submitted by PLP, which include opinions and expertise from engineers, mining experts and international technical and environmental consulting firms, underscore the fundamental gaps in the draft assessment and omission of critical practices associated with 21st Century mining.
PLP said perhaps the most glaring issue is the hypothetical mine the EPA created on which to base its assessment – a mine that could not be permitted in the United States according to today’s rigorous regulatory standards.
Although the assessment itself does not contain any recommendations as to whether the EPA should exercise its veto authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act (CWA) to prevent PLP from taking a project into the federal permitting process, EPA has indicated that the study could be the basis for such a determination.
“As a company, we firmly believe that such a determination would need to be based on the same scientific rigor and the same high standards for independent scientific research as the federal agencies would use to grant a mine the various permits required by law,” said John Shively, CEO of the Pebble Partnership. “This assessment does not meet those standards or come anywhere close to doing so. If a developer attempted to apply for federal permits using a document as flawed as this assessment, the applications would be promptly and justifiably rejected.”
In addition to bypassing many of the agency’s own internal guidelines, PLP said the assessment fails to include, consider or evaluate modern extraction technologies, mitigation plans or reclamation. PLP said the assessment also contains an excessively high number of missing peer-reviewed citations, a lack of available data sources, unfounded claims and numerous presumptions by the authors that are not based on factual information or scientific analysis.
Given the lack of scientific rigor, PLP said the assessment is an inadequate basis for a permitting decision for its project, which should be evaluated through the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
“There appears to be a lack of understanding on the part of the EPA as to how modern mines operate, along with a disregard for innovations and technologies being deployed at contemporary facilities,” Shively said.
Other significant deficiencies within the draft assessment include false assumptions related to ground and surface water, roads, and mine design; theoretical scenarios related to disturbance of aquatic habitat; and an absence of material examining current mining techniques related to fishery resources currently being deployed along water systems such as the Fraser River in Canada, and in Alaska at the Red Dog, Fort Knox, and Greens Creek mines.
PLP also noted the assessment contains no review or evaluation of best available mining practices related to modern containment or impoundment structures, nor current proven methods for pollution control, water treatment, monitoring or habitat modification.
Instead, the assessment relies on outdated mining methods and data from mines built in the 1880s that now could not be constructed or operated in the same way. PLP said the assessment ignored modern mitigation measures and management techniques which would limit the mine’s footprint and offset impact on fish habitat and wetlands. It also did not consider modern engineering that would prevent the dam failures and other impacts cited in the report.
In its comments on the assessment, the State of Alaska said the EPA did not adequately consider Alaska regulations, standards, or the mitigating aspects of modern mine construction methods, operation, and closure.
“The assessment provides a very basic review from dated mining projects that do not adhere to modern mining methods, regulations, or engineering standards,” said Thomas Crafford, Director of the Department of Natural Resources’ Office of Project Management and Permitting.
Crafford noted that the State’s modern design standards for road culverts would prevent the fish impacts that the assessment predicts.
“The State has communicated to PLP that bridge designs, not culverts, will be the starting point for any consideration of water crossings,” Crafford said. “Given the sensitivity of the rivers and streams to the fisheries, the inferior designs described in the draft assessment would not be approved by the State.”
Crafford also pointed out that in the assessment, “there is no discussion of the mitigation requirements that could be imposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers relative to the placement of roads and stream crossings or mitigation to and avoidance of wetlands.”
Essentially a literature review completed in approximately one year, the EPA draft assessment covers a 20,000 square-mile area, roughly the size of the state of West Virginia, in remote Southwest Alaska and contains no new in-the-field scientific research. By comparison, PLP has spent eight years studying the local environment and a dedicated area of approximately 1,500 square miles in and around the proposed mine site.
The EPA draft assessment focused solely on two of nine major river systems in the area, implying these are wholly representative of the entire region.
In January, PLP released its Environmental Baseline Document (EBD) prepared by independent researchers, a five-year comprehensive characterization of the biological, physical and socioeconomic aspects of the region. The EBD, which represents one of the most extensive scientific programs ever conducted for a natural resource project in Alaska, was provided to the EPA in December 2011 as part of the pre-assessment process, but has largely been disregarded. The Pebble Partnership has re-submitted the EBD as part of its EPA draft assessment comments.
The EPA provided a short, 60-day public review window for the draft assessment, which culminated during the height of the summer fishing season in Alaska. The EPA has ignored extension requests from the State of Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young, Alaska business and trade associations, tribal governments, village corporations, 10 Alaska Native regional corporations, and hundreds of Alaska residents.
“This is noteworthy because the EPA has provided no justification for why it is rushing this process, especially with no permitting package or mine plan to evaluate,” Shively said.
According to the U.S. Census, Southwest Alaska is one of the most economically depressed areas in the nation. If approved by regulators, the Pebble project would inject billions of dollars of investment into the local economy, create 2,000 construction jobs and support permanent positions for about 1,000 workers.
Yet the EPA assessment did not consider any potential benefits of mine development to human health, safety, and welfare, including those of individuals who live in the region.
“It presented a limited and biased picture of only adverse impacts of a hypothetical mine, and fails to disclose to the public those benefits to the region and State that might result from large mine development,” said Crafford.
PLP’s Shively acknowledged that EPA has a legitimate regulatory role in the established process. “There is an appropriate time and place for their input as part of the NEPA process, which is triggered once an actual mining plan is submitted,” Shively said. “Remarkably, the EPA appears to be laying the groundwork for a very different outcome, one in which EPA shuts down the process entirely and preemptively prevents Pebble from even seeking a permit under the law.”
Unfortunately, there seems to be a flawed process unfolding that disregards the challenges faced in Southwest Alaska of high unemployment, high cost of living, high suicide rates and continuing rural out-migration, Shively added. “Providing new economic opportunities could be part of the solution to many of these problems. Again, one has to wonder, why the rush?”
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