EIS Permitting at Alaska's Operating Mines: Pebble, Donlin Gold, Greens Creek, and Kensington.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: MINING

The whiplash decision in the Environmental Protection Agency's late January announcement to hold steady on its 2014 determination that the size of the Pebble Project could harm Bristol Bay's world-class sockeye fishery sent ripples though the mining industry. However, the determination does not preclude the mine from moving forward, and it has, filing for a federal permit in December that was accepted by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in early January. Pebble says the new permit reduces the mine's footprint and increases environmental safeguards.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's statement also advised that the decision "neither deters nor derails the application process" for the mine.

Canadian-owned Northern Dynasty Minerals, Pebble's majority stakeholder in the project, is rolling on.

"We filed our permit application for review by the USACE under the National Environmental Policy Act," CEO Tom Collier said in a January press release. "The USACE has determined we have a complete application and has initiated a thorough, objective review of the Pebble Project. We intend to participate fully in the process and encourage all project stakeholders to do the same."

The EPA decision stated that, while the company can continue pursuing federal permits, it will wait until May 2021 to review its assessment--that is unless USACE completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) beforehand.

The Pebble Project is a copper-gold-molybdenum deposit located on state land in the Bristol Bay Region of Southwest Alaska, about seventeen miles northwest of the community of Iliamna. The deposit is estimated to be about 90 million years old and may contain 57 billion pounds of copper, 3.4 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 70 million ounces of gold--an estimated value of $500 billion, according to Northern Dynasty.

Donlin Gold

"On the project front, we made significant progress with a permitting process that is the most rigorous in the world," said Donlin Gold General Manager Andy Cole in a newsletter. "The US Army Corps of Engineers received the final draft of our Environmental Impact Statement last summer and is scheduled to issue the final EIS in early 2018, which will be followed several months later by a Record of Decision."

"We're in the final process of releasing the final EIS in early 2018," says Jamie Hyslop, project manager with USACE.

In June, the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation issued the final air quality control...