. . . rallying point. And there are plenty of short-sighted, anti EPA congress-persons willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. Beware
The Wall Street Journal’s story headlines attests to their warm and fuzzy feelings about mining in Bristol Bay “More Proof on Pebble. A new report takes apart the EPA’s veto of a mining project.”
October 5, 2015 / Wall Street Journal
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is by now beyond dispute that the Environmental Protection Agency went rogue when it halted Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine project. And yet, there’s more.
The more comes via an independent report that criticizes the agency for its pre-emptive 2014 veto of Pebble, a proposal to create the country’s largest copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska. Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers evaluates permit applications for new projects. The EPA has a secondary role of reviewing and potentially vetoing Corps approval. Here, the EPA issued a veto before either Pebble could file for permits or the Corps could take a look.
Pebble CEO Tom Collier didn’t take this lying down. He filed a lawsuit. Then he asked former Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen to conduct an outside investigation. Mr. Cohen agreed, as he writes, “on conditions of independence. I would follow the facts wherever they may lead, and any conclusions would be mine alone.” His 346-page report, released to be Tuesday, is a straightforward yet withering takedown of EPA’s conduct.
Mr. Cohen allows that EPA has authority to issue a pre-emptive veto (a conclusion disputed by other legal scholars). He notes, however, that EPA had never done so in the water law’s 43-year history. His well-documented point is that EPA’s decision to ignore regular procedure led to basic flaws in science and procedure, making impossible a remotely “fair” evaluation.
EPA did a watershed assessment based on a hypothetical mine and used this to justify its veto. Mr. Cohen notes that EPA acknowledged “significant gaps in its assessment,” since it had no permit applications on which to base its fiction.
The Corps refused to participate in the EPA process (because no permits had been filed) as did the State of Alaska (on principle). As a result, writes Mr. Cohen, EPA was unable to take into account “meaningful participation by other state and federal government agencies, mitigation and controls as proposed by the developer, and an array of public interest factors.”
Mr. Cohen writes that everyone—pro and con—agrees this is a decision of “utmost importance” to Alaska, its economy, environment and people. “The stakes are far too high here to use the Bristol Bay watershed, and the massive mineral deposits that lie underneath State lands, as a laboratory to test an unprecedented decision-making process,” he writes.
