Battle over Bristol Bay mine: Native, fisheries groups sue Trump

If the massive proposed Pebble Mine, located between two prime salmon spawning streams, is ever built, Frying Pan Lake, pictured here, would disappear beneath a giant pile of tailings. Bristol Bay is one of the world’s greatest fisheries. less If the massive proposed Pebble Mine, located between two prime salmon spawning streams, is ever built, Frying Pan Lake, pictured here, would disappear beneath a giant pile of tailings. Bristol Bay is one of ... more Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Battle over Bristol Bay mine: Native, fisheries groups sue Trump 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Five Bristol Bay native and fisheries groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, seeking to restore Clean Water Act protection and block a giant open pit copper-goldmine proposed cheek-by-jowl with the world's greatest sockeye salmon fishery.

The suit was filed on National Salmon Day.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reportedly after intervention by President Donald Trump, in July withdrew a determination that the proposed Pebble Mine would cause enormous potential harm to rivers and wetlands where salmon spawn.

The mine would be located between two of the most productive salmon streams in the Bristol Bay fishery.

The project has also stirred resistance in the Seattle-Puget Sound area, where there are more than 1,100 licenses to fish in Bristol Bay waters. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has been a vocal critic of the proposed mine.

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"Bristol Bay is the crown jewel of Alaska's salmon industry: It is the most valuable sockeye fishery in the world, accounting for roughly half of the world's sockeye salmon harvest," said Andy Wink of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Assn.

"There's simply no precedent for open pit mining coexisting with sockeye salmon on the scale proposed by the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay."

The federal court suit claims the EPA's action under Trump was illegal, arbitrary and capricious, and did not consider copious scientific and technical information developed in two years of study by the EPA under the Obama Administration.

The EPA under former President Barack Obama catalogued potential dangers of the Pebble Mine, from loss of wetlands to the potential catastrophic rupture of a tailing day. (A dam rupture at a British Columbia mine in 2014 sent tailings and debris cascading into Quesnel Lake, home to a major salmon run.)

The Trump administration "not only broke the law, it made clear that local people have no voice in the management of our rivers, our streams and wetlands," Ralph Anderson, chief executive of the Bristol Bay Native Assn., a consortium of 31 tribes, told a news conference. (Quote is courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News.).

The Pebble Limited Partnership, which has filed a development proposal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, dismissed the legal action as "without merit." It described actions of the EPA under Obama as a "preemptive action" against the mine and "poor policy to begin with."

The Corps of Engineers' draft environmental impact statement has come under criticism from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

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Few fisheries in the world are as carefully managed as Bristol Bay, which supports more than 14,000 commercial, recreational and tribal fisheries jobs. Its global importance has been underscored this year by disastrously low returns of sockeye salmon in British Columbia's Fraser River.

"Because of our careful stewardship, Bristol Bay is home to the last fully intact wild salmon fisheries and culture in the world," said Anderson. "The federal government has a trust responsibility to protect the resources that our cultures depend on. Eliminating the proposed protections violates that responsibility."

"The people of Bristol Bay are not pushovers," he added.