Mere hours before he banged his gavel to adjourn this year’s session of the Alaska House of Representatives, Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, introduced a bill to bar metals mining from the Bristol Bay watershed.
The measure, House Bill 233, would expand on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2023 decision prohibiting permitting of the controversial Pebble Project in the region. The Biden administration action, which followed up on a process started in the Obama administration, invoked a rarely used provision on the Clean Water Act to prevent development of the huge open-pit copper and gold mine planned for the region upstream from salmon-rich Bristol Bay.
Edgmon’s bill would ban all metallic sulfide mining in the area designated as the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve, which encompasses state land in the Bristol Bay watershed.
Metallic sulfide mining, also known as hard-rock mining, is the type of mining that extracts elements like gold and copper from acid-generating rocks classified as sulfides. When these sulfides are processed, they commonly cause acid to drain out. It is a method distinct from placer mining, which sifts out metals from loose sediments. The copper and gold that would be produced at the Pebble project is held in sulfide ore and would be extracted through hard-rock mining.
The Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve was established by the Legislature in 1972 to prevent oil and gas development in the region. The effort was led by Jay Hammond, who was president of the state Senate at the time. He later became governor.
Under House Bill 223, the Hammond-championed prohibitions on petroleum development would be expanded to mining. The justifications for the 1972 action “also warrant new protections to prevent hardrock mining activities that would risk polluting the region’s river systems, ground water, aquifer systems,” as well as any drainages that connect to Bristol Bay’s surface water, the bill’s text says.
Edgmon is from the Bristol Bay region.
The bill will be considered next year, along with other measures still pending in the 34th Legislature.
Alannah Hurley, executive director of a consortium of Native tribal governments in the Bristol Bay region, said the bill would provide extra protection for EPA’s action. That protection is needed because of “the uncertainty that we’re continuing to face” from litigation pressed by Pebble’s sponsors, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. and the Pebble Limited Partnership it owns, said Hurley, who is with United Tribes of Bristol Bay, an organization that has long opposed the Pebble project.
Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Limited Partnership have sued to overturn the 2023 EPA determination, and the case remains active. The state of Alaska, at the direction of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, has also sued the federal government over the action.
Hurley said that beyond upholding the EPA determination, the bill would prevent the development of other metals mines in the region, Hurley said. There are about 20 active claims that could be developed into large metals mines, though not as large as the proposed Pebble project, she said.
If the bill passes, “we wouldn’t have to face 20 other mining claims piecemeal over who knows how many decades,” she said.
While the bill is new, the effort behind it goes back a long time, Hurley said.
“This is something the tribes have been talking about for years. We need the EPA protection, but we also need legislation to really protect the watershed,” she said.
A legislative effort similar to House Bill 233 was mounted on the federal level by former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska. She introduced the Bristol Bay Protection Act a year ago to codifythe EPA’s Clean Water Act determination barring a Pebble-type mine from being permitted in the Bristol Bay watershed. The act died in committee, and Peltola lost her seat in November to current Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska.
The tribes and other Pebble opponents have thus turned their attention to the Legislature now that Peltola is no longer in the U.S. House, Hurley said.
“The fact that she wasn’t reelected has frustrated expectations that we can make any progress with Congress,” Hurley said.
There have been previous efforts in the Alaska Legislature, as well. In 2015, Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, introduced a measure, House Bill 119, that would require legislative approval for any large-scale metallic sulfide mine in the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve. It failed to reach the House floor. Josephson introduced a similar bill, House Bill 14, in 2017. It also died in committee.
Josephson is a co-sponsor of Edgmon’s new bill.
Representatives of Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Limited Partnership were not available to comment on the new bill.
Dunleavy, who has been supportive of the Pebble project, has not taken a position, said his spokesperson, Jeff Turner. The bill was just introduced, so the governor has not had time to review it, Turner said.
“As a general rule, the Governor’s office does not comment on legislation until it has passed and been transmitted to his office,” he said by email.
This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.