The Office of the Army Corps of Engineers in Alaska plans to hold a conference call Monday with groups affiliated with the proposed mine about the decision, three people with knowledge of the call told POLITICO. An administration official confirmed the call with POLITICO.
Corps officials will say that striking technical issues remain with a major permit, the people said, adding that they expect Trump will then follow up with a public statement against the project. The people said they were not entirely sure what form Trump’s resignation would take, although they said it was more likely to be a rejection of the Army Corps of Pebble’s water permits instead of an EPA veto earlier this year. indicated that it would not exercise that power.
“There are people who have been told that there is one [Corps] press event and that it will be positive, ”said a person in Washington who is working on efforts against the mine and who asked anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
White House spokesman Judd Deere addressed POLITICO to the Army Corps.
“The White House is currently unable to comment,” he said in an email. Neither the Army Corps nor the EPA responded immediately to requests for comment.
But Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier, who worked as chief of staff for Clinton-era Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, denied the project was about to be blocked.
“We have worked with the Trump administration and the message we have received from the Trump administration was that this is a president who believes there is no place in the process of permitting political influence,” Collier said.
“I do not believe he will return to Obama-like interference in the permitting process. We have the guarantees that he will not do this,” he added.
Collier also said he was unaware of a Monday conference call. “I think if there was an interested call on Monday that Mr Sabin knew, I would know about it, and I do not.”
The Pebble Mine is planned to be built in the headwaters off Bristol Bay, home to the largest sockeye fishery in the world, providing up to 11 percent of all wild salmon catches.
“I have been there more than 10 times. It’s like no place on earth, ”Trout Unlimited CEO Chris Wood told POLITICO.
The over-face by the administration probably signals more about problems with these specific mines than a sea change in Trump’s total support for major development projects. But with Trump expecting it to die and his challenger Democrat Joe Biden against the project, Pebble Mine seems to have a few options to advance it despite more than a decade of planning, changes of ownership and political battles.
In late July, it emerged that the Trump administration was on track to approve the project as early as this month over protests by environmentalists and Alaskan Native groups against the 8,400-acre open pit mine.
Then in early August, Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act, which provided nearly $ 1 billion a year for security work. “I suspect Teddy Roosevelt was not like that,” Trump said. Later that day, Trump’s son Donald Jr. publicly took up the issue of the controversial mining project, tweeting along with Nick Ayers, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, to reject Trump for persuading Pebble.
The duo mentioned the concerns of recreational groups for outdoor games that it threatens the Bristol Bay Salmon fishery, which is commercially important and an increasingly popular destination for adventurous fishermen.
Joining the Hook-and-Bullet Audience’s Influencing Campaign was Fox News host Tucker Carlson, one of the president’s favorite who raised the issue in an August 14 segment. “The case against Pebble Mine of Alaska. Carlson and his guest, founder of Bass Pro Shops Morris, called up Theodore Roosevelt, who Trump had just called “really the great president” – and who he suggested he attend on Mount Rushmore.
Trump has undoubtedly been pro-mining, though that was largely aimed at coal mining; Pebble would mine a large deposit of copper, gold, molybdenum and silver grains so that it has no direct connection with the issue of climate change.
“Maybe not all environmental policy is about climate,” Carlson said on his show.
Long-held skepticism about the mine from many Alaskans would also require Trump to deliver politics coverage. The late Republican Senator Ted Stevens in 2008 famously called it “the wrong mine for the wrong place.” And while she ultimately has yet to take a side, First Chamber Energy and Natural Resources President Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in 2019 outlined the Peffes environmental effects.
Shortly after the Trump administration took office, it settled a lawsuit with the developer of the mine that included withdrawing the Obama-era proposal to preemptively mine the mine. Instead, the mine permit could continue through the licensing process at the Army Corps of Engineers.
As a consulting firm, EPA was critical of the Corps’ environmental research last year, warning of “substantial and unacceptable adverse effects” on fisheries. But EPA in May indicated it did not criticize and did not use the power of the Clean Water Act to veto permits for the project.
The EPA’s critics were based on unique characteristics that ultimately succeeded in bringing the environment and Trump to the same side.
The mine, developed by an American subsidiary of the Canadian company Northern Dynasty Minerals, was proposed to tap an enormous state reserve a few miles north of Iliamna Lake. The mine plan calls for an average of 70 million tons of copper, gold and molybdenum ore to be produced annually over 20 years, potentially amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. Opponents of the mine argue that the company would eventually push to expand the mine to win even more of the bail.
The corps ruled in July that Pebble Mine “would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers and result in long-term changes to the health of commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay.”
But the commercial fishing industry, recreation groups, environmentalists and local Native Alaskan groups have all long complained about the destruction of streams that are critical to salmon production and the danger that mine waste contaminates the bay.
