Ads are rUNning in Alaska, Seattle, and Washington, DC during the EPA’s open public comment period on its Clean Water Act proposal for Bristol Bay

A broad coalition of groups representing millions of supporters are running full-page ads urging the public to support EPA action to protect Bristol Bay from the Pebble mine project. The ad runs today in the Bristol Bay Times. It will also appear in The New York Times, Politico, Seattle Times, Anchorage Daily News and Juneau Empire this week and next.

“Return to Bristol Bay,” reads the title. “Your name can stop the pebble mine,” the slogan reads. “Tell the EPA to finish the job.”

This is a big step forward in the 404(c) process and a milestone in the decades-long campaign to stop the Pebble Mine and protect Bristol Bay.

EPA is currently collecting public comments and holding public hearings on the proposal. Hearings are taking place today in Dillingham, Alaska; tonight online via Zoom; and tomorrow in Newhalen, Alaska. The EPA will also accept written comments until July 5. This is the last chance for the public to intervene during the EPA’s Clean Water Act 404(c) process.

Sustainable safeguards for Bristol Bay are needed to protect the region’s economic and cultural lifeblood: its salmon. Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, generating $2.2 billion a year, supporting 15,000 jobs, providing 57% of the world’s sockeye salmon, and supporting the Alaska Native communities that have thrived there for centuries. time immemorial.

This area of ​​unprecedented economic and ecological value is so special that even the Trump administration denied Pebble Mine’s Clean Water Act permit, concluding that the mine would cause “significant degradation” of Pebble Bay’s aquatic resources. Bristol and was “contrary to the public interest”. .”

Yet the Pebble Limited Partnership continues to appeal this denial and double down on the delusions of grandeur. The Pebble Ghost Mine will haunt Bristol Bay until the EPA grants permanent protections for its headwaters under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act.

Bristol Bay Tribes first applied to the EPA to use its 404(c) authority in 2010, triggering a three-year, twice-peer-reviewed science assessment of the risk to Bristol Bay large-scale mining. In 2014, the EPA released a draft ruling to block the Pebble mine, but, after years of litigation by the Pebble Limited Partnership, it was never finalized. In 2019, the Trump administration reversed and withdrew the proposed 2014 decision. Bristol Bay tribes, commercial fishers and conservation groups – including the NRDC – challenged the illegal Trump administration withdrawal and, in 2021, a federal judge reinstated the proposed ruling from 2014. The EPA then relaunched the 404(c) process and updated its proposed ruling to reflect information that has become available since the agency’s 2014 proposal, including new scientific analysis and the Pebble Limited Partnership’s 2020 mining plan.