"Both the mining camp and the salmon camp are wondering where EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stands."
"July 4 marks the peak of the largest, most valuable wild salmon run left in America.
The sockeye salmon migration into Bristol Bay, Alaska, can exceed 40 million fish. As they charge into the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers and fan out across myriad tributaries, the sockeye and four other species of Pacific salmon are pursued by commercial and sport fisheries valued at over half a billion dollars. When they reach the region’s clear, wild headwaters, those millions of salmon spawn and produce billions of offspring that then find their way down into Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake. Then the fish head out toward the Bering Sea, get big and fat on omega-3-rich krill, and in three more years return to their headwaters to begin the cycle anew. Whether marketed to Americans or exported to other countries, Bristol Bay salmon are a major bulwark against America’s “seafood deficit,” which in 2016 exceeded $14 billion.
In spite of all this, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has been stewarding the resurrection of a project that poses a significant threat to the region’s lucrative fisheries. The Pebble Mine project, first proposed by Cominco Limited in the late 1980s, focuses on a deposit containing billions of tons of copper, gold, and molybdenum in the very same headwaters where all those salmon get their start. Located in a seismically active region high in sulfur, salmon advocates believe the proposed mine and associated infrastructure would dangerously contaminate the Nushagak and Kvichak river systems. As Rick Halford, the former Republican majority leader of the Alaska Senate, told me a few years back while flying over the Pebble deposit, “You couldn’t pick a better place to ruin both drainages.”"
