NRDC: Pebble Mine Environmental Review Falls Flat by Joel Reynolds

Pebble Mine Environmental Review Falls Flat

August 21, 2019
by Joel Reynolds, Western Director, Senior Attorney, Marine Mammals, Oceans Division, Nature Program
NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council



Pebble CEO’s enthusiastic spin fails to mask widespread criticism of data gaps, unsupported conclusions, and failure to meet industry standard practice.

When Tom Collier talks, it’s sensible to be skeptical.

What Would Defense Secretary Cohen Have Done With His "Independent" Pebble Mine Report? by Joel Reynolds

What Would Defense Secretary Cohen Have Done With His "Independent" Pebble Mine Report?

In the latest installment in the saga of the embattled Pebble Mine, there is inescapable irony in last week's release of The Pebble Partnership-funded "independent" report by former Defense Secretary William Cohen and his firm The Cohen Group. Based on a brief, undefined investigation, Secretary Cohen concluded to no one's surprise that his client has been unfairly treated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its federal Clean Water Act review of the mining project - just as his client has argued for years.

TELL THE PEBBLE PARTNERSHIP TO CALL IT QUITS

The fight to stop the Pebble Mine goes on -- but the battlefront has moved from the U.S. EPA to the courtroom and beyond as we escalate massive nationwide pressure on Northern Dynasty Minerals, the last company standing behind the disastrous venture, to call it quits.

Over the last two weeks, NRDC ran a series of hard-hitting, full-page print ads in Washington urging the Pebble Partnership -- Northern Dynasty's legal entity -- to walk away from Pebble Mine. The EPA has confirmed that this gargantuan open-pit, gold and copper operation -- along with its estimated 10 billion tons of toxic mining waste -- carries catastrophic risk for Bristol Bay, its world-class salmon fishery, its pristine environment and its people.

Saying Goodbye to Bobby Andrew, Defender of Bristol Bay by Joel Reynolds

Saying Goodbye to Bobby Andrew, Defender of Bristol Bay
by Joel Reynolds, Western Director and Senior attorney, NRDC, Los Angeles

I didn't expect the Pebble Mine would outlast Bobby Andrew. He was a fighter who never seemed to get tired. Over 70 years old, and he was always willing to make the trip - whatever the trip, wherever it took him -- to talk, to testify, to tell the terrible story of the uniquely reckless scheme by international mining giants to poison the communities and wild salmon fisheries of Alaska's Bristol Bay with a gigantic copper and gold mine.

photograph © copyright, Natural Resources Defense Council 2015@NRDC @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd 

Pebble Mine 2014 Year in Review: "And Then There Were Lawyers . . . ."

Pebble Mine 2014 Year in Review: "And Then There Were Lawyers . . . ."
by Joel Reynolds
Western Director and Senior attorney, NRDC, Los Angeles
published in Huffington Post, Posted: 01/05/2015 1:58 pm EST

When someday the story of the Pebble Mine is told, 2014 may be best remembered as the year when all that remained of the once formidable Pebble Partnership was a bunch of lawyers for hire. By the end of 2014, all of the mining giants and their funding - Mitsubishi, Anglo American, and Rio Tinto - were gone, leaving only Northern Dynasty Minerals to keep the reckless vision of the Pebble Mine alive. The Partnership's new CEO is a lawyer from the Washington, D.C. law firm of Steptoe and Johnson, and mining activities have ground to a halt.

By the end of 2014, Pebble's public face had become lawsuits and lobbying against EPA, targeting its authority to do what Alaskans had petitioned it to do - i.e., to protect Alaska's wild salmon fishery. Three lawsuits had been filed against the agency, and legislation to constrain the agency's review of the Pebble project had been introduced in both houses of Congress.

More Bad News for the Pebble Mine: Rio Tinto Announces It May Divest by Joel Reynolds, NRDC

More Bad News for the Pebble Mine: Rio Tinto Announces It May Divest

by Joel Reynolds, Western Director and Senior attorney, NRDC, Los Angeles Posted: 12/23/2013 4:31 pm

Photograph Copyright 2013 Robert Glenn Ketchum

Rio Tinto's Opportunity: Leave the Pebble Mine by Joel Reynolds, Natural Resources Defense Council

Rio Tinto's Opportunity: Leave the Pebble Mine
by Joel Reynolds, Western Director and Senior attorney, NRDC, Los Angeles
Posted: 09/24/2013 4:24 pm Huffington Post

Yesterday, in Forbes, mining giant Rio Tinto's CEO Sam Walsh, with General Electric's CEO Jeffrey Immelt, offered his support to the process, underway at the United Nations this week, for the design of global sustainable development goals, replacing the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. NRDC has been deeply involved in this process -- one whose fundamental purpose is to create a global roadmap to sustainability -- and we welcome the engagement of these two global companies. We endorse the view that business is an essential partner in designing and achieving these goals.

But we believe it is essential that these companies, two of the world's largest, acknowledge and fully endorse the "three pillars of sustainability" -- economics, social equity, and environment. In their statement today, while much is said about the need for a growing economy, the importance of addressing infrastructure poverty and empowering women, and the value of transparency, nothing is said about the environmental dimension of sustainability or the importance of protecting the ecosystems that sustain us today. In this fundamental respect, we believe they have failed to articulate an effective vision.

Anglo American Dumps the Pebble Mine by Joel Reynolds, Natural Resources Defense Council

Anglo American Dumps the Pebble Mine 
by Joel Reynolds, Western Director and Senior attorney, NRDC, Los Angeles 
Posted: 09/17/2013 8:26 am HUFFINGTON POST

Yesterday Anglo American, a 50 percent partner in the Pebble Limited Partnership, announced that it is withdrawing from Pebble Mine, a giant gold and copper mine proposed at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska. The London-based mining giant finally recognized what Alaska Natives, Bristol Bay residents, commercial fishermen, sportsmen, lodge owners, chefs, jewelers, EPA scientists, NRDC and others have been saying for years: Pebble Mine poses too great of a risk.

Anglo American Chief Executive Mark Cutifani issued a statement lauding the "rare magnitude and quality" of the Pebble deposit, while also justifying Anglo's plans to withdraw from the risky venture: "Our focus has been to prioritise capital to projects with the highest value and lowest risks within our portfolio, and reduce the capital required to sustain such projects during the pre-approval phases of development as part of a more effective, value-driven capital allocation model."

There is no question that Pebble Mine is a bad investment, replete with environmental, economic, operational, reputational, social, regulatory, and legal risks. Mitsubishi Corporation realized it in 2011 when it sold 100% of its interest in the Pebble project. Anglo American realized it only after spending $541 million trying to develop Pebble Mine.

Proposed at the headwaters of the world's greatest wild salmon fishery, Pebble Mine would threaten the region's internationally renowned salmon runs. Salmon are the economic, cultural, and ecological linchpin of the region, supporting a $1.5 billion annual commercial fishery that employ 14,000 workers. Salmon also sustain the culture, tradition, and spirituality of native communities that have relied on subsistence fishing for thousands of years, and they are food to a vast array of wildlife, including bears, eagles, seals and whales.

But no one should be misled into thinking that yesterday's announcement, while a huge blow to the project, means the fight to stop Pebble Mine is over. Far from it.

Northern Dynasty Minerals, now the sole owner of the project, immediately issued a press release reassuring anyone who will listen that plans to build Pebble Mine will move forward: "Northern Dynasty will again own 100% of one of the world's most important copper & gold resources and will have the benefit of $541 million worth of expenditures, which opens the door to a number of exciting possibilities for Northern Dynasty and its shareholders and the Pebble Project and its stakeholders. Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Partnership have both the expertise and resources necessary to advance the Pebble Project."

Notably, Rio Tinto owns almost 20 percent of Northern Dynasty's interest in Pebble Mine.

Despite its attempt to portray a silver lining, Northern Dynasty Minerals' stock plummeted approximately 30 percent today alone, following a 90 percent fall beginning in early 2011. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this 5-day chart of Northern Dynasty's stock prices says it all:

NAK:NYSE MKT LLC
As of close Monday, 09/16/2013
-0.64 (-30.04%)

Anglo's announcement comes at the same time groups opposed to Pebble Mine are celebrating the significant public opposition to the mine. An analysis of 895,195 public comments submitted to EPA regarding its Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment found that 73 percent of all comments were supportive of EPA protecting Bristol Bay, including 84 percent of individual comments from Alaska and a staggering 98 percent of individual comments from Bristol Bay residents. EPA issued a revised draft Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment earlier this year concluding that Pebble Mine would have "significant" and even "catastrophic" impacts -- including the certain dewatering, destruction, and pollution of the Bristol Bay watershed. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy visited the Bristol Bay region last month in order to learn more about Pebble Mine, where she heard a unanimous request from a capacity crowd in Dillingham, Alaska to stop the Pebble Mine.

While yesterday's announcement is a positive development, the fight to stop Pebble Mine must continue and, if possible, intensify. With Northern Dynasty Minerals' bulldozing ahead with plans for Pebble Mine, it remains critically important for EPA to take action under the Clean Water Act to permanently protect the fishery and water resources of Bristol Bay -- and the economic, environmental subsistence values that depend on those resources.

Click here and urge EPA to protect Bristol Bay.

NRDC's "Splash Ball": SAY NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE

I would like to thank @NRDC and the organizers / supporters of "The Splash Ball" - a fun evening Friday nite in #SanFrancisco to raise awareness about #BristolBay and to SAY NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE. Thank you also to those that bid and purchased the limited edition print and photographically imprinted luxurious silk scarf I donated for the auction. I hope their new owners will enjoy them (and "like" my FB pages: www.facebook.com/RobertGlennKetchum & www.facebook.com/NoPebbleMine.photos ). I Trust a good time was had by all!
Photograph © 2013 @RbtGlennKetchum #LittleBearProd

No Pebble Mine: Pictures from Ground Zero. An Autobiographical Photo Series by Robert Glenn Ketchum.

January 16, 2013 - NO PEBBLE MINE #18, Pictures from Ground Zero:

The habitat of southwest Alaska supports the most productive salmon fishery in the world, but there is also arctic char, dolly varden, and huge rainbow trout in abundance, not to mention all the other animals, birds, and epic American parkland. President Obama has my books to ensure that he and his family can SEE what is at stake. Contact him now, tell him to support the EPA and direct them to say NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE. 

Photograph © 2013 Robert GlennKetchum #LittleBearProd

Joel Reynolds, NRDC: Robert Glenn Ketchum, Our Generation's Ansel Adams

While Robert Glenn Ketchum's name recognition can be debated, his impact on the world cannot.  According to American Photo Magazine, he is “the most influential photographer you’ve never heard of.”

In fact, among conservationists, he is renowned for his 35-year history of photographic activism on behalf of some of the most threatened landscapes in the world. From the Hudson River Valley to California’s Big Sur coast to Alaska’s Tongass rainforest to Ohio’s Cuyahoga River Valley to Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California and, most recently, to Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska.  For his work, he has earned a long list of significant accolades, awards, and recognition, leading to his selection last year by American Photo for a Master Series profile previously reserved for the photographic firmament of Avedon, Leibovitz, Cartier-Bresson, and Helmut Newton.

What William Henry Jackson, Ansel Adams, and Eliot Porter were to their generations of photographers, Robert Glenn Ketchum is to ours.  He is an artist whose passion for conservation has led him to become one of the world’s most effective defenders of our natural heritage, using his extraordinary photographic talents to convey the beauty and the peril of places that we, as a society, cannot afford to lose. The photos featured here are only a few examples of his work.

Fifteen years ago I had the privilege of working with Robert Glenn Ketchum to protect the last undisturbed breeding and birthing lagoon of the Pacific gray whale at Laguna San Ignacio -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site targeted by Mitsubishi Corporation and the Mexican government for construction of the world's largest industrial; salt factory. The project was defeated in March 2000, and the lagoon remains today one of the natural wonders of the planet. Most recently, we have joined with Ketchum to fight the proposed Pebble Mine in the wild lands of southwest Alaska -- an outrageous scheme by a consortium of foreign mining companies to build one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines at the headwaters of the incomparable wild salmon fishery of Bristol Bay. For thousands of years the salmon have sustained the people and wildlife of Bristol Bay, and today they are the heart of a fishery that generates an estimated $450 million annually and thousands of jobs. Whatever your perspective on mining, it is difficult to imagine a worse location for a project of this kind.

In support of a unique coalition of Alaskan Native communities, commercial and recreational fishermen, hunters, businesses, and environmentalists, Ketchum has thrown himself into the fight against the mine, photographing the region, publishing photo books, giving lectures, speaking to reporters, lobbying federal officials, and generally doing everything he can to raise awareness of the region and the threat posed by the Pebble Mine. Visit his website at www.robertglennketchum.comand see for yourself.

NRDC has a long history of association with Robert Glenn Ketchum, and we are proud once again to be working closely with him. The Pebble Mine is one of the most glaring examples in the world today of a project whose fate will spell the future of our planet, for better or worse.  NRDC and its members are determined to do all that we can to stop it.

Join Robert Glenn Ketchum, NRDC, and the people of Alaska. Take action now to stop the Pebble Mine.

Joel Reynolds, NRDC: Pebble Mine: Road to Disaster

Most people who've heard of the massive Pebble Mine — proposed for construction in the wild lands above Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska — know about the gigantic open pit, the estimated 10 billion tons of mining waste laced with toxics, the unavoidable risk of contamination to the wild salmon fisheries of region, and the overwhelming opposition of the people who live there.

But few people understand that it gets even worse. The foreign mining companies that make up the Pebble Partnership have said very little about impacts from the road, power plants, slurry pipelines, relentless heavy-duty diesel truck traffic, and even a deep water port that would accompany the mine – infrastructure essential to its operation, destructive in its own right, and staggering in its geographic scale.

This week my colleagues and I flew over the proposed right-of-way of what is currently estimated to be a 104-mile road from the mine site to Cook Inlet.  From the pristine wild lands at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, the road would wind south, crossing innumerable streams and other water bodies, large and small, where salmon spawn.  It would skirt the east end of Lake Iliamna -- the largest fresh water body in Alaska – eviscerate the community of Pedro Bay, bridge the Iliamna River (among others), and traverse steeper and steeper slopes as it winds its way through icy mountain peaks that drop precipitously into the deep blue waters of Iniskin Bay in Cook Inlet. 

There, an industrial marine terminal and a deep water port would be constructed at the receiving end of a new slurry pipeline, where ore from the mine would be loaded onto large, ocean-going container ships.  These industrial facilities – and the increased ship traffic that it is intended to attract -- wouldn’t be good news for the critically endangered population of Beluga whales that reside in Cook Inlet, already home to the Port of Anchorage to the North. The population has already been federally listed as endangered and its Cook Inlet habitat designated as critical.

Although no one yet knows how the power for the massive mine and associated infrastructure would be generated – power needed, for example, to continuously and permanently dewater the site, power the mine construction and operations, slurry the ore, treat the run-off, and run the port – estimates are that the demand would equal or surpass that required by the entire city of Anchorage.  The costs of such facilities – economic, environmental, and social --- would be staggering.

It’s no secret that the technological and engineering challenges of large-scale mining in a region as wild, wet, and vast as is contemplated for the Pebble Mine are unprecedented, from the mine itself to the facilities essential to service it.  But it is equally clear that, even if the world’s best engineers could be enlisted to build it, there is no way they could engineer away the inevitable and innumerable risks of failure, accident, fuel and chemical spills, contamination, and ultimately economic, environmental, and social devastation that such a project, in such a location, would pose to the communities, to the fishermen, and to the wildlife of Bristol Bay. The Pebble Mine is a road to disaster.  And when the ore has left the country, the people of Alaska will be left with the wreckage.

 Say NO to the Pebble Mine!
~Joel Reynolds

Robert Glenn Ketchum named by Outdoor Photography as one of 40 Most Influential Nature Photographers

"40 Most Influential Nature Photographers - We Reveal the Real Conservation Movers and Shakers"

British magazine, Outdoor Photography, has selected the top 40 nature photographers from around the globe who go the extra mile to use their images and time to help highlight (and even fix) some of the most pressing environmental and conservation issues.


#16 - Robert Glenn Ketchum, USA

INFLUENCE: Robert's photographs and his personal activism have helped to define photography's successful use in conservation advocacy. He was named by Audubon magazine as one of the 100 people who 'shaped the environmental movement of the 20th century' and he is a lifetime trustee of the Alaska Conservation Foundation.

CURRENT PROJECTS: "I am working to protect the salmon fishery of Bristol Bay from a proposed Canadian mine called the Pebble."

MOTIVATION: "My work has never just been about pictures of nature. My photographs seek to define wild places so they can be more fully understood."

www.robertglennketchum.com



#RbtGlennKetchum
#LittleBearProd