When First Quantum Minerals took its $150 million and bolted earlier this spring, it became the fourth financial backer to leave the warty, unloved Pebble Mine project at the altar. If dug, Pebble would become the largest open-pit copper and gold mine in North America. Worse, it would sit at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska. The same area that every year since the beginning of time, more or less, has welcomed the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs into the rivers that form its outstretched arms. This is why most Americans support protecting Bristol Bay from foreign development. It’s also why most Americans can’t comprehend EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s actions to reopen the mine permit process, well after the door had already been slammed. But here we are—coming in hot.
This Friday, June 29, marks the end of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ scoping comment period for Pebble.
You can submit your official comment, here.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.