The proposed Pebble Mine has been looming over Bristol Bay’s fishermen and communities for more than two decades.
Many stakeholders believed the fight was over when the region was granted federal protection under the Clean Water Act in 2014. Unfortunately, those protections were reversed in 2017.
The proposed mining plan includes a 500-foot-tall dam to contain the toxic byproduct of the mining process. That dam would have to be maintained forever — lifetimes after the Pebble deposit is depleted.
The Pebble dam would loom over the headwaters of North America’s most productive salmon streams in a seismically active region. It would threaten a renewable resource that provides more than 14,000 jobs and also happens to be the nation’s most valuable wild salmon fishery. It would put subsistence hunting and fishing at risk. Not for a decade or a century, but forever.
