ANCHORAGE, AK - At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hearing in Anchorage today, 81 of 123 testifiers spoke in opposition to the Pebble mine plan and the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, with dozens of people remaining to testify at the end of the hearing. Throughout the day, individuals, businesses and organizations opposed to the mine issued the following statements: 

It’s a recurring theme with Pebble Mine these days: Paid Pebble Limited Partnership lobbyist’s being appointed to head environmental protection agencies at both the state and federal levels. From where I sit in Bristol Bay, I’m feeling like the interests of myself and other Alaskans are not going to be accounted for when these former Pebble employees, now government officials, get out their pens to sign off on state and federal permits for Pebble.

The company that wants to mine copper and gold in southwest Alaska at the site of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery hired a firm to design mine waste pond dams that was behind one of the worst mining disasters in Canadian history.

The most important document on the Pebble Project’s path to a key permit to mine the headwaters of Bristol Bay has been released by the Army Corps of Engineers and utterly fails the people of Alaska.

In a major development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Pebble Mine on Wednesday.