Feds inch closer to approving Alaska mining project seen as a threat to Pacific Northwest

[DonViejo]

BY JULIANNA RENNIE

MARCH 10, 2019 08:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Over the past several decades, fishermen, business owners, Alaska Native organizations and environmental groups have protested a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay — a pristine salmon habitat. Now the federal government is inching toward approving the mining project.

Nestled in southwest Alaska, Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest wild salmon run. The watershed supports a teeming ecosystem of eagles, grizzlies and beluga whales.

It’s also an economic engine for the Pacific Northwest. Each year, the fishery contributes thousands of seasonal fishing and processing jobs and millions of dollars in economic activity to Washington, Oregon, and California, according to the University of Alaska Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Bristol Bay is where the Pebble Limited Partnership, the company developing the mine, plans to build a 10.7-square-mile open-pit mine to dig up copper, gold, molybdenum, and other minerals. The mine would require new infrastructure, including roads, a port and a 188-mile-long natural gas pipeline.

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https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/policy/environment/article227144774.html

[OregonBlue]

1. Stupid people who want to kill the planet for money. They have no souls.

[DFW]

2. That is the true face of the Republican Party. This is the essence of who they are.

If we have something beautiful, productive, and irreplaceable, gifted to us by nature, fuck it up irreversibly and irretrievably, so that a few guys can get rich and enjoy the money for thirty years--after nature took ten million years to create it.

They just don't give a rat's ass. Welcome to Republicanworld.