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Agency officials coached tribes on how to oppose Alaska’s Pebble Mine
Though President Obama has repeatedly urged that science guide environmental decisions, regulators inside the Environmental Protection Agency secretly worked with tribal and environmental activists to preempt a full review of an Alaskan mine and veto the project before the owners’ permits could be considered, internal memos show.
Charged with being neutral arbiters, EPA officials instead began advocating for a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project in western Alaska as early as 2008, long before any scientific studies were conducted or the permit applications for the project were even filed, the emails obtained by The Washington Times show.
“As you know I feel that both of these projects (Chuitna and Pebble) merit consideration of a 404C veto,” EPA official Phillip North wrote in an email suggesting that the mining project’s rejection be added to the agenda of an agency retreat in summer 2009.
EPA wouldn’t even announce the beginning of a scientific review of Pebble Mine until 2011, two years after Mr. North’s email, but discussion of a pre-emptive veto dominated internal discussions inside the agency for much of the three years beforehand.
At the same time, EPA officials had regular contacts with potential opponents of the mining project, coordinating activities with environmentalists and even coaching local tribes on how they could strengthen their case opposing the project.
“Tribes have a very special role in Pebble issues because of government-to-government relations,” Mr. North wrote to an Alaskan tribal leader in June 2010. “EPA takes that very seriously. I encourage you to develop that relationship as much as you can.”
The efforts to get EPA to veto the project before the Army Corps of Engineers could evaluate the engineering and scientific impacts reached all the way to top officials in Washington.
A presentation prepared in 2010 for then-EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson made clear that a preemptive veto “had never been done before in the history” of the Clean Water Act and could risk litigation.
EPA eventually conducted a narrow scientific review and preemptively vetoed the mine project this February, before the Army Corps of Engineers could decide the permits for the project on the scientific and technical merits.
The decision has become one of the most controversial in recent EPA history, prompting the owners of the proposed mine, members of Congress and the state of Alaska to request a formal investigation by the EPA’s internal watchdog, the inspector general.
“The state is concerned that actual bias within the agency induced EPA to invoke a novel interpretation of its statutory authority to conduct the assessment and led to the development of an assessment that contains findings likely tainted by that bias,” Alaska Attorney General Michael C. Geraghty wrote Inspector General Arthur Elkins on Feb. 3.
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made a similar request after reviewing some of the same documents obtained by The Times. “Taking such unprecedented federal agency action with predetermined conclusions is not sound government practice and delegitimizes other necessary regulatory action undertaken by the EPA,” the lawmakers argued.
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