Alaska AG: Pebble permit denial violates state’s development rights
by: Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce 23 hrs ago
The Dunleavy administration argues the Alaska Statehood Act requires it to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ denial of a key wetlands permit for the Pebble project.
The state appeal claims that decision was made using an unprecedented evaluation of the project’s environmental impacts.
Acting Attorney General Ed Sniffen signed the state’s 59-page brief on Friday appealing the Corps Alaska District’s November record of decision denying Pebble construction permits. Dunleavy said Jan. 8 the state would appeal the Corps’ decision in a move many opponents of the mine contend directly contradicts the governor’s long standing insistence that he is “neutral” towards Pebble.
Monday is the deadline for appeals of the Pebble decision to Army Corps of Engineers Pacific Division Commander Col. Kirk E. Gibbs. The Pebble Partnership said in a statement Thursday that it had filed its appeal but the company did not provide further details of its argument.
A Corps spokesman said a Journal request for Pebble’s appeal was being processed Friday. A spokeswoman for the Department of Law provided the Journal a copy of the state’s brief.
Sniffen wrote that because the state was granted 103 million acres of land containing resources intended to support state and local governments, an economy and way of life and the Pebble deposit is on state land, “The commitments made in the Statehood Act, therefore, mandate that the State must vigorously contest any expansion of federal authority that challenges the State’s management and use of Alaska’s lands and resources.”
He additionally stressed that the Statehood Act and the 1976 Cook Inlet Land Exchange, which resulted in the state’s selection of the Pebble lands, limit the federal government’s authority to intervene in state management of the area because it was presumed the minerals would be developed.
