Did the much reviled Pebble Mine project just die with a whimper and not a bang?

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

A 15-year fight to mine for gold along Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay might have just ended — with a whimper. 

Canadian mining firm Northern Dynasty Minerals has been a hot topic in investment advice since Election Day. The company’s stock jumped 326 percent after Donald Trump’s victory, as newsletters feverishly pitched the company’s prospects under the new regime. One even went so far as to label the stock “Trump’s Gold.” 

But Northern Dynasty’s long-planned gold and copper mine, located inside a key salmon spawning habitat, is less a secret fortune-maker and more an elaborate pump-and-dump stock scheme, investment analysts from Kerrisdale Capital said Tuesday. 

“All this enthusiasm is misplaced. We believe Northern Dynasty is worthless,” the analysts said in the note. Despite the stock jump, the company is actually “worth nothing because its key asset is not commercially viable.”

Well that's a little underwhelming. And yet gratifying. 

However it should be noted that this project has changed hands at least three times in the last fifteen years, and faced court orders and numerous protests, and yet it still refuses to completely die despite almost universal opposition from the Alaskan people. 

So is this it? Could this be the final nail in this project's coffin?

Well damn I hope so.

EPA moves to officially block the Pebble Mine.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it is beginning a process that could block a massive proposed gold mine in Alaska from being built. 

The Pebble Mine is a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine that could be up to 2 miles long, a mile and a half wide, and 1,700 feet deep -- the largest of its type in North America. The proposed site for the mine is at the headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak rivers, which feed into the Bristol Bay. It is the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world, producing nearly half of the world's wild sockeye. 

The EPA said Friday that it is invoking Clean Water Act protections that would stop its construction, citing concerns about the threat it poses to the bay and the fish that depend on it. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that the agency is taking the step to "ensure that the world's most productive salmon fishery is safe from the risks it faces from what could be one of the largest mines on Earth" in a call with reporters Friday afternoon. 

McCarthy cited threats to the region's multimillion-dollar fishing industry, as well as to native cultures that rely on the bay. The agency released a scientific assessment of the bay and proposed mine in mid-January, which McCarthy said provided "ample reason for EPA to believe that a mine of the size and scope of Pebble Mine would have significant and irreversible impacts on Bristol Bay."

And that should be the end of that.

This has been going on for years and it seems that everybody, except a handful of  politicians including Sarah Palin, have been speaking out against this since it first became known.

Alaska natives, fishermen, and environmentalists have been beating the drum, and finally it looks like the EPA is going to put their foot down and stop this potential environmental disaster BEFORE it can poison our water and kill our salmon.

I think Alaskans everywhere will be celebrating this decision. 

Robert Redford takes on the Pebble Mine in Alaska.

I know that we are a little irritated at the Huffington Post, but this article written by Robert Redford is required reading for anybody who loves Alaska, and every other wonderous, magical  place on our planet:

Imagine a pit two miles wide by 2,000 feet deep, and an underground mine a mile deep. This gargantuan gold and copper operation would produce an estimated 10 billion tons of contaminated waste -- 3,000 pounds for every man, woman and child on Earth.

Massive earthen dams -- some taller than the Three Gorges Dam in China -- would be constructed to hold back that waste forever. Now imagine all this in an active earthquake zone at the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world. The threat to Bristol Bay just below is unimaginable.

No wonder the Pebble Mine is opposed by nearly 80 percent of Bristol Bay residents. The growing coalition to stop this disaster-in-the-making is led by Native village corporations, associations and tribes from around Bristol Bay. They've partnered with commercial and recreational fishermen, sportsmen and conservation groups to protect the thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars that come from Bristol Bay's renewable economic engine: wild salmon.

Anglo American's history is littered with one pollution disaster after another: from Zimbabwe to Ireland to Nevada. Rio Tinto has left a trail of toxic contamination that spans the globe: from Indonesia to Bolivia to Utah. Do you trust these companies to take a catastrophic risk with one of our last and greatest wild places?

Mr. Redford also provides this link to a petition that I am asking all of you to please sign in order to protect this sparkling jewel of Alaska  from becoming a toilet filled with contaminated industrial sludge.

It will only take a moment, and afterward you will not only have the satisfaction of protecting such a gorgeous place, but you will have the added satisfaction of knowing that you have helped to sabotage yet another of Sarah Palin's carefully laid plans to ravage our pristine landscape.