Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jim Murphy, who is the legal advocacy director for the National Wildlife Federation, and director of the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School.
Vermont Law School is 3,700 miles away from Bristol Bay, Alaska. But on an average day in the school’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic, you wouldn’t know it. Our classrooms are buzzing as aspiring lawyers craft arguments to save an Alaskan region and confront a monolith. Under a new partnership with my organization, the National Wildlife Federation, the students are working on a real-world case with major implications: They are taking the Environmental Protection Agency to court.
What’s at Stake
The EPA is responsible for protecting public health and the environment. That’s why, in 2014, the agency issued a decision blocking construction of the Pebble Mine, a project that promised to wreak havoc on an entire region and a world treasure.
It was the right choice, and here’s why: The proposed site of the mine is Bristol Bay, a 40-million-acre swath of untouched Southwest Alaskan land where snow-fed springs flow from the mountains, forming eight rivers. Wild Pacific salmon convene in their crystal-clear waters each year, swimming upstream to spawn. “Salmon runs” only happen in the healthiest habitats. Once frequent worldwide, they’ve dwindled primarily due to pollution, deforestation, and dams. Bristol Bay’s is one of the last and most prolific on Earth.
Salmon are a keystone species, meaning countless others, from microscopic microbes to massive predators, depend on them. Completing their life cycle, the fish pump marine nutrients into river headwaters, forming the biological base of an entire ecosystem. Grizzly bears and other animals transmit them to the forest, imparting essential nitrogen to soil and trees.
Humans need salmon, too. The fish are sacred to indigenous communities that have subsisted on them for centuries. Today, almost half the world’s wild sockeye salmon harvest comes from Bristol Bay. The fishing industry is valued at $1.5 billion. It supports 20,000 local jobs. 37,000 tourists visit the region every year to fish and to experience a pristine habitat truly unlike any other.
The Threat
Of course, the health of Bristol Bay depends on protections against those who seek to monetize it. Beneath that abundance of life, gold and copper deposits rest underground. Canadian corporation Northern Dynasty Minerals has been plotting the minerals’ extraction for over a decade. The company hopes to unearth some 11 billion tons of ground at the headwaters of two Bristol Bay rivers.
Northern Dynasty is proposing the Pebble Mine — a pit over a mile long and a mile wide — in the midst of these rich headwaters. If it is built, along with the direct destruction involved, it will result in a pond comprising up to 10 billion tons of toxic waste, held precariously behind the world’s largest earthen dam. In a region of seismic activity, the question of polluting leakage into the rivers is not so much a question of if, but of when. Any contamination would spell doom for the salmon and the ecosystem that depends on them.
The threat doesn’t stop there. To transport all of that mineral wealth out of Alaska, a series of projects would wreak irrevocable damage to the landscape: an industrial port carved into Amakdedori Beach; a 188-mile natural gas pipeline beneath Cook Inlet; a highway paved through the wilderness, cutting off a critical corridor for grizzly bears’ seasonal movements. The latter would skirt the edge of a sanctuary where bears convene annually during salmon runs — the last known major brown bear gathering on earth.
Hundreds of scientists have evaluated these plans, overwhelmingly reaching the same conclusion: The mine would be a disaster. You don’t need to be a scientist, though, to understand why.
The Case
After Trump took office, it wasn’t long before hints emerged that the EPA was reconsidering its 2014 decision: from closed-door meetings between EPA administrators and Northern Dynasty executives, to a reopening of public comments.
The EPA formally withdrew its 2014 Proposed Determination last July. The permitting process for the mine is now moving forward. But we won’t stand idly by to watch the EPA reject the findings of its own scientists and ignore millions of public comments. The withdrawal is unlawful. That’s why the National Wildlife Federation has joined groups across the country to challenge it in court.
Back at Vermont Law School, students research legal issues and draft documents that will end up in the courtroom. In doing so, they are learning a valuable lesson: We need to hold our public institutions accountable. Federal laws meant to protect our shared resources and health are being attacked and dismantled by the very people we’ve hired to enforce them.
This case perfectly illustrates the world these aspiring lawyers live in. They are coming of age in a time when we are all too often back away from our obligations to be good stewards of our land, water, air, and wildlife. Young law students are eager to work hard to reverse that trend. The National Wildlife Federation tapped them to work on this case because they are creative, they think transformationally, and they are shaping the future of the law. We don’t need to wait until graduation to consider them environmental advocates: They already are. And they’ll see the EPA in court.
