How We Protect It Forever
Bristol Bay, Alaska,
is irreplaceable
We need action that will permanently protect the entirety of the Bristol Bay watershed from large-scale mining.
The leadership of the last two presidential administrations effectively put the brakes on Pebble Mine. However, we need durable legislative safeguards for all of Bristol Bay’s irreplaceable lands and waters.
How We Got Here
For more than two decades, Bristol Bay has been under threat from Pebble Mine. If built, the mine would produce billions of tons of poisonous waste that would permanently devastate the economy, ecology, and way of life of the region. In November 2020, President Trump answered the call of millions of Americans by denying a key permit, delivering a serious blow to the fate of Pebble. Then, in January 2023, EPA issued a rarely used Section 404(c) Clean Water Act veto of the project.
These actions provide important protections for a portion of the Bristol Bay watershed by stopping Pebble Mine from operating in specific areas of the headwaters of Bristol Bay. But legal challenges from Pebble Mine and future large-scale mining projects wanting to develop outside of the area protected by the EPA veto still threaten the region.
We need our elected leaders to pass legislation that fully protects all of Bristol Bay and nothing less.