Pebble Mine

Bristol Bay Alaska is well known for its trophy rainbow trout and king salmon. It’s also home water to an immense number of sockeye salmon. However, ore deposits containing about 80 billion pounds of copper and 110 million ounces of gold are nearby - - - and that’s a problem.

The EPA, after assessing the risk of leakage from the open pit mine & tailing ponds into the fishery, put the Pebble Mine on hold in 2014. However, there was a change of heart at the EPA; that agency proposed to erase the Clean Water protections in 2017.  Now, another change of heart. In January 2018, EPA Director Scott Pruitt decided that Bristol Bay's natural resources should be protected. 

There’s lots of controversy about delivering north state water to agricultural interests and towns down south, but studying Gov. Brown’s Proposition 1 (2014) two tunnel project revealed this raft-ripper - - - that the amount of water promised to farmers and towns each year has often exceeded the rivers’ flow!  And that intermittent but persistent shortage is dangerous for Delta and SF Bay fisheries. For very different perspectives of this complicated situation, read these sources...

• Water's for Fighting (The North Coast Journal)
  
• Restoring Fairness to the World of California Water (Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog)
  
• The Era of Big Dams is Still Over (Even With the Water Bond) (Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog)
  
• California Water Myths - PDF (Public Policy Institute of California)
  
• http://www.restorethedelta.org/2018/01/12/breaking-brown-administration-prepares-smaller-one-tunnel-project-restore-delta-responds/