PCC Joins Businesses to Protect Bristol Bay

April 25, 2019

PCC joined Businesses for Bristol Bay in requesting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suspend its review of Pebble Limited Partnership’s permit application to build an open pit mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

Bristol Bay, located in Southwest Alaska, is one of the last great wild salmon fisheries left in the world, with more than 40 percent of the world’s wild sockeye coming from the bay. Yet for over a decade, Bristol Bay’s fishing industry and communities have been overshadowed by a proposed Pebble Mine project — a massive open pit mine to extract gold and low-grade copper ore in a seismically active, wet, and porous region at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed.

Businesses for Bristol Bay is a coalition of diverse stakeholders dedicated to protecting the bay’s economic prosperity and ecologic vitality from an open pit mining operation.

In their collective letter, the Businesses for Bristol Bay members share their concerns over the Army Corps’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) of the mine. The report was rushed in its release, is based on incomplete information, and does not fully recognize the impacts of a mining operation on the Bristol Bay watershed.

PCC, as a member of the Businesses for Bristol Bay coalition, is a signatory on this letter. Read the full letter here.