Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Treg Taylor today announced they have filed a motion directly with the United States Supreme Court to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s veto of the controversial Pebble Mine project.
Claiming the veto infringes on the state’s rights to develop land around the mine’s proposed site, the Dunleavy administration is seeking to undo the landmark decision earlier this year that blocked the large-scale mine project in order to protect the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. The decision was hailed as the “nail in the coffin” for the project.
Direct appeals to the Supreme Court are incredibly unusual, a point Taylor acknowledged in a news release announcing the filing, but argues “it’s appropriate given the extraordinary decision being challenged.”
The specific part of the decision they’re complaining about is a prohibition on any other mines seeking to develop the Pebble deposit and discharge a similar amount of wastewater within a 309-square-mile area surrounding the mine’s proposed site. While the EPA decision was specifically about barring mines developing the Pebble deposit, Dunleavy and Taylor argue that it blocks virtually any other mine in the area.
The Bristol Bay Defense Fund—a coalition of groups, tribes and businesses opposing the mine—called the move a “publicity stunt.”
“The lawsuit is legally and factually unjustified–and is little more than a publicity stunt filed on behalf of an unscrupulous mining company, Pebble Limited Partnership, that has repeatedly misrepresented its record and misled regulators, its investors, Congress, and the general public. The EPA’s authority to protect Bristol Bay under the Clean Water Act stands on an extensive and robust scientific and technical record that spans two decades and three presidential administrations,” said the group in a prepared statement. “Alaskans and people across the country overwhelmingly support EPA’s action to protect Bristol Bay, and do not support the Pebble Mine.”
While the mine had been broadly unpopular with Alaskans, Dunleavy has doggedly supported Pebble Mine throughout his time in office. He quietly led an effort to personally lobby former President Donald Trump into approving the mine—including passing along letters written by the company pursuing Pebble Mine as his own. That effort looked like it might have been successful until Republican sportsmen, including Donald Trump Jr. And Tucker Carlson, came to the mine’s defense, and the Trump administration reversed course, protecting the mine.
The filing shows that the Dunleavy administration has once again hired conservative Trump-aligned law firm Consovoy McCarthy to represent it. The administration’s work with the firm was the focus of much consternation in the Legislature after it was hired on a $600-an-hour contract in 2019 as part of the state’s fight with public sector unions. Legislators took an unusual step of reworking the state’s budget to block the spending, but are still uncertain just how much money was spent on the foray.
As things tend to go with the U.S. Supreme Court, the timeline for the next steps or decisions on the motion is not entirely clear, but the federal government has the right to reply to the motion in the next 60 days.
The state’s motion
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.