US

EPA actions at mine could hurt $220 billion in investments

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
Font Size:

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) preemptive assessment of the Pebble Mine in Alaska could have a “chilling effect” on $220 billion in investments, according to the Brattle Group, an economic and financial consulting firm.

In May, the EPA released its watershed assessment of large-scale mining by Pebble LP at Bristol Bay, which could be one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, and expressed concerns over impact the mine would have on local salmon habitats and surrounding wetlands.

Under the Clean Water Act, operations that dump “dredge or fill materials” into wetlands, rivers, lakes, or streams are required to obtain a Section 404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The EPA can revoke this permit if there are “unacceptable adverse impacts on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas, wildlife, or recreational areas.”

However, the watershed assessment did not evaluate any actual plans for the Pebble Mine, as none have been put forward, instead it evaluates a hypothetical mine. Independent scientists have also expressed concerns over this approach and have said the assessment was rushed.

“It has a chilling effect over all these kinds of investments. Everybody in every project knows that there’s a process, and it’s a challenge, a serious one, to comply with that process,” Dan McGroarty, president of the nonpartisan American Resources Policy Network, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“To be stopped before the process begins and subject it to a hypothetical is a new wrinkle, and that can chill capital, that can chill investment, and the jobs, in this particular economy, that we want to see,” he continued. “It’s going to have a very negative effect on the manufacturing process in the U.S.”

The EPA has never blocked a mining project after a preliminary watershed assessment was completed, and companies behind the Pebble mining project worry that doing so would make it easier for environmental groups to stop other projects.

“The EPA is flexing its administrative muscle and seeing how far forward it can reach and how far after the fact can it reach,” said McGroarty.

Congressional Republicans criticized the EPA’s tactis and California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa called the actions “unprecedented and legally questionable.”

“EPA’s assertion of pre-emptive veto power appears to undermine the permitting process as outlined by Congress when it passed the [Clean Water Act],” Issa wrote in letter.

This is not the first time the EPA has looked to test the limits of its Section 404 authority. In June, a federal court ruled against the EPA’s use of Section 404 to revoke a permit for Mingo Logan Coal Company in West Virginia — four years after the permit had originally been issued the Army Corps of Engineers.

The judge wrote that the EPA’s interpretation of the law was “illogical and unreasonable” and relied on “magical thinking.”

“It is further unreasonable to sow a lack of certainty into a system that was expressly intended to provide finality,” said the opinion.

According to McGroarty, more than $220 billion in U.S. investment goes through Section 404 Clean Water Act permits spanning many industries, including farming, manufacturing, building, energy, water treatment, and resource extraction projects.

“Just imagine the reaction of the rest of the industry, that they might be pulled into a process before they’ve put a project in place,” he said. “These projects commit capital in the hundreds of millions, in the billions, and they do it for years before the first shovel goes into the ground and they can begin to get a return.”

If the EPA can block a project before any permits or plans are put forward, it would send many mining projects and jobs overseas.

“If we don’t exploit and develop what we have in the United States, which is considerable,” he said, “we are simply going to underscore our foreign dependence.”

“It’s going to have a very negative effect on the manufacturing process in the U.S. I couldn’t even estimate,” he concluded. “$200 billion of investment, I couldn’t even estimate how many jobs that would be. Honestly, is this going to be something we just accept because an agency defines its role in role in a different way?”

Follow Michael on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel