EPA Report Highlights Danger of Pebble Mine

An Environmental Protection Agency report released Friday said that the rivers and streams of Alaska’s salmon fishery would be severely impacted if the proposed Pebble Mine’s dam failed to hold back waste. According to the report, if the tailings in the copper and gold mine’s dam were to break, 20 miles of streams and rivers would have greatly degraded habitat for decades.

Smaller failures in the damn could still lead to contaminated streams if the mine is not properly managed and even without failures, the fishery would be impacted by eliminated and blocked streams, removal of wetlands and a reduction in the amount of quality fish habitat. The annual probability of failure was estimated at between 1-in-10,000 and 1-in-1 million.