Backers of Alaska gold mine win court battle with EPA

On-again, off-again plans for the world's largest gold and copper mine could be back on again, after a federal judge in Alaska issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from its ongoing efforts to bury the project.  Pebble Partnership, the Canadian company behind the project, which would take place near Anchorage, claims the regulatory agency has conspired illegally with opponents of the mine to devise scientific and environmental justifications for blocking it. Salmon fishermen in Washington state and Alaska, Native American groups and environmental organizations have opposed the massive project for several years, and had appeared to have gotten it scuttled prior to Tuesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Russel Holland, in Anchorage. “We expect the case may take several months to complete,” Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier said Tuesday after the U.S. District Court ruling in Anchorage. “This means that, for the first time, EPA’s march to preemptively veto Pebble has been halted.”  Holland's ruling stops the EPA from taking action against the project until he makes a decision on Pebble’s lawsuit claiming the agency broke the law to stop the mine. Pebble Partnership's lawsuit claims the EPA secretly relied on opponents of the mine to help craft a “patently biased” environmental assessment that determined the project could be devastating for the salmon of Bristol Bay. “Instrumental to this scheme was EPA’s clandestine use of the de facto advisory committees – made up of individuals and groups who have been vehemently opposed to any mining of the Pebble deposit – to help the agency plan and then implement unprecedented steps designed to guarantee that no mining of the Pebble deposit would ever take place,” the company’s lawsuit claims. Holland’s preliminary injunction order indicates he believes Pebble Partnership has a chance to prove its case. But EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Colaizzi expressed doubt that the judge will ultimately side with the mining company...more