Corps extends comment period for Pebble draft environmental impact statement

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District is extending the public comment period an additional 30 days for the Pebble Limited Partnership draft environmental impact statement, the Corps announced in a press release last week.

The deadline for submitting comments about the draft EIS is now June 29. The Corps will consider all comments received by that date before finalizing the document and making a permit decision. The extension brings the length of the public comment period to 120 days.

In April, the Corps conducted nine public hearings in Alaska to receive comment on the permit application and draft EIS in Anchorage, Dillingham, Homer, Igiugig, Kokhanok, Naknek, New Halen, New Stuyahok, and Nondalton. To date, about 8,400 public comments have been uploaded to the EIS website with more incoming.

The Corps released the draft EIS on Feb. 20 with the formal public comment period beginning March 1. Since January 2018, the Corps has made Pebble Limited Partnership’s permit application to discharge fill material into U.S. waters and work in navigable waters for the purpose of developing a copper-molybdenum-gold mine project in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska publicly available on the EIS website. Also, baseline data for the environmental analysis has been available since March 2018.

Comments can be electronically submitted on the public website: https://www.pebbleprojecteis.com; or written comments mailed to:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District

ATTN: DA Permit Application 2017-271, Pebble Limited Partnership

645 G Street Suite 100-921

Anchorage, Alaska 99501

All comments submitted will be made publicly available in their entirety, any personal information such as name, address, or email will become part of the public record.

For more information regarding the evaluation of Department of Army permit application, visit pebbleprojecteis.com.