Rep. Rob Bishop has a helpful comparison for those worried about the Environmental Protection Agency’s permit approval process.
“If you can survive triplets for 16 years, you can survive EPA,” the Utah Republican quipped Wednesday.
The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee was holding a hearing on the EPA’s disapproval of a mine project in Bristol Bay, Alaska, before the company seeking to build it filed its permit application.
The hearing was on the agency’s use of environmental permit law, or the National Environmental Policy Act, to kill off projects it disapproves of.
Bishop’s triplets comparison came after a representive of the indigenous people there told him she has been waiting 13 years for a decision to be made on the Pebble Mine. She also mentioned it was her 16-year-old triplets’ birthday.
Bishop suggested that EPA will continue its delays as a matter of convenience.
The indigenous residents want to ensure that the EPA is not undercut in protecting the salmon that fill the bay there and that the tribal communities depend upon for their livelihoods.
“Our concern with Pebble is pretty simple: Its size, type and location threaten our salmon, and thus our life and livelihood in the bay,” said Kimberly Williams, executive director of Nunamta Aulukestai, a nonprofit group that represents the indigenous groups that rely on the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon population, the largest in the world.
The GOP is using EPA’s Pebble Mine decision to illustrate a broader point about the agency: That its decisions are driven by pre-conceived ideas and activism, rather than the facts.
Williams said the state of Alaska has not listened to their concerns, forcing the group to go to the EPA for help.
The EPA conducted an exhaustive public process in evaluating concerns, amassing 1.5 million comments, in which the vast majority expressed opposition to the mine.
But the final say on the project cannot be heard until the company proposing to build it files an application to begin the final environmental assessment.
“Our people have been in limbo for nearly 13 years, waiting for a company that tells us year after year that a permit application will be coming soon,” Williams said. “And yet, year after year, after year, we are left waiting.”
