Within hours of meeting with a mining company CEO, the new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency directed his staff to withdraw a plan to protect the watershed of Bristol Bay, Alaska, one of the most valuable wild salmon fisheries on Earth, according to interviews and government emails obtained by CNN.
The meeting between EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Tom Collier, CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, took place on May 1, Collier and his staff confirmed in an interview with CNN. At 10:36 a.m. that same day, the EPA's acting general counsel, Kevin Minoli, sent an email to agency staff saying the administrator had "directed" the agency to withdraw an Obama-era proposal to protect the ecologically valuable wetland in southwest Alaska from certain mining activities.
In 2014, after three years of peer-reviewed study, the Obama administration's EPA invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act to try to protect Bristol Bay after finding that a mine "would result in complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources" in some areas of the bay.
"All of these losses would be irreversible," the agency said.
The EPA is suggesting that this does NOT mean they will give the go ahead for the mining project, suggesting that they want to simply do an environmental impact statement first, but we know they are going to green light this project.
Remember everything that President Obama did, Donald Trump wants undone.
Alaskans fought this project for years, and now all of that hard work might be for nothing, because some racist white guy has a hard on for the first black president.
Seriously, have I mentioned how much I dislike the people in this administration?
Source http://ift.tt/2wLII2X
