July 21, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today sent the following letter and comments to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oreg.), U.S Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) urging reconsideration of objections to the Pebble Mine project in Alaska:
“The tundra wasteland that is the site for the proposed Pebble Mine was originally federal government property. However, the federal government decided to swap this less valuable land with the state of Alaska for the acreage that subsequently became Lake Clark National Park and Preserve via the Cook Inlet Land Exchange. The land was fine to give away when it had zero value for land that was suitable to be declared a national park, and it takes an incredible amount of hubris for the federal government to put additional restrictions on the use of the barren wasteland after more than hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent by private companies to create a plan to responsibly extract the strategic minerals that the federal government chose to trade to the State of Alaska.
“No one is urging that the NEPA process not be followed to ensure that the mine meets federal requirements, and once it does, then turn the decision over to the authorities in the state of Alaska. However, your complaints amount to little more than grandstanding as you want the goal posts to be moved in an obvious effort to renege on the original agreement when the land for Lake Clark National Park was obtained.
“After almost a decade, it is time to allow the owners of Pebble deposit to have their opportunity to present their engineering studies and mining plans for fair and honest federal scrutiny. When, and if, the NEPA process is successfully completed, the decision will lie where it rightfully should – with the state of Alaska which traded for this land and zoned it for mining in the first place.”
Attachments:
Letter and Comments to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, U.S Rep. Jared Huffman, U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal and U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, July 21, 2020 at https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PebbleMineLetter7-21-20.pdf
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