By Kirk Johnson | The New York TImes
Federal environmental regulators, citing risks to water quality and salmon spawning grounds in one of the world’s richest fisheries, moved on Friday to block the development of a giant open-pit copper mine in the watershed of Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska.
While the decision by the Environmental Protection Agency was not an outright death blow to the project, called the Pebble Mine, it left little room for the mine and its supporters to persuade the agency otherwise. E.P.A. officials said they would now start gathering additional information and public comment under a provision of the federal Clean Water Act that could end any chance of the mine project’s going ahead.
The agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy, was unequivocal in saying that the science, including a three-year peer-reviewed study by the E.P.A. completed this year, had spoken.
