Supreme Court won’t review EPA rejection of Alaska copper mine

By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear Alaska’s challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection of the controversial Pebble Mine project, which would have become the largest copper, gold and molybdenum extraction site on the continent.

The EPA last year invoked a seldom-used authority granted as part of the Clean Water Act to put a stop to the mine proposal.

The Bristol Bay watershed, where the mine would have been located, is home to the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world, according to data on the EPA’s website. It’s also home to 25 federally recognized indigenous communities, which rely on salmon for more than half of their subsistence harvest.

Alaska had asked the justices last year to hear their challenge to the EPA’s ruling, arguing that the nation’s highest court had the authority to hear their case before lower courts reviewed the matter.

The court rejected the request without comment.

“Alaska tried to persuade the court that this is the rare kind of dispute that the justices should hear as a trial court, without having it go through lower courts first,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“Although there’s no explanation accompanying today’s denial, it stands to reason that a majority of the justices disagreed and were willing to let the case go through ordinary litigation in the lower courts first,” he added.

For some two decades, the proposal for the mine has been a lightning rod for controversy, and has been widely assailed by numerous interest groups in Alaska and the lower states, and also faced opposition from many Alaskans.

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