The Biden administration is expected to deny permits for a 211-mile industrial road through the vulnerable Alaskan wilderness to a massive copper deposit, handing environmentalists a victory in an election year in which the president is seeking to emphasize his credentials as a climate leader and environmentalist. It's possible.
The Interior Department is expected to announce as early as this week that no action should be taken on federal land where the road, known as the Ambler Access Project, will be built, according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity. . Because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. They said a formal rejection of the project would come later this year.
The road was essential to reach an estimated $7.5 billion copper deposit buried in ecologically sensitive land. There are currently no mines in the area and no permit requests have been submitted to the government. The road was the first step.
It would be a huge victory for opponents who have argued for years that blocking the industrial road would threaten wildlife as well as Alaska Native tribes that rely on hunting and fishing.
Environmentalists, including many young climate activists, were outraged by President Biden's decision last year to approve Willow, an $8 billion oil drilling project on pristine federal lands in Alaska. The proposed road would be hundreds of miles south of the Willow project.
The move comes as the Biden administration tries to find a balance between two different and sometimes conflicting goals.
Mr. Biden intends to boost America's clean energy to combat climate change. Ambler Metals, the mining venture behind the proposed road, said the copper it seeks is important for building wind turbines, photovoltaics and transmission lines needed for wind, solar and other renewable energy. But the president is also determined to preserve environmentally sensitive lands, expanding the amount of national monuments across the country while blocking oil and gas drilling on some public lands.
David Krause, interim executive director of the National Audubon Society's Alaska office, said protecting the natural environment around the Ambler area is a “huge undertaking.”
“This is one of the most ecologically intact and functional landscapes on Earth,” Mr. Krause said.
As proposed, the Ambler project would consist of a $350 million, two-lane, all-season gravel road that would wind through the foothills of the Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, reaching across 11 rivers and thousands of streams. Future mine site.
The Department of the Interior found that the road could disturb wildlife habitat, contaminate salmon spawning grounds and threaten the hunting and fishing traditions of more than 30 Alaska Native communities. The two people said they expect the agency to say in the final analysis that any version of the industrial road would cause “substantial and irreversible” harm to the environment and tribal communities.
“The caribou are suffering, the fish are suffering,” Julie Roberts-Hyslop, first chief of the Tanana tribe, said in an interview last year. The roads will make these problems worse, she said.
A Home Office spokesman declined to comment.
Kaleb Froehlich, managing director of Ambler Metals, said the company was “surprised” that the Interior Department had rejected the project.
“If true, this decision ignores community support for this project while denying Alaskans vital revenue to a region whose youth are being forced to leave due to a lack of jobs and opportunities,” Mr. Froehlich said in a statement. He called this an “illegal and politically motivated decision” and urged the government to reconsider.
Because Ambler Road passes through federal land, a right-of-way permit was required from the Department of the Interior. The Trump administration approved the permit in 2020, citing the potential for the road to provide access to significant copper and cobalt deposits.
After Biden was elected, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland ordered a new analysis, saying the environmental impact of roads had not been properly studied. Last October, her agency released a draft review that found “significant flaws” in the Trump-era study.
For example, the new review identified 66 communities that could be impacted by the road, compared to 27 communities identified by the Trump administration. The review found that many of these communities depend on local reindeer and fish, and that industrial roads could harm the movement and survival of reindeer, which are already threatened by climate change.
They also found that building roads can speed up the thawing of permafrost, land that has been frozen for hundreds or thousands of years in some cases. Thawing permafrost can destabilize the land, leading to landslides, flooding and damage to indigenous communities. Melting permafrost can also contribute to global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“Ice-rich soils in the proposed corridor will warm and potentially melt regardless of whether or not they are built,” the review said. “However, site-specific soils are expected to experience amplified or accelerated thawing due to construction,” the agency wrote.
Without roads, copper deposits would likely remain untouched. The decision is expected to spark an angry backlash from Alaska's two U.S. senators (Republicans) and its only House member, a Democrat (all of whom support the path).
Alaska leaders argue that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 guarantees right-of-way across federal lands for the proposed Ambler Road.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state's development bank, applied for a federal permit to build the road in 2015 and approved about $44.8 million for the project. Ambler Metals described the road as an “urgent” need to supply domestic minerals for national security and clean energy to address climate change.
It was estimated that the road and associated mines would create more than 3,900 jobs in an area with high unemployment while adding revenue to state and local coffers by generating more than $300 million in annual wages.
Tribes and environmental groups have questioned these assumptions as overly optimistic, saying there are greater reserves in some less ecologically sensitive areas.