Free Republic

Politicians are demanding that the U.S. become more self-sufficient in crucial metals and minerals, but then they block domestic mining at every opportunity. Alaska’s Pebble Mine project is the latest to join the casualty list. The Pebble site holds an estimated $300 billion to $500 billion in mineral resources and could be one of the world’s largest suppliers of copper and gold. Electric cars as well as wind and solar power require enormous amounts of copper. Investors have invested nearly $1 billion on exploration, engineering and studies to meet regulatory demands. Yet last week the Biden Environmental Protection Agency issued...

A proposed gold and copper mine that nearly got buried by the Obama administration moved closer to reality when its developers filed new permits with the federal government. The company behind Pebble Mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, were poised Friday to file a wetlands-fill permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The permit application by the Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, marks a milestone for the project that has seen renewed interest since President Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. “At the outset of 2017, we established three ambitious...

Republicans are investigating what they call "improper influence" from a national green group on the Obama administration's signature Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change regulation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are demanding the EPA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hand over documents on the organization's involvement in drafting the proposed carbon pollution rules. The investigation is based on a New York Times ' report that said the NRDC provided the blueprint used for the rules, and "heavily influenced the president's proposal." While...

On-again, off-again plans for the world's largest gold and copper mine could be back on again, after a federal judge in Alaska issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from its ongoing efforts to bury the project. Pebble Partnership, the Canadian company behind the project, which would take place near Anchorage, claims the regulatory agency has conspired illegally with opponents of the mine to devise scientific and environmental justifications for blocking it. Salmon fishermen in Washington state and Alaska, Native American groups and environmental organizations have opposed the massive project for several years, and had appeared to have...

Apparently this wasn’t just an isolated innocent: a second federal agency is also having trouble finding emails that a congressional committee is demanding in order to fulfill its oversight responsibilities: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash. “We’re having...

A former EPA official tied to a controversy over allegations of federal overreach at an Alaska mine project has mysteriously gone off the grid, sources tell FoxNews.com, complicating lawmakers' efforts to question him. Emails from Phillip North, a now-retired Environmental Protection Agency employee, recently surfaced that seem to show the Alaska-based biologist tried to get the Pebble Mine project killed as far back as 2008. Those emails -- and memos indicating government officials worked early on with tribal leaders and environmental groups to oppose the venture -- raised questions about the agency's claims that when it ultimately vetoed the gold-and-copper...

<p>WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency came under fire Thursday after new emails surfaced that allegedly show government officials worked in secret with tribal leaders and other environmental groups to preemptively oppose the controversial Pebble Mine project in Alaska before a review was even conducted.</p>

Agency officials coached tribes on how to oppose Alaska’s Pebble Mine. Obama has repeatedly urged that science guide environmental decisions, regulators inside the Environmental Protection Agency secretly worked with tribal and environmental activists to preempt a full review of an Alaskan mine and veto the project before the owners’ permits could be considered, internal memos show. Charged with being neutral arbiters, EPA officials instead began advocating for a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project in western Alaska as early as 2008, long before any scientific studies were conducted or the permit applications for the project were even filed, ......

This Friday will mark the release of the May unemployment report. A report that will reflect the last effects of the Obama trillion-dollar stimulus and of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE2). The report is likely to show that job creation is mediocre at best, with unemployment insurance claims continuing well above the 400,000 weekly level, housing in a double-dip recession and the gross domestic product contracting to a paltry 1.8 percent growth rate for the second quarter of 2011. The situation is so dire on the economic growth front that The New York Times has awoken from its slumber...