New state documents show Dunleavy administration still pushing Pebble Mine in secret

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has long been a promoter of the Pebble Mine, having his administration operate almost like a secret division of the company, while claiming in public that he has never made up his mind about the project.

Pebble served as a ghost writer for Dunleavy and instructed him on what he should say to President Trump to help promote the project. Brett Huber, the state employee who led the Pebble push, was praised as a “rock star” by the Pebble chief of staff for his contributions to the cause.

“For me, mining is personal,” Pebble wrote for Dunleavy. “I grew up around mining. My daughters work for the Red Dog mine in Northwest Alaska. I have seen firsthand how important this industry is to a healthy and robust economy.”

On the Pebble Tapes, former Pebble boss Tom Collier said Dunleavy was a friend he could count on and that Chief of Staff Ben Stevens had served on a Pebble advisory committee.

“The governor has to be out there playing politics and kissing babies, where the chief of staff is sitting at his desk running the state government,” said Collier. “And that’s a guy who was on the Pebble advisory committee. Sure, the State of Alaska is every bit as supportive, if not more supportive of us, as each day goes by.”

“They’ve always been supportive kind of behind the scenes but more vocal so this mitigation plan that we’re putting together, almost all of the land is state land,” he said.

After the release of the Pebble Tapes, and the publicity storm that cost Collier his job, the Dunleavy administration doubled down on its bogus neutrality claims.

On Sept. 21, the state Department of Natural Resources released a statement that concealed the collaboration and cooperation between the Dunleavy administration and the Pebble mine.

Text messages, meeting minutes and other state documents from July and August, which have just been released in response to a public records request by SalmonState, demonstrate the ways in which the state continues to act like a Pebble partner on a mitigation plan.

A decision by the Army Corps of Engineers forced the Pebble promoters to produce a more extensive mitigation plan for land near the proposed mine site.

“If you think I can help w (with) mitigation ideas, let me know,” Sara Longan, deputy commissioner of DNR, texted to Kyle Moselle on July 16. The state was discussing mitigation ideas with Pebble, confirming what Collier said about his understanding with the governor. Moselle is the leader of the state’s “large mine permitting team.”

The plan would require about 112,000 acres of “actual mitigation area,” according to the state summary of an Aug. 4 meeting of state and company officials. The Corps of Engineers wants mitigation in the watershed of the mine site.

The document said the group needed a “plan with conceptual detail” that Pebble and the Dunleavy administration support for meeting the mitigation sought by the Corps of Engineers.

The state wanted a “blended approach” on mitigation, DNR Commissioner Corri Feige texted on Aug. 11 to Moselle.

On July 31, Longan texted to Moselle that James Fueg, the Pebble vice president of permitting, would be calling with information on a recent meeting with Dunleavy about the best way to proceed.

“There will be a big push for mitigation on state lands, as you know, and not much time to develop a ‘plan.’ We can do this, but will take the Corp supporting us also. We can talk more, but I think PLP is onto a good approach,” Longan said in the text to Moselle.

In a later message, she said she had a “really good chat” with Jason Brune, the former Pebble Mine employee who is now the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation.

“This will be a huge lift, but I have full confidence in this team,” Longan said.

On the Pebble Tapes, Collier said he also had full confidence in Dunleavy and the state DNR. He said the company believed that if the state sets aside state land right next to the mine for preservation, that would meet the federal mitigation requirement.

“I had a two-hour one-on-one meeting with the governor when all of this came up about a month ago to walk him through this, to get his commitment that they would be there,” Collier said in August.

“And now we’re working with his Department of Natural Resources and they are being very cooperative in working this through with us.”

The internal state documents released to SalmonState confirm much of what Collier said on the Pebble Tapes, except for the manner in which the state might set aside the land. He said a conservation easement was the likely option.

As of late August, the option preferred by Pebble, according to state documents, is that the Department of Natural Resources would ask the Department of Fish and Game for what is known as an “Interagency Land Management Assignment.” In essence, the departments would strike a land management deal to help Pebble.

They had discussed this Aug. 25 as one four methods the state could use to preserve land and narrowed the discussion to an interagency agreement on Aug. 31 for a “compensatory mitigation plan.”

Pebble “is leaning towards this item,” the meeting notes say. One advantage is that there are many examples of interagency agreements and “terms have been extended out to ‘perpetuity’ in at least one example.”

The Pebble people said they didn’t know if a deal struck between two state agencies could be accepted by the Corps of Engineers to meet a permitting requirement. How would the Pebble mine get an interagency agreement moving?

“A request is made from DNR to another state agency,” the minutes say.

The Pebble promoters submitted their revised mitigation plan to the Corps of Engineers this week, but the company and the federal government have refused to release it. There is no excuse for this secrecy. Or for Dunleavy to claim neutrality.

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