Dunleavy should reveal what secret agreement he made with Pebble Mine

With his decision to appeal the Pebble Mine rejection, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has again failed to tell Alaskans what secret agreement he made with the mine promoters.

If there is no secret agreement, the state had better halt its appeal of the Pebble permit because it will be dead before arrival.

The Pebble appeal is probably already dead with the Biden administration. But Dunleavy will want to go to court, especially if he gets the $4 million he wants from the Legislature for the elite statehood strike force of Outside contract lawyers.

If there is no secret agreement, the Pebble mine lied to the Corps of Engineers and the public.

I’m guessing the mine promoters told the truth and had a secret handshake agreement with Dunleavy, who has worked to support the mine behind the scenes, while claiming to be neutral.

Pebble told Dunleavy what to say to President Trump, helped him plot political strategy and wrote letters and talking points for him to deliver.

The outline of the secret Dunleavy agreement with Pebble seems pretty clear from the “compensatory mitigation plan” the mine promoters submitted. It was rejected by the Army Corps of Engineers Nov. 25.

The mine promoters told the Corps of Engineers that they would preserve 112,445 acres of wetlands and aquatic resources near the mine site as “compensatory mitigation,” making up for lands that would be dug up to extract copper, gold, silver, molybdenum and other minerals 200 miles southwest of Anchorage.

“The Koktuli Conservation Area will preserve 112,445 acres within the Koktuli River watershed and remove the threat of development from the protected areas,” Pebble said.

“The preservation of the Koktuli Conservation Area will allow the long-term protection of a large and contiguous ecosystem that contains highly valuable aquatic and upland habitats, including a riparian corridor along 70 miles of the Koktuli River,” Pebble said in the mitigation plan released by the Corps of Engineers.

But there is a problem with the promise to create a new conservation area.

The Pebble mine doesn’t own or control the 112,445 acres of the proposed Koktuli Conservation Area and is powerless to “remove the threat of development.” It needs an official action by the state, one that deserves public hearings, public debate and review by the Legislature.

The mine can’t make promises to the Army Corps of Engineers unless the owner of the land—represented by the Dunleavy administration—made a secret agreement with Pebble to “remove the threat of development” for the next 99 years with deed restrictions.

The Corps of Engineers found that the mine promoters never provided the real estate information it needed to determine whether the plan was legit.

Pebble told the Corps of Engineers, “A deed restriction will be recorded in the appropriate recording district,” a promise it would never have made without Dunleavy’s support.

There was no public document to back that up.

“A site protection instrument was not provided; therefore, could not be evaluated,” Calvin Alvarez, chief of the south section, wrote for the Corps of Engineers in the permit denial.

“No supporting real estate information was submitted; therefore, could not review title insurance, reserved rights, rights-of-way, etc.”

In a Dunleavy administration meeting in early August, administration officials and Pebble representatives talked about limiting development on about 112,000 acres of state land to satisfy the Corps of Engineers.

That document and others confirmed what former Pebble CEO Tom Collier said on the Pebble Tapes about secret negotiations with Dunleavy in which he would agree to preserve state lands near the mine site to help Pebble. What Collier didn’t predict was that the Trump administration would reject the plan.

On Aug. 4, state officials and Pebble officials met to try to develop “A plan with conceptual detail that PLP (Pebble Limited Partnership) and DNR (Department of Natural Resources) agree with for meeting mitigation requirements set by USACE (US Army Corps of Engineers.)”

On Aug. 25, the state and Pebble met about five options for preserving land.

On Sept. 21, the state Department of Natural Resources released this statement that lied about the collaboration between the Dunleavy administration and the Pebble mine.

The state claims the scope of the mitigation plan demanded by the Corps of Engineers was inappropriate. Whether that is true or not, Alaskans need to know what deal Dunleavy made with the mine about the 112,445-acre mitigation plan and why he kept it from the public.

The acting attorney general, Clyde “Ed” Sniffen Jr., claims the Corps demanded “mitigation measures that are simply impossible to meet in Alaska.”

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