Ambler Road Project Final EIS Due by July

By YERETH ROSEN
Alaska Beacon
    What is known as the final supplemental impact statement, or final supplemental EIS, will likely be completed in the second quarter of this year, said the status report filed on Monday in U.S. District Court by Justice Department attorneys.
    That is a little later than previously anticipated, the status report said. Previously, the final SEIS was expected to be released in the first quarter of the year, the status report said.
    The supplemental EIS was launched in 2022 in response to litigation. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management started the process to address what it determined were deficiencies in the environmental reviews conducted during the Trump administration.
    The Ambler Access Project is a proposed 211-mile road that would pass through the Brooks Range foothills to enable commercial development of multiple mines in the remote Ambler district of Northwest Alaska. The mine sites hold copper, along with other metals.
    While the BLM approved construction of the road in 2020 under the Trump administration, the agency determined that there had been insufficient analysis of the project’s impacts.
    A draft supplemental EIS released in October found that the Trump administration analysis had understated the road’s anticipated disruptions to traditional subsistence hunting and fishing and its expected damage to the region’s permafrost.
    The supplemental EIS process has been contentious.
    The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state-owed development bank that is pursuing the Ambler Access Project, has argued that the process is unwarranted and that the federal government has no right to block the road’s construction.
    “The Federal government cannot deny the State of Alaska the ability to feasibly and economically access its minerals across federal lands,” AIDEA said in its Dec. 22 comments on the draft SEIS that was released in October.
    The BLM, in its analysis, fails to appreciate the important economic benefits that would result from road and mine development, AIDEA’s 72-page comment letter said. “The responsible development of these claims has the potential to create thousands of jobs and diversify Alaska’s economy,” the letter said. It pointed to the nearly $41.5 million spent from 2020 to 2023 by mining companies seeking to develop projects in the Ambler district. The SEIS process has put future spending in doubt, the letter said.
    Vancouver-based Trilogy Metals Inc., which has partnered with Australia’s South32 to form the joint venture Ambler Metals LLC, is the main company pursuing mining in the district, and would be the main beneficiary of the road the AIDEA proposes to build. The joint venture will continue to spend money on the project in 2024, according to a Feb. 9 statement released by Trilogy.
    But road opponents who live along the corridor of the proposed project have dismissed possible economic benefits.
    “Trilogy and Trilogy’s partners can’t be trusted to protect our lands or our water. They will destroy our land. We will be left with chump change from anything that’s taken from these mines on this road.  We will not be enriched from that road or any other mines coming from that road,” Clarence Wood-Griepentrog, a resident of the region, said during a Dec. 11 public hearing held by the BLM in Selawik.
    Luke Jackson, speaking at the BLM’s Nov. 20 hearing in Kobuk, said the road project would damage other sources of wealth.
    “If we don’t have caribou, if we don’t have fish, there’s nothing to live for,” he said at the hearing. “We’re limited in what we have, but what we do have — it makes me feel pretty rich.”
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https://alaskabeacon.com/yereth-rosen

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