WASHINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers will impose new demands for mitigating environmental damage from a vast proposed copper and gold mine in Alaska, potentially delaying approvals for the project beyond the presidential election, three people familiar with the Corps’s plans said on Saturday. The Corps is expected to send a letter on Monday to the developers of the Pebble Mine project, these people said, adding that it will not issue a permit until the company presents plans to protect an area in the surrounding watershed, a critical breeding ground for salmon, equal in size to the acreage that the mine would damage. That requirement could significantly slow a project that had been sailing toward approval until it incurred the opposition of President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as well as Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, Nick Ayers. If Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, prevails in November, the project is likely to die. “The mine will be close to killed by this,” said Whit Fosburgh, the president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

Source: New York Times August 23, 2020 00:33 UTC