Posted on 04/19/2016 12:20:01 PM PDT by george76
Retired EPA scientist Phil North, the man the Pebble Partnership says was the mastermind behind the effort to block its proposed mine in southwest Alaska, spent a full day answering questions from a congressional committee Thursday.
...
Norths whereabouts were unknown at least to Pebble executives for nearly two years.
But the company eventually found him. Pebble compelled his return to the U.S. from the Asia-Pacific, where he was on a grand tour with his family, to answer questions related to a lawsuit over the proposed Pebble mine. North sat for questions from Pebble attorneys in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago, and then received a Congressional subpoena to answer more questions. North says the House committee is requiring confidentiality, so he was not free to disclose what was discussed in the closed session.
Pebble claims North improperly colluded with anti-mine activists.
Mr. North was part of a group at EPA that made up their minds that this project should be vetoed before any of the science that they alleged they did was done, and that they manipulated the process in such a way as to make that outcome become a reality, Pebble CEO Tom Collier said in an interview with KDLG this month
Collier points to emails that he says show North helped mine opponents draft their petition to the EPA. Then, according to Pebble, North disappeared when questions and lawsuits arose.
...
North says the actual decision to use a lesser-known passage of the Clean Water Act against the mine, before Pebble applied for a permit, was made by higher-ups at EPA.
(Excerpt) Read more at alaskapublic.org ...
There should be a huge penalty for administrative abuse and dishonesty.
Had a friend who was looking at this as a potential job.
This is the 2nd largest mineral deposit of its type on the planet, and only slightly smaller than a similar one in Indonesia.
57 billion lb copper, 70 million oz gold, 3.4 billion lb molybdenum and 344 million oz silver; and 4.46 billion tonnes in the inferred category, containing 24.5 billion lb copper, 37 million oz gold, 2.2 billion lb molybdenum and 170 million oz silver. Quantities of palladium and rhenium also occur in the deposit.
HUGE amounts of money involved, to say nothing of the follow-on jobs potential.
Obviously the science is in , and it is unquestionable - must be mine-denier !
and then they did the science.., sorta like "global warming" , which became "climate change" !
Alaska Ping!
Alaska's State Motto should be "Alaska: America's Riches"
At the very least such a finding of abuse and fraud by the bureaucracy should vacate any decisions they have made and force them to return to square one with an entirely different set of decision makers. This will punish the bureaucracy where it hurts the most.
There’s no way to undo the harm to the entity they denied due process. Time has passed, money has been spent, and the project opportunity window may be closed.
This should be a pension-cancelling activity.
Can you believe Lois Lerner rode off into the sunset with a pension of, IIRC, about 160K per year?
Current prices and value
Copper $2.22/oz $126.54B
Gold $1250.70/oz $87.549B
molybdenum $5.58/lb $18.972B
Silver $17/oz $5.848B
Just a little money involved.
Back in the Reagan years I had a neighbor who was a political science professor at one of the California universities. Nice guy, but a self-described radical.
Professors get sabbaticals. He would use his sabbatical to take jobs in the Bureau of Land Management or maybe the EPA where he would implement the radical agenda.
I don’t think many conservatives know about this revolving door between government regulatory agencies and university radicals as I never see it mentioned. All paid for by us, through taxes.
Interesting. Agree had never heard of it but makes a lot of sense.
The bad players inside of these agencies usually aren’t career Civil Service employees.
It’s activists who have friends inside the agency who hire them for short term contracts and let them do a lot of damage to private citizens.
It’s something that needs to be exposed.
Filthy,crooked and insolent trash out globe hopping on a taxpayer pension. A royal POS. DESERVES any harsh tragedy that comes his way.
Bought and paid for.
that's the rat way....quid pro quo...
actually theres a good reason not to, namely, that the Copper River salmon fishery would be trashed probably forever if the multi-hued tailing ponds full of toxic sludge which are a usual result of mining leach into the watershed.
“Copper $2.22/oz”
If true a 1980’s copper penny is worth 24 cents.
Shirley you meant pound instead of once.
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