The Biden administration is expected to deny permission for a 211-mile industrial road through Alaska’s fragile wilderness to a major copper deposit, handing a victory to environmentalists in an election year when the president wants to underscore his credentials as a climate leader and environmentalist. .
The Interior Department plans to announce as early as this week that there should be “no action” on federal land where the road known as the Ambler Access Project will be built, according to two people familiar with the decision who asked not to be identified. because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. A formal denial of the project would come later this year, they said.
The road was necessary to reach what is estimated to be a $7.5 billion copper deposit buried under ecologically sensitive land. There are currently no mines in the area and no permit applications have been submitted to the government. the road was the first step.
Blocking the industrial road would be a huge victory for opponents who have argued for years that it would threaten wildlife as well as Alaska Native tribes who rely on hunting and fishing.
Environmentalists, including many young climate activists, were outraged last year by President Biden’s decision to approve Willow, an $8 billion oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska. The proposed road would be several hundred miles south of the Willow project.
The move comes as the Biden administration tries to find a balance between two different and sometimes opposing goals.
Mr. Biden intends to boost clean energy in the United States to fight climate change. Ambler Metals, the mining company behind the proposed road, said the copper it seeks is critical to building wind turbines, solar cells and transmission lines needed for wind, solar and other renewable energy. But the president is also determined to preserve environmentally sensitive lands and is expanding the footprint of national monuments across the country while barring some public lands from oil and gas drilling.
David Krause, interim executive director of the National Audubon Society’s Alaska office, said protecting the wildlife around the Ambler area is a “huge deal.”
“This is one of the most ecologically intact and functional landscapes on the planet,” Mr Krause said.
As proposed, the Ambler project would consist of a $350 million, two-lane, all-season gravel road that would run through the foothills of the Brooks Range and Gateway to the Arctic National Park and Preserve, crossing 11 rivers and thousands of streams before it arrives. the location of a future mine.
The Interior Department found that a road would disturb wildlife habitats, contaminate salmon spawning grounds and threaten the hunting and fishing traditions of more than 30 Alaska Native communities. In its final analysis, the agency is expected to say that any version of an industrial road would “significantly and irreversibly” harm the environment and tribal communities, the two people said.
“The caribou are struggling, the fish are struggling,” Julie Roberts-Hyslop, first chief of the Tanana Tribe, said in an interview last year. A road will exacerbate those problems, he said.
An Interior Ministry spokesman declined to comment.
Kaleb Froehlich, chief executive of Ambler Metals, said the company was “surprised” that the Department of the Interior would deny the project.
“If true, this decision ignores local community support for this project while denying jobs for Alaskans and critical revenue for a region where young people are being forced to leave due to a lack of opportunities,” Mr. Froehlich said in a statement. . He called it an “illegal and politically motivated decision” and called on the government to reconsider.
Because Ambler Road would cross federal land, it required a right-of-way permit from the Department of the Interior. The Trump administration approved the permit in 2020, citing the potential the road would provide access to important copper and cobalt deposits.
After Mr. Biden’s election, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland ordered a new analysis, saying the environmental impact of the road had not been adequately studied. In October, her agency issued a draft review that found “significant deficiencies” in the Trump-era study.
For example, the new review identified 66 communities that could be affected by the road, compared to 27 identified by the Trump administration. The review found that many of these communities depend on local caribou and fish, and that an industrial road would harm caribou migration and survival rates that are already threatened by climate change.
He also found that building the road could accelerate the thawing of permafrost, ground that has been frozen in some cases for hundreds or thousands of years. When permafrost melts, the ground can become unstable, causing landslides, flooding and damage to indigenous communities. Melting permafrost can also release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
“Ice-rich soils in the proposed corridors will warm and potentially thaw with or without construction,” the review found. “However, with construction, soils in this area are expected to experience enhanced or accelerated thawing,” the agency wrote.
Without the road, the copper deposits would likely remain untouched. The decision is expected to draw an angry backlash from Alaska’s two U.S. senators, both Republicans, and the only member of Congress, a Democrat, who all support the road.
Alaska leaders argue that the Alaska Lands Conservation Act of 1980 guarantees a right-of-way on federal lands for the proposed Ambler Road.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state’s development bank, applied for federal permits to build the road in 2015 and approved about $44.8 million for the project. Ambler Metals has described the road as “urgently” needed to provide domestic minerals for national security and clean energy to tackle climate change.
It has been estimated that the road and an associated mine would create more than 3,900 jobs in an area of high unemployment, while generating more than $300 million in annual wages, adding revenue to state and local coffers.
Tribes and environmental groups have challenged those assumptions as overly optimistic and said larger reserves exist in parts of the country that are less ecologically sensitive.