Memorandum 18-014 Reso 18-007 Pebble Mine Scoping Meetings

Memorandum 18-014

TO:                         Mayor and Homer City Council 

FROM:                  Councilmember Aderhold

DATE:                    January 10, 2018

SUBJECT:           Resolution 18-007

On January 8, 2018 the city received a press release from the Pebble Limited Partnership that the permit application they submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) in December for the Pebble Mine project had been accepted. Their press release was because the Corps issued a Public Notice of Application for Permit on January 5, 2018. In the Public Notice the Corps states that it has determined that an environmental impact statement (EIS) level of analysis will be required for the review of the Department of the Army permit application. The Public Notice also states that the Corps will soon publish a Notice of Intent to prepare an EIS in the federal register which will include a list of public scoping locations. Resolution 18-007 requests that Homer be included in the list of locations because of the potential affects the construction and operation of the Pebble Mine project could have on the residents of the City of Homer and the surrounding area.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal regulatory agencies to reach out to the public and other state and federal agencies with regulatory jurisdiction to determine the scope of the EIS. Holding a scoping meeting in Homer would allow Homer area residents to hear first-hand from Pebble Limited Partnership about their proposed project and from the Corps and the agency’s third-party consultant about the process and intended schedule for the EIS. Homer area residents will be better positioned to submit comments to the Corps that inform the development of alternatives to the proposed action and the analysis of possible effects. Those who attend the scoping meeting will also have the opportunity to sign up to receive future notices related to the EIS.

Following scoping, the Corps and the third-party contractor (NEPA practitioners in the private sector who will work at the direction of the Corps, with costs for preparing the EIS paid by the project proponent) will prepare a scoping summary report that outlines the comments they received, alternatives that were suggested, and what impacts analyses they intend to include in the EIS based on the scoping comments. The Corps will develop the alternatives to the proposed project that they will analyze. At minimum, they will evaluate the proposed alternative and a no action alternative. They could evaluate alternative transportation routes, port sites, natural gas pipeline alignments, power sources, etc.

They will then write a Draft EIS that analyzes the impacts (positive and negative) of each alternative. This process could take up to a year or more. Once the Draft EIS is publicly available, the Corps will conduct public meetings, likely in the same locations in which they conducted scoping, and the public will have opportunity to comment on the alternatives, analyses, and findings presented.

As a past NEPA practitioner who has prepared several major EISs, I firmly believe we want to be on the Corps’ list of scoping locations for this project.

Recommendation: Approve Resolution 18-007

Enc:  USACE Public Notice