Tell Congress: Stop the EPA's Trojan Horse Before It Destroys Us All!

The Environmental Protection Agency has just taken its first abrupt step in the most dangerous power grab of our time.

And it did so in direct defiance of instructions from the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

All Members of Congress must now join the fight to stop EPA’s next step!

The menace is hidden in a study.  It seems to be an ordinary EPA draft study – “An Assessment of Potential Mining Impacts on Salmon Ecosystems of Bristol Bay, Alaska.”  But the study was hastily released on May 18 – despite the prohibition of Congress – and is widely assumed to be the first step toward an unprecedented preemptive veto of the proposed Pebble Mine, a project which has not yet requested a single permit, but promises $7 billion of new infrastructure in a place without a diverse economy if EPA doesn’t kill it.

The Oversight Committee has asked the EPA to answer a long list of questions about its first-time assertion of such preemptive veto power, which the agency claims is authorized by the Clean Water Act, Section 404(c), but the committee says is illegal.

EPA claims its study’s “narrow scope” does not indicate that the agency has already decided to preemptively veto the mine. The evidence says that’s a flat lie.

EPA’s quick release of its hideously negative watershed assessment – against congressional instructions – can only be seen as a deliberate and malicious end-run to rapidly poison public opinion against Pebble Mine before anyone could come out for it.

All Members of Congress must now join the fight to block EPA’s preemptive veto power!

The comment period, open now and ending July 23, has been irretrievably biased by EPA’s defiant early release of its study. With overwhelming public disapproval – rigged by the EPA and its Big Green allies – EPA will be fully justified in vetoing the Pebble Mine before its first permit is requested.

Very clever. Very ruthless. Very vicious. Very illegal.

EPA used a similar tactic by yanking a West Virginia mining permit AFTER the mine had been running for years, instead of BEFORE as in the Pebble Mine. The West Virginia mine owner took EPA to court and won. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled:

“EPA’s position is that section 404(c) grants it plenary authority to unilaterally modify or revoke a permit that has been duly issued by the Corps [the Army Corps of Engineers] – the only permitting agency identified in the statute – and to do so at any time.

“This is a stunning power for an agency to arrogate to itself when there is absolutely no mention of it in the statute. It is not conferred by section 404(c), and is contrary to the language, structure, and legislative history of section 404 as a whole.”

The case isMingo Logan v. EPA, decided March 23, 2012.

The Oversight Committee told EPA in a May 10 letter that, just as EPA has no authority to yank a permit retroactively, Section 404(c) gives EPA no authority to deny one preemptively.

Now we can see. This fight IS NOT ABOUT THE MINE. It is about EPA’S POWER OVER PERMITS.

Now we can see the Pebble tactic: Kill it before it starts. It’s like arresting speeders before they get in the car.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE MINE. THIS IS ABOUT EPA’S POWER OVER PERMITS.

All Members of Congress must join the fight to block EPA’s preemptive veto power!

If the EPA gets away with the Pebble tactic in Alaska, EPA will have a precedent to kill any project anywhere in America. 

The Obama Administration will then possess the perfect political poison pill.

This is not about the mine.   This is about the Pebble tactic.

All Members of Congress must join the fight to block EPA’s preemptive veto power!

This fight IS NOT ABOUT THE MINE. It is about THE POWER OVER PERMITS.