EPA stops the Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay with rarely used power

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday morning that it is effectively killing the controversial Pebble Mine project in Southwest Alaska.

The decision caps a decades-long battle over a region that is not only home to one of the world’s largest deposits of copper and gold, but also the world’s largest wild salmon run.

The EPA says the mine would cause too much damage to the salmon habitat, and it’s banning certain mining activities at the Pebble deposit.

United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley called EPA’s decision historic. It’s a move some Bristol Bay tribes have pushed the EPA to take for 13 years.

“Many of those who began this battle are no longer with us. New generations of our people have been born and raised with the cloud of Pebble hanging overhead,” she said at an EPA press conference on Monday. “But our ancestral responsibility to safeguard our watershed and fishery has united all of us in our work to defend the world's last great wild salmon fishery.”