United States suspends Alaska’s mining road approved during Trump-era

The United States Interior Department has filed a brief in Alaska’s district court to suspend the development of a 340 km road leading to Alaska’s Ambler mining district, since it would be crossing the traditional homelands of many native communities. 

The construction of the Ambler road, which would connect the Dalton Highway to the mining district in northwestern Alaska and unlock a 120-km-long stretch of mineral-rich land, was approved by the country’s previous administration in July 2020.  

But the interior department told the court this week that it wanted to review “significant deficiencies” that it identified in the approval process.  

“The interior department is asking the court to remand the right-of-way decision to the agency,” Melissa Schwartz, the interior department’s Communication Director, told The Northern Miner by email.  

“Additionally, the interior department will suspend the right-of-way for the road during the review period to ensure that no ground-disturbing activity takes place that could potentially impact the resources in question.”  

The Ambler Road would cross the homelands of many native communities in Alaska, including the Koyukon, Tanana Athabascans and Iñupiat peoples. During the new review, the department will reconsider the analyses related to the National Environmental Protection Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.  

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy criticized the move as “another front” in the Biden administration’s “war on Alaska.”  

In a statement on February 22, Dunleavy said that the move was an attempt to “block economic and natural resource development with unfounded environmental claims, despite the project receiving a robust federal environmental review.” 

“You would think President Biden would want to improve access to American sources of copper and other strategic minerals that are needed in our combined efforts to increase renewables,” Dunleavy commented in a press release.  “Instead, actions like this only serve to push development to Third World nations that don’t have the environmental ethic that Alaskans have.”  

Trustees for Alaska, a human rights group, welcomed the decision, but said that the government had failed to “acknowledge the full and long list of legal problems with the interior department’s approval process” and refused to revoke the permits of the applicant, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.  

“This project never should have been authorized in the first place, and the agencies can’t fix their broken analysis by papering over their mistakes,” Suzanne Bostrom, a senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, said in a press release.  

She noted that the government essentially wanted to try to correct select deficiencies in its review and said that it “entirely ignores the numerous other legal issues raised by plaintiff groups, such as failing to follow laws meant to protect our lands, air and water.”