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An Alaska Native Tribal Government and three conservation groups are suing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to consider the future impacts of mine development before approving an exploration plan for a hardrock mine project in the Chilkat River watershed in Southeast Alaska.
The Chilkat River -- "Jilkaat Heeni" in the Tlingit language, meaning "storage container for salmon" -- runs from its headwaters in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, into the sea near Haines, Alaska. The watershed, which includes the Klehini River, provides spawning grounds for all five species of Pacific salmon, as well as anadromous eulachon and trout. The surrounding steep mountainsides, forests, and river valleys are inhabited by mountain goats, wolverines, wolves, black and brown bears, and moose. It is a spectacularly beautiful, amazingly special and unique place in this world.
Where the Chilkat and Klehini Rivers meet the Tsirku River near Klukwan, alluvial deposits under the riverbeds release warm water and keep the confluence open into late autumn when other waterbodies have frozen. Here, within an area set aside as the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, thousands of bald eagles gather to feast on the last runs of coho and chum salmon -- a globally unique phenomenon.
The watershed was settled millennia ago and is the traditional territory of the Chilkat Tlingit people. Today, the watershed remains central, economically and culturally, to the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan, a federally recognized tribe. Traditional harvests, particularly of wild salmon and eulachon, are the lifeblood of the Village.
Wild stocks of salmon returning to the Chilkat watershed are harvested by commercial, recreational and subsistence fishermen. The Chilkat watershed is central to the livelihoods and culture of people who live, fish, and hunt there, or otherwise depend on and enjoy the region's pristine waters, rich wildlife, and immense natural beauty.
Today, mining threatens the watershed. A Canadian company, Constantine Metal Resources Ltd., with financing from a Japanese company, Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd., is conducting exploration drilling above Glacier Creek, a tributary of the Klehini River, to determine whether there is a commercially valuable copper-zinc-gold-silver deposit in the mountainside. If exploration leads to such a discovery, the next step would be full-scale mine development to extract metals-bearing rock, a process that has the well-documented and all-too-frequent consequence of releasing toxic heavy-metals pollution and acidic water into the surrounding environment. If developed, the mine would threaten the downstream environment, including the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve and Klukwan, with mine-waste pollution that could devastate fish populations and all who depend upon them.
BLM has oversight responsibility for Constantine Metals' project, but has failed in that role. Under the United States' bedrock environmental laws, BLM must consider the impacts of its incremental decisions advancing the mining project. In the past year and a half, BLM has twice approved Constantine Metals' exploration activities, both times refusing to consider the impacts of potential mine development and its potentially devastating consequences for the watershed, even as the company continues to invest more money in the project. BLM's promise to look at development impacts later is insufficient; if the company were to discover a valuable deposit to mine, BLM's power under the law to protect the public's land at that point would be compromised.
Faced with these illegal actions and impending threats, the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Lynn Canal Conservation, and Rivers Without Borders filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska asking a federal judge to invalidate BLM's approvals of the project and order the agency to comply with legal requirements to consider all of the project's impacts, including from potential development. The groups are represented by the Alaska office of the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.
The following are statements from the groups:
"The Chilkat Tlingits did not merely subsist, but thrived because of the abundance of salmon that migrate home to this watershed. Over the past several years our Tribe has been having government-to-government discussions with BLM regarding the permitting process for mining in the Chilkat Watershed," said Kimberley Strong, Tribal President of the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan. "We have strongly objected to BLM's permitting process as it does not take into account the environmental risks from a fully operating hardrock mine. Hardrock mining is a threat to our Chilkat wild stock salmon and the sustainability of our community. All five species of wild Pacific Salmon, as well as Steelhead, and Dolly Varden inhabit the watershed. It continues to feed our people as it has for thousands of years."
"The incremental permitting of big potential mines like the Palmer Project presents a real threat to downstream communities like Klukwan and Haines, and to the salmon and clean water upon which all Southeast Alaskan communities rely," said Meredith Trainor, Executive Director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. "We are now at a key point in the approval process where BLM still has the authority to influence and shape the outcome. But by permitting this project piecemeal, BLM is effectively ignoring their responsibility to conduct a thorough assessment. Considering only a small area and a short timeframe leaves the public agency blind to any consideration of how downstream communities will be impacted and does not provide communities with an opportunity to raise concerns about what full mineral exploitation will mean to their people and their future."
"Lynn Canal Conservation is dedicated to protecting the ecological integrity of the upper Lynn Canal, the Chilkat Valley, and the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, located just a few miles downstream of the Palmer Project," said Eric Holle, President of Lynn Canal Conservation. "By letting an industrial-scale project proceed with limited consideration of impacts, from exploration toward full mine development, BLM is putting wild stocks of salmon, the keystone species of the region, at risk. This decision threatens the biological fabric that our members rely on."
"The Chilkat watershed has outstanding ecological, cultural and economic values that need to be safeguarded," said Will Patric of Rivers Without Borders. "With so much at stake, activities that may lead to mining in the headwaters demand rigorous, comprehensive and objective analyses. Unfortunately, that's not what we're seeing from the BLM."
"BLM is committing itself to a path while willfully ignorant of the destination," said Kenta Tsuda, an attorney at Earthjustice. "We're asking the court to make the agency take off the blindfold and evaluate the impacts of its decisions before it's too late."
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460"I'm not happy with some of the things I'm hearing about," the Washington Democrat said, stressing that still needs to see legislative text.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal said Sunday that the Biden White House should be concerned about securing the Congressional Progressive Caucus' support for the newly announced debt ceiling agreement, given that the deal includes work requirements for aid programs and other provisions sure to infuriate the Democratic Party's left flank.
Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), toldCNN she is "not happy with some of the things" she's hearing about the tentative agreement but emphasized that she still needs to see legislative text, which is expected to be released Sunday afternoon.
Asked whether the White House and Democratic leaders still have to worry about whether the CPC—which has 101 members in the House—will support the final agreement, Jayapal responded, "Yes, they have to worry."
While noting that the spending cuts in the deal aren't nearly as large as the House GOP wanted, Jayapal raised concerns about the new work requirements for some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
The White House-GOP agreement would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients who are up to 54 years old and have no children—up from the current age ceiling of 49. Under current law, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, "non-elderly adults without children in their homes can receive benefits for only three months every three years, unless they are working at least 20 hours a week or can document they are unable to work."
The broadening of work requirements would sunset in 2030, according to the White House, and SNAP eligibility would be expanded for veterans and people who are homeless.
Jayapal said Sunday that SNAP work requirements are "absolutely terrible policy," adding that "we have seen reams of data that show that, when you put these work requirements in, they're really just administrative red tape that prevent the people who need help from getting help."
"I told the president that directly when he called me last week on Wednesday that this is saying to poor people and people who are in need that we don't trust them," Jayapal said, noting that people on SNAP receive an average of $6 per day in benefits. "I think it is really unfortunate that the president opened the door to this."
\u201cWork requirements are bad policy. They don\u2019t reduce spending, they create administrative burdens, and they simply don\u2019t work.\n\nThe fact that this is a GOP priority is cruel, and every American should know what they\u2019re trying to do to poor and working families.\u201d— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@Rep. Pramila Jayapal) 1685284434
Outside advocates and economists have vocally condemned the debt ceiling agreement's real-term spending cuts, attacks on aid programs such as SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and cuts to IRS funding, but progressive lawmakers have been largely quiet since details of the tentative deal began emerging Saturday night.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter on Sunday that Republicans will release legislative text at some point in the afternoon and top Biden administration officials will brief the Democratic caucus on the deal at 5:00 pm ET.
Politicoreported Sunday that "Democrats are pissed that Republicans got a briefing on the deal last night—and that they won't get the same until 5:00 pm tonight."
One unnamed senior Democrat told Politico that rank-and-file lawmakers are "furious that they will learn about [the details of the deal] from Republicans and Sunday talk shows."
Some members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, have responded angrily to the tentative agreement, which would lift the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025 and put spending caps in place for 2024 and 2025.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) called the deal "insanity," complaining that it wouldn't cut spending aggressively enough.
During a press briefing Sunday morning, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) downplayed the Freedom Caucus outrage, saying he's confident that a majority of House Republicans will vote for the agreement.
The Treasury Department warned Friday that the U.S. government will run out of money to pay its obligations on June 5 unless Congress lifts the debt ceiling.
"For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass."
Progressive economists and advocates warned that the tentative debt ceiling agreement reached Saturday by the White House and Republican leaders would needlessly gash nutrition aid, rental assistance, education programs, and more—all while making it easier for the wealthy to avoid taxes.
The deal, which now must win the support of both chambers of Congress, reportedly includes two years of caps on non-military federal spending, sparing a Pentagon budget replete with staggering waste and abuse.
The Associated Pressreported that the deal "would hold spending flat for 2024 and increase it by 1% for 2025," not keeping pace with inflation.
The agreement would also impose new work requirements on some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) while scaling back recently approved IRS funding, a gift to rich tax cheats.
In exchange for the spending cuts and work requirements, Republican leaders have agreed to lift the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025—a tradeoff that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is pitching as a victory to his caucus, which includes far-right members who have demanded more aggressive austerity.
President Joe Biden, for his part, called the deal "a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want."
"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Saturday night that "this is a punishing deal made worse only by the fact that there was no reason for President Biden to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy over whether or not the United States government should pay its bills," alluding to the president's executive authority.
"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors," said Owens. "The deal represents the worst of conservative budget ideology; it cuts investments in workers and families, adds onerous and wasteful new hurdles for families in need of support, and protects the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying their fair share in taxes."
The agreement comes days before the U.S. is, according to the Treasury Department, set to run out of money to pay its obligations, imperiling Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments and potentially hurling the entire global economy into chaos.
House Republicans have leveraged those alarming possibilities to secure painful federal spending cuts and aid program changes that could leave more people hungry, sick, and unable to afford housing, critics said.
"For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass," wrote Angela Hanks, chief of programs at Demos.
While legislative text has not yet been released, the deal would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients without dependents up to the age of 54, increasing the current age limit of 49. Policy analysts and anti-hunger activists have long decried SNAP time limits and work requirements as cruel and ineffective at boosting employment. (Most adult SNAP recipients already work.)
"The SNAP changes are nominally extending work requirements to ages 50 to 54. In reality, especially as the new rule is implemented, this is just an indiscriminate cull of a bunch of 50- to 54-year-olds from SNAP who won't realize there are new forms they need to fill out," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project.
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, wrote on Twitter that the agreement is "cruel and shortsighted," pointing to the work requirements and real-term cuts to rental assistance "during an already worsening homelessness crisis."
"House Rs held our nation's lowest-income people hostage in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling," Yentel continued. "The debt ceiling 'deal' could lead to tens of thousands of families losing rental assistance... Expanding ineffective work requirements and putting time limits on food assistance adds salt to the wound, further harming some of the lowest-income and most marginalized people in our country."
The White House and Republican leaders also reportedly agreed to some permitting reforms that climate groups have slammed as a boon for the fossil fuel industry. According toThe New York Times, the agreement "includes measures meant to speed environmental reviews of certain energy projects," though the scope of the changes is not yet clear.
And while the deal doesn't appear to include a repeal of Biden's student debt cancellation plan—which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court—it does reportedly contain a provision that would cement the end of the student loan repayment pause, drawing fury from debt relief campaigners.
\u201cResuming student debt payments will crush working families and is simply bad policy\u2014but agreeing to codify the pause\u2019s end into law before the Supreme Court decides on broad-scale relief is criminal.\u201d— The Debt Collective \ud83d\udfe5 (@The Debt Collective \ud83d\udfe5) 1685241461
The deal must now get through Congress, a difficult task given likely opposition from progressive lawmakers who oppose attacks on aid programs and Republicans who want steeper cuts.
As the Times reported, "Lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus were privately pillorying the deal on Saturday night, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus had already begun to fume about it even before negotiators finalized the agreement."
Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said Sunday that "it's a relief to see that congressional leaders and the president have come to an agreement to raise the debt limit and avert an economic disaster."
"But by instituting work requirements for critical assistance programs and rescinding important funding to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, this deal will rig the economy even more in favor of the most well-off Americans while failing to fix the real structural problems that led to the current debt crisis in the first place," said Hanauer. "The deal avoids the elephant in the room: it includes no new revenues even though tax cuts of the past few decades were a primary driver of deficit growth."
"And next up, many Republican lawmakers want to double down on tax cuts by pushing through many more tax cuts that would most help wealthy families and corporations," Hanauer added. "They should do the opposite."
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction. But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests."
The Biden White House late Friday accused Republicans of attempting to "take food out of the mouths of hungry Americans" by imposing new work requirements on recipients of federal nutrition assistance, a public rebuke of the GOP that came as negotiators worked to finalize a debt ceiling agreement.
Additional work requirements appear to be among the final sticking points in the time-sensitive talks, with the GOP insisting on their inclusion in any agreement to raise the debt limit.
In a statement Friday night, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the GOP's proposed work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are "designed to tie the most vulnerable up in bureaucratic paperwork" and "have shown no benefit for bringing more people into the workforce."
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction," said Bates. "But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests that would add $3.5 trillion to our debt."
House Republicans have demanded new work requirements for recipients of SNAP, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—many of whom already work.
Asked Friday whether the GOP would be willing to drop its push for work requirements, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.)—the party's lead negotiator—said, "Hell no."
"Hell no," he repeated. "Not a chance."
The White House has spoken out against new work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, but it's unclear whether it opposes fresh work mandates for TANF, which replaced the more generous Aid to Families With Dependent Children program under the Clinton welfare reform law that Biden supported as a senator.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, welcomed the White House's statement against SNAP work requirements, which analysts say could strip food aid from millions of people amid a worsening hunger crisis.
"The president is calling out MAGA GOP hypocrisy of refusing to raise the debt ceiling so the economy doesn't crash simply to take food from hungry people," Jayapal tweeted Saturday. "When you count admin[istrative] costs of bureaucratic red tape, this would produce ZERO savings. Isn't and has never been about saving money."
The White House issued its statement amid growing progressive concerns over the concessions the Biden administration has reportedly granted to GOP hostage-takers.
On Friday, watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and policy analysts responded with outrage to reports that the Biden White House is leaning toward accepting Republicans' demand for IRS funding cuts—a giveaway to rich tax cheats.
Progressives have also voiced alarm over reports that the emerging debt ceiling deal includes a two-year cap on non-military federal spending, which would result in cuts to key domestic programs.
"Any deal is a disaster since most government departments and agencies are currently severely underfunded," warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.