Bethel’s tribal government and five other tribes from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta sued the federal government in 2023, arguing that the environmental underpinning of Donlin Gold’s permits was faulty.
In her initial decision in the case in September 2024, United States District Court Judge Sharon Gleason rejected some of the tribes’ claims. But Gleason agreed that federal agencies hadn’t fully considered the potential that a dam to hold mining waste, called a tailings dam, could fail. A tailings dam failure could send hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic waste into Crooked Creek and the nearby Kuskokwim River, endangering fish and animals in the area and impacting livelihoods and subsistence activities. The federal agencies considered a 0.5% spill from the tailings dam in their initial analysis, when recent failures of tailings dams elsewhere in the world have discharged much more than that.
The tribes, federal defendants, and intervenors – including the State of Alaska and regional Alaska Native corporation Calista – were then tasked with presenting solutions.
The tribes, represented by environmental law organization Earthjustice, argued that the court should strike down the mine’s water permit, a right-of-way for a proposed gas pipeline that would power the mine, and a joint approval for the project issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Lawyers for the federal agencies and intervenors argued for a less drastic approach, which would allow reevaluation of the mine spill potential without vacating the existing permits and agreements.
In her final decision issued June 10, Judge Gleason agreed with the feds. She wrote that she did not find that the error was a fundamental flaw significant enough to warrant vacating the permits. Gleason also noted the defendants’ argument that vacating the permits could cause significant regulatory confusion and potential economic loss.
Gleason wrote that she “expects the agencies to take the requisite hard look” at their environmental analysis as they reevaluate and consider a larger tailings dam spill.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Bureau of Land Management will have to provide updates to the court every six months, but there isn’t a hard deadline for when the new environmental analysis has to be finished. And if there’s any construction on the gas pipeline or under the mine’s water permit, they’ll have to provide 90 days notice to the court and tribes.
Read the judge's June 10 remedy order here.
