Protecting Subsistence Resources in the Imuruk Basin
Action Alert
Please provide your input on how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Environmental Impact Statement can better protect the Imuruk Basin from Graphite One mining submit by November 2nd.
Click Here for more information.
Kigluak Mountain Range above Hot Springs Creek. Site of the Proposed Graphite One Mine. (Photo Credit: Hal Shepherd)
The Norton Bay Watershed Council (NBWC) is working to protect tribal water and subsistence rights from mining activity in the Imuruk Basin watershed. The proposed Graphite One mine poses a serious threat to fish and wildlife, water quality, and the critical subsistence area of the Imuruk Basin. The NBWC is coordinating efforts with various advocacy groups to build public awareness of the threats from the mine and protect instream flows and salmon habitat on at-risk streams.
Threats to Ecosystem and Subsistence
The Imuruk Basin watershed holds the largest known graphite deposit in North America and is the proposed site of the Graphite One mine in the Kigluaik Mountains near the headwaters of salmon-bearing streams of the Imuruk Basin. The proposed Mine poses a significant threat to the ecosystem and subsistence activities of tribes in the area. Graphite One plans to mine roughly four-million tons of material and process it down to roughly 60,000 tonnes of graphite concentrate on-site, before transporting the material to the Port of Nome. With an excavation footprint of over 1,176 acres, a proposed 17.3-mile-long access road built through Mosquito Pass requiring numerous stream crossings, and an existing man-camp to support the exploration phase. The Canadian owned mining company plans to extract 10,000 tons of material per day, with an annual output of 175,000 tons of graphite per year.
Tribes in the area have fished and hunted for subsistence in the Imuruk Basin and the Kigluaik Mountains in the area of the mine for millennia. The Graphite One mine threatens to wreck this important ecosystem and critical subsistence area. The Tribes, along with the Norton Bay Watershed Council have consistently called for adequate environmental and cultural impact analysis as part of Graphite One’s permitting process, given potential impacts on community health, subsistence, water, and cultural resources.
The Tribes arguethat the as part of the permitting process, the Corpsmust consider federal law, which holds that subsistence has the highest priority above all other uses. The Tribes also expressed concerns about toxic effluent from the mine site impacting public health and the fish and wildlife resources in the watershed, and maintained that Graphite One hasnot complied with existing permitting requirements.
Tribes Achieve Cooperating Agency Status
Under substantial pressure from NBWC, the Tribes and the local community, last summer,the US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) announced that it would conduct an Environmental Impact State regarding the mining company’s application for a Section 404 permit under the Clean Water Act and that, under the so-called Fast-41 process, it would likely complete the EIS in less than a year so that the permit for the Mine could be issued by September 2027
As part of drafting the EIS, the Native Villages of Mary's Igloo, Teller, and Brevig Mission have been invited by the Corps to participate in both the NEPA and Fast-41 Graphite One permitting process as Cooperating Agencies (CA), and each of the tribes accepted.
Because the Corps has said they will not be providing funding to assist the Tribes with such participation, the Native Village of Mary’s Igloo is applying for funding to hire an attorney or consultant to assist them to prepare for and participate in G2G meetings, and to submit traditional ecological knowledge and scientific data during this process.
To date, the only information the Corps has considered as part of the permitting process is the sometimes flawed data and reports submitted by the permit applicant. Over the past several years, as a means of offsetting the one-sided data flow, the Native Village of Mary’s Igloo, as well as Brevig Mission and Teller, have been collecting their own data, including instream flow, temperature, water quality, and anadromous fish surveys to add to, or rebut the limited data already submitted by the mining company. This data and knowledge can now be incorporated into the EIS due to the Tribe’s Cooperating Agency Status.
Another important factor in the Cooperating Agency process is the Corps’ issuance of n approved jurisdictional determination ("AJD") is a document stating the presence or absence of “waters of the United States” in relation to the permitting process. Under existing Corps policy, AJDs are generally valid for five years unless new information warrants revision prior to the expiration date.
In the case of the Graphite One permit application, the Corps has determined that the:
The Project would permanently discharge fill material into 389.8 acres of waters, including wetlands, that the Corps determined as jurisdictional via an approved jurisdictional determination completed on July 22, 2026. The Project would also incur temporary impacts to 142.6 acres of jurisdictional waters, including the diversion of 12,440 linear feet of stream into artificially constructed channels that would convey flow into Graphite Creek downstream of the mine site. These impacts would occur within the 1,176.0-acre footprint of the Project, which includes the mine, the proposed access road, and the temporary barge landing and storage pad that would be situated along the edge of Imuruk Basin.#_ftn1
However, under the Trump administration’s proposed limitations to the Waters of the U.S. Rule, an AJD would be essentially meaningless, because while the agencies’ actions are governed by the definition of "WOTUS” that is in effect at the time the Corps completes an AJD, not the date of the request for one, as in the case of the Graphite One mine AJD, an existing determination would be worthless if the applicant requests that the AJD be thrown out and replaced by a new AJD based on the new rule (once adopted). As Cooperating Agencies, however, the Tribes may have authority to request that the current AJD issued by the Corps remain in effect..
Finally, because cooperating agency status gives participants access to more information from the mining company than is normally provided to the general public as part of the public process, the Tribes will have access to information that will show any flaws in the mining company’s analysis. This will allow the Tribes to point out that flawed information should not be included in the EIS.
