Category: Veterans – Patriotism

Trade war jeopardizes China’s huge investment in creation of new ‘cancer alley’ in Appalachia

ThinkProgress

Trade war jeopardizes China’s huge investment in creation of new ‘cancer alley’ in Appalachia

Industrial build-out in West Virginia would have massive environmental impacts.

Mark Hand      June 18, 2018

Environmental activists fear massive investments in petrochemical and energy facilities could turn part of Appalachia into a new “cancer alley” like the one in Louisiana along the Mississippi river. Credit: Julie Dermansky/Corbis via Getty Images

Doubts are growing about a Chinese company’s planned investment in a suite of natural gas-related projects in West Virginia due to the Trump administration’s intensification of a trade war between the United States and China.

From the day the agreement was announced last fall, skepticism has surrounded the issue of whether state-owned China Energy Investment Corp. would follow through on its planned $83 billion investment in energy infrastructure in West Virginia. The cost and scope of the project — known as the Appalachian Storage Hub — would be unprecedented.

The massive project would include natural gas liquids storage, a major intersection of pipelines, and a petrochemical refinery row. Environmental groups have expressed concern that the construction of natural gas liquids and petrochemical processing plants could contaminate air and water resources.

The escalating trade war between the United States and China is causing further uncertainty about the agreement. Global stock prices fell Monday as investors reacted to the decision last week by the United States to target an additional $50 billion in China-made goods for new tariffs.

Brian Anderson, director of the Energy Institute at West Virginia University, has previously touted the positive impact of the China Energy investment. Anderson said two months ago that the agreement with the Chinese company could be coming along at the perfect time. But on Monday, Anderson adjusted his expectations, telling an energy industry conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that the trade war “has put this project in jeopardy.”

Another potentially ominous sign for the project is the decision by the chief executive of China Energy to cancel plans to speak at this week’s conference — the Northeast U.S. Petrochemical Construction Conference — as the war of words between the two countries on trade issues heated up. The CEO, who reports to the president of China, reportedly cited the trade war as the reason for canceling his trip to the conference.

If trade relations between the United States and China improve and China Energy ultimately carries out its end of the deal, environmental groups are concerned that the state of West Virginia will not be able to properly oversee the potential damage caused by the construction and operation of the energy and petrochemical facilities.

West Virginia has a long history of favoring coal industry profits over the environment and public health. The state is showing the same deference to the natural gas industry, which has grown into a powerful business force in the state over the past 10 years.

The scale of industrialization that would come from the $83 billion investment would be a “big burden” on the state Department of Environmental Protection that does not have adequate resources to enforce regulations on existing coal and natural gas industry operations, according to Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

Natural gas investments are happening at such a rapid pace in the state that “mistakes are being made and damage is being done” by state environmental officials in a similar fashion to how they failed to adequately monitor the coal industry, Rosser told ThinkProgress.

Appalachia’s struggling coal communities find hope in transition to clean energy

The Appalachian Storage Hub took a major step forward last November as part of a U.S. trade mission to China attended by President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. During Trump’s visit to China, China Energy announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to invest $83.7 billion in the planned storage hub over 20 years. For comparison, West Virginia’s gross domestic product in 2016 was $72.9 billion.

If it is developed, the hub would bring a massive buildup of the petrochemical industry along the Ohio River from southwestern Pennsylvania to Huntington, West Virginia. It would stretch into surrounding counties with a spur from down the Kanawha River from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to Charleston, West Virginia.

Environmental groups fear the region could become another “cancer alley,” similar to the buildup of petrochemical facilities in Louisiana along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

“Petrochemicals, pipelines, and plastics are not a plus for the Ohio Valley. We are threatening the future of generations to come if we buy into this promise of short-term economic gains instead of realizing the disastrous long-term effects that will occur,” the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Huntington, said in an alert issued last Thursday.

West Virginia is undergoing political upheaval that also could impact the agreement. Last week, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) forced Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher to resign over his handling of a flood relief program. Thrasher was the top state official who traveled to China last November as part of the trade delegation.

A once thriving coal town has turned toxic, and citizens are desperate for help

Furthermore, a potential conflict of interest has emerged as part of the $83 billion investment. At least one member of West Virginia’s negotiating team was also negotiating on behalf of his private company when he traveled to China last fall to negotiate the deal, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported last Friday. The corporate executive, Steven Hedrick, is CEO of Appalachia Development Group LLC and CEO of the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center.

Appalachia Development Group has been seeking a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Appalachian Storage Hub project. The state Commerce Department paid for Hedrick’s travel for the China negotiations. The state found out that Hedrick asked China Energy officials to specifically target some of their investment in his company’s natural gas storage hub.

Rosser, head of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, said she believes the state will have “big-time regrets” if it does not implement necessary safeguards that will protect the environment and public health from the massive industrial build-out.

An abundant harvest from Punta Mona, Costa Rica

EcoWatch shared a live video.
June 18, 2018

An abundant harvest live from Costa Rica with Stephen Brooks.

We are live here at Punta Mona and want to share an abundant harvest with all of you!

We are live here at Punta Mona and want to share an abundant harvest with all of you!

Posted by Stephen Brooks on Monday, June 18, 2018

Americans currently owe $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.

ATTN:

Americans currently owe $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.

College Debt

Americans currently owe $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.

Posted by ATTN: on Thursday, May 24, 2018

Western United States will run out of water in the the next 20-30 years

DeSmogBlog

June 17, 2018

Water experts predict that essential food producing areas in the Western United States will run out of water in the the next 20-30 years due to climate change. #YEARSproject #ClimateFacts #WorldWaterDay

Climate Facts: U.S. Drought

Water experts predict that essential food producing areas in the Western United States will run out of water in the the next 20-30 years due to climate change. #YEARSproject #ClimateFacts #WorldWaterDay

Posted by DeSmogBlog on Sunday, June 17, 2018

He’s dying of cancer. Now, he’s the first patient to go to trial to argue Roundup made him sick

CNN

He’s dying of cancer. Now, he’s the first patient to go to trial to argue Roundup made him sick

By Holly Yan      June 17, 2018

Monsanto says Roundup is safe and can’t be linked to individual cancer cases.

(CNN) On bad days, Dewayne Johnson is too crippled to speak. Lesions often cover as much as 80% of his body.

Doctors have said they didn’t expect him to live to see this day. But Monday marks a milestone: Johnson, 46, is the first of hundreds of cancer patients to see his case against agrochemical giant Monsanto go to trial.

Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, regularly used Roundup and claims it gave him cancer.

CNN reported last year that more than 800 patients were suing Monsanto, claiming its popular weed killer, Roundup, gave them cancer.

Since then, hundreds more non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients have made similar claims, Johnson’s attorney, Timothy Litzenburg, said. He now represents “more than 2,000 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma sufferers who used Roundup extensively,” he said.

Johnson, a father of two in California’s Bay Area, applied Roundup weed killer 20 to 30 times per year while working as a pest manager for a county school system, his attorney said.

Johnson’s case is the first to go to trial because, his doctors claim in court filings, he is nearing death. And in California, dying plaintiffs can be granted expedited trials.

And there’s a lot riding on this case, which could set a legal precedent for thousands of cases to follow.

Report on Roundup ingredient in dispute

The big questions at stake are whether Roundup can cause cancer and, if so, whether Monsanto failed to warn consumers about the product’s cancer risk.

Patients: Roundup gave us cancer as EPA official helped company

In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said the key ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

“For the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” the report states.

“The evidence in humans is from studies of exposures, mostly agricultural, in the USA, Canada, and Sweden published since 2001. In addition, there is convincing evidence that glyphosate also can cause cancer in laboratory animals.”

But Monsanto long has maintained that Roundup does not cause cancer, and that the IARC report is greatly outnumbered by studies saying glyphosate is safe.

“We have empathy for anyone suffering from cancer, but the scientific evidence clearly shows that glyphosate was not the cause.” Monsanto Vice President Scott Partridge

“More than 800 scientific studies, the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the National Institutes of Health and regulators around the world have concluded that glyphosate is safe for use and does not cause cancer,” Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of strategy, said in a statement.

“We have empathy for anyone suffering from cancer, but the scientific evidence clearly shows that glyphosate was not the cause. We look forward to presenting this evidence to the court.”

Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Lord said regulatory authorities help ensure Roundup is safe.

“The safety of each labeled use of a pesticide formulation must be evaluated and approved by regulatory authorities before it is authorized for sale,” she has said.

The National Pesticide Information Center — a cooperative between Oregon State University and the EPA — said studies on cancer rates in humans “have provided conflicting results on whether the use of glyphosate containing products is associated with cancer.”

Many more cases to follow

Johnson’s case — and hundreds of similar cases against Monsanto — have been filed in various state courts, Litzenburg said. Many other cases have been filed in federal multidistrict litigation, or MDL.

                                                             Johnson had lesions on most of his body, a doctor said.

MDL is a procedure similar to class-action, in that it consolidates pre-trial proceedings for the sake of efficiency. But unlike a class-action lawsuit, each case within an MDL gets its own trial — with its own outcome.

In other words, one MDL plaintiff might get a large settlement, while another plaintiff might get nothing.

It’s not clear when future state or MDL trials will begin. One advantage of filing in state court — as Johnson did — instead of through MDL is that state courts might produce an outcome faster.

And in Johnson’s case, time is critical.

“Mr. Johnson is angry and is the most safety-oriented person I know,” his attorney said. “Right now, he is the bravest dude in America. Whatever happens with the trial and his health, his sons get to know that.”

CNN’s Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.

‘America is better than this’: What a doctor saw in a Texas shelter for migrant children

The Independent

‘America is better than this’: What a doctor saw in a Texas shelter for migrant children

Kristine Phillips, The Independent     June 17, 2018

A prominent doctor has spoken out against the Trump administration‘s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the US border. saying it could have a ‘devastating’ long-term effect on their emotional well-being.

Dr Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter for children under the age of 12 that runs along the Texas border with Mexico.

The shelter in question held 60 beds and had a little playground for children. Rooms are equipped with toys, books and crayons.

To Dr Kraft, it looked like a friendly environment for children – a place where they could be happy.

But the child who caught the pediatrician’s attention during a recent visit was anything but happy. This little girl – no older than two – was screaming and pounding her fists on a mat. Yet staff members could not comfort the infant because of the rules prohibiting physical contact.

“The really devastating thing was that we all knew what was going on with this child. We all knew what the problem was,” Dr Kraft said. “She didn’t have her mother, and none of us can fix that.”

Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from their parents during six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The little girl is among the multitude of immigrant children who have been separated from their family as part of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, meaning any adult who crosses the border illegally will face criminal prosecution. That also means parents were taken to federal jails while their children were sent to shelters.

It is believed 11,432 migrant children are in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services – an increase of nearly 3,000 from beginning of May. These numbers include children who arrived at the border without a relative and children separated from their parents.

The policy so far has pushed shelters to their capacity. Trump administration officials are making preparations to hold immigrant children on military bases. On Thursday, the Trump administration said it will house children in tents in the desert outside El Paso.

“The really basic, foundational needs of having trust in adults as a young child was not being met. That contradicts everything we know that the kids need to build their health,” said Dr Kraft after her visit to the Texas shelter.

 Such a situation could have long-term, devastating effects on young children, who are likely to develop what is called toxic stress in their brain once separated from caregivers or parents they trusted. It disrupts a child’s brain development and increases the levels of fight-or-flight hormones in their bodies, added Kraft. This kind of emotional trauma could eventually lead to health problems, such as heart disease and substance abuse disorders.

Kraft and her organization are not alone in this opinion.

Nearly 4,600 mental health professionals and 90 organizations have signed a petition urging Trump and attorney general Jeff Sessions to stop the policy of parental separation.

It says: “To pretend that separated children do not grow up with the shrapnel of this traumatic experience embedded in their minds is to disregard everything we know about child development, the brain, and trauma.”

“While not all of the children we are ripping from their parents will suffer the full consequences of toxic stress, many may,” said child psychologist Megan Gunnar of the University of Minnesota.

Although the policy is being implemented by his own administration, Mr Trump has avoided publicly owning it and. Instead, he blamed Democrats for “forcing the breakup of families at the border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda.”

Health and Human Services blames Congress, saying its inability to pass legislation on border security “created perverse and dangerous incentives for illegal border crossings and child smuggling.”

For Dr Kraft, the partisan finger-pointing means politicians run the risk of obscuring the impact the parental separation policy will have on children.

“As partisan and as divisive as the whole topic of immigration is, we need to start with what’s right,” she said. “Can we start with just keeping parents and children together while we figure out some of the other details?”

“The kids need to come first,” she added. “America is better than this.”

Washington Post News Service

Raising wages [doesn’t] kill jobs.

Unfiltered: ‘‘Raising wages [doesn’t] kill jobs. It’s just a thing rich people say to poor people.’
Unfiltered Yahoo News

June 7, 2018

“There is no excuse for any company in America to pay their workers so little that they need food stamps, and Medicaid and rent assistance … This is bulls**t.” https://yhoo.it/2Ma9V3s

Unfiltered: ‘‘Raising wages [doesn’t] kill jobs. It's just a thing rich people say to poor people.’

“There is no excuse for any company in America to pay their workers so little that they need food stamps, and Medicaid and rent assistance … This is bulls**t.” https://yhoo.it/2Ma9V3s

Posted by Unfiltered Yahoo News on Thursday, June 7, 2018

For the biggest group of American workers, wages aren’t flat. They’re falling.

Chicago Tribune

For the biggest group of American workers, wages aren’t flat. They’re falling.

By Jeff Stein and Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post     June 16, 2018

A crowd of more than 2,000 march in downtown Chicago to protest low wages on Labor Day on Sept. 4, 2017. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

The average hourly wage paid to a key group of American workers has fallen from last year when accounting for inflation, as an economy that appears strong by several measures continues to fail to create bigger paychecks, the federal government said Tuesday.

For workers in “production and nonsupervisory” positions, the value of the average paycheck has actually declined in the past year. For those workers, average “real wages” – a measure of pay that takes inflation into account – fell from $22.62 in May 2017 to $22.59 in May 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

This pool of workers includes those in manufacturing and construction jobs, as well as all “nonsupervisory” workers in service industries such health care or fast food. The group accounts for about four-fifths of the privately employed workers in America, according to BLS.

Without adjusting for inflation, these “nonsupervisory” workers saw their average hourly earnings jump 2.8 percent from last year. But that was not enough to keep pace with the 2.9 percent increase in inflation, which economists attributed to rising gas prices.

“This is very likely because of the spike in oil prices eating into inflation-adjusted earnings,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist and strategist at Decision Economics. “We pay for energy-related costs out of our wages, out of our compensation. And it’s making a real impact.”

The fall in those wages has alarmed some economists, who say paychecks should be getting fatter at a time when unemployment is low and businesses are hiring.

“This is odd and remarkable,” said Steve Cornell Kyle, an economist at Cornell University. “You would not normally see this kind of thing unless there were some kind of external shock, like a bad hurricane season, but we haven’t had that.”

The falling wages promise to exacerbate historic levels of U.S. inequality. Within the labor force, it means workers who were already making less are falling further behind. And if private laborers as a whole are seeing their earnings flatten while the economy as a whole grows at an annual rate of more than 2 percent, that means the gains are going almost exclusively to people already at the top of the economic ladder, economists say.

“The extra growth we are seeing in the economy is going somewhere: to capital owners and people at the top of the income distribution,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, noting workers’ share of corporate income remained relatively low as of January. “And what we’ve seen is in recent period a much higher share of total income earned going to owners of capital.”

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation and campaign adviser to President Trump , said the figures were troubling. But he added that the drop in real wages could be a reflection of the economy adding low-end jobs, rather than declining values further up the chain. If so, he said, that would be a sign of economic vitality, as the economy pulled in unemployed workers.

But other experts doubted that argument. “For that to be true, you’d have to see that the jobs coming back are particularly low-wage jobs,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “There was some evidence of that initially in the recovery, but I don’t think the evidence supports the idea.”

But why is wage growth so tepid?

This problem is not new: Slow wage growth bedeviled the Obama administration as well.

Economists broadly disagree about the cause of persistently weak wage growth, offering a variety of possible explanations.

Ernie Tedeschi, a former Treasury official under President Barack Obama, said the unemployment rate may create a misleadingly positive impression of the health of the jobs market, given how many Americans dropped out of the labor force during the Great Recession.

Weaker union rights for workers may also be cutting into their ability to force pay increases from their bosses, said Jared Bernstein, who served as an economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump officials pointed to what they called a strong growth in private business investment in the first quarter of 2018, after the tax law’s passage, and expressed optimism that the law would translate into higher wages for workers in the near future. They also dismissed the allegation that the data disproved their claim that the tax law would raise the average worker’s wage by $4,000.

“The law is just six months old,” said DJ Nordquist, chief of staff for Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, in an email. “Our estimates [of the tax law’s benefits] were for ‘steady state’ – when the full effects of the law spread throughout the economy, which will take years, as we always said it would.”

But to Democrats, the tepid wage growth helps bolster their claim that the Republican tax law was overwhelmingly geared toward the wealthy and that a more direct role for the federal government is needed to help workers.

“Today, while the cost of health care, prescription drugs, gasoline and housing soar, the average worker, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is now making slightly less than he or she made one year ago after adjusting for inflation,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an email to The Washington Post, arguing for a higher minimum wage and a single-payer health-care plan.

Related: Chicago Tribune

A minimum-wage worker can’t afford a 2-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S., report finds

By Tracy Jan, Washington Post    June 13, 2018

Apartment for rentIn this Nov. 10, 2015, file photo, apartments for rent are shown in Portland, Ore. A new report says for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum-wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment. (Don Ryan / AP)

The economy’s booming. Some states have raised minimum wages. But even with recent wage growth for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum-wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Not even in Arkansas, the state with the cheapest housing in the country. One would need to earn $13.84 an hour – about $29,000 a year – to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour.

Even the $15 living wage championed by Democrats would not make a dent in the vast majority of states.

In Hawaii, the state with the most expensive housing, one would have to make $36.13 – about $75,000 a year – to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment. The minimum wage in Hawaii rose to $10.10 an hour this year.

It gets worse in many metropolitan areas. San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties top the list of most expensive jurisdictions, where one would need to make $60.02 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.

“The housing crisis is growing, especially for the lowest-income workers,” said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “The rents are far out of reach from what the average renter is earning.”

Downsizing to a one-bedroom apartment will only help so much.

According to the report, a one-bedroom is affordable for minimum-wage workers in only 22 counties in five states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Those states all set their minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25.

Nationally, one would have to earn $17.90 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment or $22.10 an hour for a two-bedroom rental. That’s based on the common budgeting standard of spending a maximum of 30 percent of income on housing.

The report estimates that renters nationally make an average of $16.88 an hour. That means even those making above minimum wage struggle to afford rent.

Housing costs have continued to rise with growing demand for rental housing in the decade since the Great Recession. At the same time, new rental construction has tilted toward the luxury market because of increasingly high development costs, the report said. The number of homes renting for $2,000 or more per month nearly doubled between 2005 and 2015.

“While the housing market may have recovered for many, we are nonetheless experiencing an affordable housing crisis, especially for very low-income families,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in the report.

The low-wage workforce is projected to grow over the next decade, particularly in service-sector jobs such as personal-care aides and food-preparation workers.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has tried cutting federal housing subsidies for the lowest-income Americans. As it stands, only 1 in 4 households eligible for federal rent assistance gets any help, the report said. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson recently proposed tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements on those receiving rent subsidies.

Rich Alaskan donor gave $250K to Trump after EPA reversed decision on Pebble Mine

ABC News

Rich Alaskan donor gave $250K to Trump after EPA reversed decision on Pebble Mine

By Stephanie Ebbs     June 16, 2018

Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News/MCT via Getty Images

A wealthy activist who has funded efforts to block a proposed mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay donated $250,000 to President Donald Trump‘s re-election effort six weeks after the administration abruptly decided to prevent the mine from moving forward.

The move to block the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay from moving forward seems to diverge from a trend in policy under the leadership of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt — seen as one of President Donald Trump’s most productive cabinet members in moving to undo environmental regulations put in place under the Obama administration. During the Trump presidency, the EPA in 2017 had previously allowed the mine to move forward.

The EPA said the change in course was because the environmental risk was too great and announced on January 26 that the mine would not immediately move forward.

Robert Gillam made his second and largest donation to Trump Victory Fund just weeks later, donating $250,000 on March 9, according to FEC filings.

Gillam has previously spent as much as $2.5 million to block the Pebble Mine from moving forward in Alaska’s fertile fishing ground called the Bristol Bay. He has been advocating against the mine since 2005, according to an Alaska state report. He declined to comment for this story.

Robert B. Gillam, CEO of McKinley Capital.

Gillam has previously donated to the Republican National Committee, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Republican campaigns in Alaska.

He went to Wharton with Trump and met with him at Mar-a-Lago the weekend before he made a $250,000 donation to the president’s Victory Fund, according to a report in E&E News. Gillam owns a fishing lodge in the area, according to public meeting records, and has said that the mine would hurt the local salmon population.

Last November he wrote in an editorial that the mine project was “doomed.”

“For more than a decade, I have taken on the battle against the Pebble Mine, because, more than any other development proposal in our state’s history, it threatens to forfeit to foreign mining companies an invaluable part of our heritage, something Alaskans cannot afford to lose -— and will never stop defending —- Bristol Bay; the last great salmon fishery on the planet,” Gillam wrote in the opinion piece in a local newspaper.

The Pebble Mine project was blocked by the Obama administration in 2014, citing harm to the environment that the EPA said would be caused by mining in the area. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed that decision in May 2017 and allowed the permitting process to move forward as well as accept public comments on the process.

In late January, the EPA abruptly slowed the project again, saying the agency has “serious concerns” about the risk mining could pose to fishing operations and local residents around Bristol Bay. The agency didn’t go so far as to block the mine completely but said the permit application “must clear a high bar” and provide information on how the mine will impact the surrounding area.

The company behind the Pebble Mine project announced in May that a major partner ended their agreement to support the mine, adding more uncertainty to the future of the project.

ABC News’ Soorin Kim contributed to this report.