January is a time for taking stock of one’s resources. For the state of Alaska the resources are Alaska’s natural resources. Development projects are high on the list of legislative priorities for many state office holders.

Projects aiming to harness resources like hydrocarbons, fish, minerals and timber include a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope and a hydroelectric dam on the Susitna River in Southcentral, but one of the most controversial of all is the Pebble Mine Project near Bristol Bay.

How are Alaska’s decision makers shaping the Pebble process legislatively now that they’re back to work in Juneau?

Most recently Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage , released Senate Bill 152, “Approval of Bristol Bay Sulfide Mine,” on Jan. 17. The bill was referred to Community and Regional Affairs Committee and then to Resources Committee. The bill would require legislative approval before issuing an “authorization, license, permit, or approval of a plan of operation for a large-scale metallic sulfide mining operation that could affect water in or flowing into or over the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve."

The bill currently has no co-sponsors.

Rep. Paul Seaton, R-Homer, has introduced a bill that in its most current iteration is titled House Bill 85 “Mixing zones and Sewage Systems with Potential Effects to the Pebble Project.” Mixing zones are areas downstream of a pollutant discharge where the levels of pollutant are higher than normally allowed until they dilute into the larger water body. The bill would change current regulation to “prevent discharge of pollutants into any freshwater spawning area of the species identified on the statutory list if they spawn in nests.”

The bill is designed to make certain information about water pollution available for public reading and comment (bit.ly/xk1Mgm).

The project first became widely known when Northern Dynasty bought the project from Tech Cominco in 2004.

An estimated $188 billion worth of gold is only a portion of the treasure promised by the Pebble Project including an estimated 40.2 million tons of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum and commercially significant amounts of silver, rhenium and palladium.

The project is located 200 miles southwest of Anchorage.

What is being done to support or oppose the project, of course, does not equal what could be done.

Lindsey Bloom, commercial fishing and outreach director for Trout Unlimited, agrees with Rep. Seaton in that current mixing zone laws are not “compatible with protecting fish in Bristol Bay,” she said.

“The single most important change for Bristol Bay would be that the watershed be given higher standards of protection than it currently has under the 2005 Bristol Bay Area Plan,” Bloom said, “which is being challenged by local residents in the supreme court.”

Regulations that limit pollutant levels in the state are not strict enough, Bloom said. “At current state copper standards, salmon can lose their ability to navigate to spawning grounds. Adverse impacts to the salmonid food chain can occur below (Department of Environmental Conservation) criterion for copper for aquatic life in Alaska and lethal levels are well below the human drinking water standard,” Bloom said.

The Pebble project will need to pass through Alaska’s regulatory process. This process too comes with some controversy.

The Pebble Project probably won’t enter the process until later in 2012 or 2013, Ed Fogels, Deputy Commissioner for Alaska Department of Natural Resources said.

“We are quite a ways away from an actual application,” Fogels said.

Deputy Commissioner Fogels is responsible for overseeing five divisions — Agriculture, Forestry, Mining, Land and Water, Parks and Outdoor Recreation and Support Services as well as the Office of Project Management and Permitting.

"There is the anti-Pebble folks and pro-Pebble folks; we are not pro Pebble, we are pro process,” Fogels said. “We have a good process. We can permit a project like Pebble. It will take more time and more resources and more manpower,” Fogels said, but it has all the same components as other projects.

“We don't pretend that it is perfect, but we are continually looking to improve," Fogels said.

Fogels said he has debated the state regulatory process many times in public. He said an example he often uses to explain his position is that “when you take your car in for an emissions test and it fails, do you throw your car away? No you go get it fixed,” Fogels said. The same works with the regulatory process. If an application is inadequate they go back and redesign. The process continues until the application meets the state’s criteria or the project runs out of steam. Applicants are given a chance to rectify deficiencies, Fogels said.

“Our jobs are not just to deny,” Fogels said of DNR. “Our laws are designed to allow us to do disturbances to fish bearing water. If you couldn't there would be no development in Alaska,” Fogels said.

“From my perspective the question is whether the state’s process is robust enough for this project which is entirely unique from any other project the state has ever permitted,” Lindsey Bloom of Trout Unlimited said. “And, the answer is no.”

The size, type, and location of the Pebble prospect are entirely different from anything the state has dealt with or been set up to deal with, she said. Bloom said it makes sense that an extraordinary salmon resource like this watershed would require higher than ordinary protections for fisheries.

Bloom said local communities are also at a disadvantage so long as Alaska is without a current Coastal Zone Management Plan in place.