Sen. Mark Begich’s recent comments supporting the continuation of the EPA’s Bristol Bay Watershed assessment are deeply troubling for many Alaskans.

His words are being exploited by anti-resource development activists as a rallying cry to provide a last-ditch effort to save this fatally flawed assessment that even the experts agree provides no value.

It’s time to stop this expensive and divisive farce. It’s time we try something radical by letting Pebble submit a mine plan and seek permits under the legal guidelines of the stringent permitting process. Let’s trade rhetoric and hypotheticals for facts and science.

The fact is, Sen. Begich agrees.

He’s consistently opposed an EPA preemptive permit denial. So why keep the watershed assessment alive? 

—  Thomas Gummer

Anchorage