⛏️Joseph Burnitz ⛏️
402 posts
@JosephBurnitz
Engineer | Data analytics | Hobbyist Investor | $NAK Enthusiast | All opinions are my own and not financial advise
NEW: New college graduates are facing the toughest job market since the pandemic, with 42% reportedly underemployed.
Read this email. Then tell me the veto was ever about science. Geoffrey Parker is the attorney who DRAFTED the original 404(c) petition in 2010. He represents Ekwok Village Council and Bristol Bay Fishermen's Association. Without his work, EPA has no veto to defend. None of this exists. And in January 2023, he wrote directly to the Assistant Administrator of the Office of Water and told her the Recommended Determination would "trigger otherwise avoidable legal claims" and needed to go back to Region 10. The petitioner's own attorney. Warning them. In writing. On the record. EPA's reply, six days later: "Thanks for the feedback." Then they issued the veto anyway. Think about what that means. The EPA ignored the Army Corps' own Final EIS that found no measurable impact on Bristol Bay fish. They ignored independent consulting firm AECOM. And they ignored the attorney who gave them the authority to be in the room in the first place. Every voice with actual expertise told them to stop. They did it anyway. That is not science. That is not regulatory integrity. That is an agency being run as a political weapon, and the paper trail is now sitting in front of a federal judge. Case 3:24-cv-59. Judge Sharon Gleason. Briefing complete April 15. This email is in the record. @epaleezeldin — why is your agency spending taxpayer money defending a determination that the petitioner's own counsel told you was legally indefensible before it was ever issued? You inherited this. You don't have to keep fighting for it. $NAK is a ~$1B market cap sitting on 57 billion lbs of copper and 71 million oz of gold on Alaska state land. A trillion dollars of strategic metal America actually needs. And the only thing standing between the market cap and the deposit value is a veto that was indefensible on the day it was signed. The record is the record. The veto is coming off. $NAK #PebbleMine #NAKNation #CriticalMinerals #AlaskaComeback @MarcMilette @SarahPalinUSA @TyewayorHighway @taketheseodds #copper #copx #maga @POTUS
@epaleezeldin Why is EPA burning taxpayer money defending the Pebble Mine veto in court when the attorney who drafted the original 404(c) petition told them, in writing, that the Recommended Determination would "trigger otherwise avoidable legal claims"? Their reply: "Thanks for the feedback." @SarahPalinUSA @TyewayorHighway @taketheseodds thoughts?
🏔️ NAK Nation — READ THIS! My colleague Joseph Burnitz recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request that I believe every American who cares about the rule of law needs to see. He has posted the letter for our community on X today and I encourage every single one of you to read it carefully. The attorney who drafted the original 2010 petition that started the entire Section 404c veto process against Pebble Mine privately warned the Biden EPA seven days before the Final Determination was issued that the Recommended Determination had legal vulnerabilities that would trigger otherwise avoidable legal claims and needed to be referred back to Region 10 for additional work. The EPA's response was six words. "Thank you for sharing this feedback" And then they issued the veto anyway the same day. Let that sink in. This was not a close call. This was not a difficult scientific judgment. This was a federal agency that had already decided the outcome it wanted and was not going to let inconvenient legal warnings from its own supporters get in the way. The process was rigged from the beginning. Internal EPA documents show officials were strategizing about how to use Section 404c to block Pebble Mine as early as 2008. Two years before the official petition was even filed. Two years before the process that was supposed to be initiated by concerned citizens was supposedly initiated at all. The EPA did not write this veto. It was conceived in back rooms by EPA insiders working alongside outside activists and political operatives who used the agency as a weapon to destroy a billion dollar investment and block 800 billion dollars worth of America's own mineral wealth. This was politically motivated from the very beginning. The Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment that formed the scientific foundation of the veto was not independent science. It was a predetermined outcome dressed up in scientific language by a team specifically selected to produce the result the agency had already decided it wanted. And when the very lawyer who started the whole process thirteen years earlier privately told them their own determination was legally flawed and needed more work they responded with six words and issued it anyway. The Army Corps of Engineers own gold standard Final Environmental Impact Statement prepared by independent consulting firm AECOM found no measurable impact on Bristol Bay fish populations. The EPA ignored that conclusion entirely. It never even attempted to explain why its conclusions contradicted the most comprehensive scientific analysis ever conducted on the project. It just issued the veto anyway. This is not regulatory oversight. This is not environmental protection. This is the systematic abuse of federal regulatory power by unelected bureaucrats serving political masters rather than the law. It is the kind of behavior you would expect from a corrupt government agency in a country where the rule of law does not exist. It has no place in the United States of America. The veto was built on a legal standard the Supreme Court declared invalid four months after it was issued. It was issued over the documented objections of its own supporters. It contradicted the agency's own gold standard science. It was never properly reviewed under the correct legal standard. And it destroyed over a billion dollars of investment and locked away 800 billion dollars of American mineral wealth without a single permit ever being denied through the proper legal process. This was never about science. This was never about salmon. This was about left-wing extremism and the radical environmental movement's obsessive desire to control resource development in the United States of America. The once most prominent capitalist society in the world. A nation built on the principle that its citizens and its states have the right to develop their own land their own resources and their own economic destiny without unelected bureaucrats serving a radical political agenda deciding otherwise. And the people who abused that power left a paper trail. This is corruption. It is regulatory weaponization. And it is a betrayal of every principle that is supposed to distinguish American governance from the kind of politically driven bureaucratic abuse that defines the governments we spend billions of dollars trying to reform in other parts of the world. The courts are now being asked to hold the EPA accountable. The FOIA documents your colleague Joseph Burnitz obtained are part of a growing body of evidence that confirms what many of us have suspected for years. This was never about science. This was never about salmon. This was about power and control. And the people who abused that power left a paper trail. The truth is coming out. And when Judge Gleason rules it will be on the record forever. America deserves better than this. Alaska deserves better than this. The investors who believed in this project deserve better than this. And the rule of law demands better than this. Please read Joseph's post. Share these posts widely. And let people know what actually happened here. Stay locked in NAK Nation. The truth is coming out. 🇺🇸🏔️ #NAKNation #PebbleMine #EPA #RuleOfLaw #CriticalMinerals #AlaskaComeback #Corruption #FOIADocuments #JosephBurnitz
@epaleezeldin Why is EPA burning taxpayer money defending the Pebble Mine veto in court when the attorney who drafted the original 404(c) petition told them, in writing, that the Recommended Determination would "trigger otherwise avoidable legal claims"? Their reply: "Thanks for the feedback." @SarahPalinUSA @TyewayorHighway @taketheseodds thoughts?
⛏️ $NAK community, it’s time. ⛏️ @JosephBurnitz and I are hosting a Space next Monday at 6:30 PM PST. We'll go through Northern Dynasty's latest filing that just dropped against the DOJ/EPA. We'll cover the main arguments they made, where the government's position looks weak, and what this likely means for the case going forward, including timelines and possible next steps. It's an important update on the Pebble fight, so if you're interested in $NAK, feel free to join and bring your questions. Hope to see you there. #Pebblemine x.com/i/spaces/1ajem…
Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions. After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.
Another gaping hole I realized in EPA's argument--Kings(chinook) and Coho ain't Sockeye. EPA defends its action by valuing the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery, "$2.0 billion" and "15,000 jobs." FD at EPA_AR_0082945. That value is overwhelmingly sockeye-driven. Bristol Bay produces "about half of the world's Sockeye salmon." per EPA_AR_0082943. But the streams EPA is protecting at the mine site don't contain sockeye. PLP's sampling of the 8.5 miles proposed for fill found Coho and Chinook, roughly 370 juvenile Coho and 50 juvenile Chinook in NFK 1.190, and 344 juvenile Coho and 12 juvenile Chinook in NFK 1.200. FEIS at EPA_AR_0095026, EPA_AR_0092560. Zero sockeye. EPA's own brief concedes sockeye are found "immediately adjacent" and "immediately downstream" of the mine site, not in the streams being destroyed. Doc. 215 p 46. EPA bridges this gap through indirect mechanisms: headwater streams supply nutrients, gravel, and flow to downstream sockeye habitat. FD at EPA_AR_0083078-79. Scientifically plausible, but the Army Corps evaluated the same mechanisms and concluded the mine "is not expected to affect overall productivity in the greater Koktuli River basin." FEIS, Ch. 4 at EPA_AR_0095966. The cost-benefit problem is straightforward. EPA credits the full $2.0 billion fishery value as a benefit of its action without ever disaggregating how much of that value is attributable to the Coho and Chinook actually found at the mine site versus the sockeye connected only through indirect downstream effects the FEIS found insufficient. EPA has species-specific harvest data in the record (EPA_AR_0083049) but never uses it to apportion the benefit. Under Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743, 752 (2015), cost-benefit analysis requires "consideration of all the relevant factors", including which species are actually affected and what those species are actually worth. The brief's strongest species-specific link is Chinook: the Nushagak district accounts for 75% of Bristol Bay's commercial Chinook catch, and the Koktuli River is often the largest Chinook producer in the Nushagak watershed. EPA_AR_0083017, 0083030. But EPA never quantifies the Chinook-specific commercial value or separates it from the sockeye-dominated total, despite having species-specific commercial harvest data available in the record. EPA_AR_0083049. Funnily enough, coming out of an old case from the NRDC v. EPA, an agency is "free to emphasize or deemphasize particular factors" but must provide a reasoned basis for doing. NRDC v. EPA, 25 F.3d 1063, 1071 (D.C. Cir. 1994). Aggregating all species into a single undifferentiated value and attributing it to an action whose primary ecological evidence involves different species than those driving the value is not reasoned emphasis, it is (intentional?) obfuscation. tldr; EPA put $2.0 billion on the benefits side of the ledger. The ecological evidence at the mine site supports a fraction of that figure. How large a fraction is unknowable because EPA never did the math. There is no scientific disagreement, it's a simple analytical failure that makes the cost-benefit weighing un-reviewable. Kill shot. 🎯
