The most important document on the Pebble Project’s path to a key permit to mine the headwaters of Bristol Bay has been released by the Army Corps of Engineers and utterly fails the people of Alaska.

In a major development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Pebble Mine on Wednesday.

In an hourlong interview with the Anchorage Daily News editorial board and reporters Friday, Alaska’s senior senator said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election should be made public. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also said she’ll likely call for more public-comment time on a federal review of the Pebble copper and gold prospect.

The Alaska Senate majority recently conducted a poll to gauge Alaskans’ opinions on a wide-ranging set of issues. One question was whether Alaskans supported or opposed the proposed Pebble mine. Though the question assumed that “all environmental safeguards are met” for the mine, 61 percent of the 7,407 Alaska respondents still opposed its development.

I've been asked recently to review the Pebble mine project, which will soon release its Draft Environmental Impact Statement. It's what I've done professionally for the past 29 years, though I usually work on the company side, rather than for the environmental opposition. My specialty is water treatment: I design systems that cleanse polluted water during the mining operation and after it closes. Thus far, what I've seen of this project isn't pretty.