The public had many opinions about mining minerals on the seabed off Alaska’s coast. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management closed its public comment period on April 1, and now the agency is reviewing roughly 90,000 submissions.
It’s a first-of-its-kind lease sale, covering more than 113 million acres of federal offshore waters. It includes most of the Aleutian Islands, parts of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean, and parts of the Gulf of Alaska.
The comment period originally closed March 2, but the federal agency extended it through April 1. It drew what the bureau called a significant level of public participation, though the agency said it didn’t know whether 90,000 comments was the most it had ever received.
After reviewing the comments, the next step is called Area Identification. It is where the federal agency narrows down which specific areas, if any, move forward. There is no set timeline for that phase.
Several more steps would follow before any lease sale could occur. Those include an environmental analysis where agency scientists study the potential impacts of mining in those areas.
