President Donald Trump’s plan to jump-start deep-sea mining in international waters using an obscure U.S. law is poised to generate fierce debate this week between mining advocates and environmental groups.
In public hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, NOAA will vet its proposed rule laying the framework for the U.S. government to issue licenses and permits to mine the ocean floor for mineral-rich nodules considered essential to power the nation’s technology economy.
The proposal relies on technical revisions to a 45-year-old law, the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, which tasks NOAA with overseeing commercial recovery of polymetallic nodules from the seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Environmentalists call the rulemaking a dangerous step toward damaging pristine seafloor habitats and a blatant end-around of international law.
“Given that one of NOAA’s core missions is to study and protect the ocean, it’s deeply troubling to see the agency charged with the task of opening the floodgates to a destructive industry like seabed mining,” said Jeff Watters, a spokesperson for the Ocean Conservancy, in a statement. Watters predicted the U.S. could “unleash an environmental tragedy.”
