The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed in 2025 by five tribal governments whose members hold an interest in the region for traditional harvests and activities. IPOP, a Las Vegas-based company, has proposed mining gold by dredging a nearly three-mile section of Bonanza Channel in Safety Sound, a sheltered body of water that flows into Norton Sound. The project was originally pitched as the basis for an Alaska-themed reality show that was to be called Rivers of Gold, an aspect the company has since said was dropped. It has been widely opposed by residents of Nome and the Bering Strait region, as well as by Kawerak Inc., a regional tribal consortium; the regional Native-owned Bering Straits Native Corp.; and the local Native-owned Norton Sound Economic Development Corp.
Gleason said the Corps' Hawaii-based Pacific Division, which approved the permit in 2024, failed to properly explain why it reached a different conclusion from the Alaska district office, which denied the application in 2022. She cited divergences in the analysis of impacts to migratory birds, the channel's floor and turbidity in the water column, and noted that the Pacific Division used a study the Alaska district had discredited. The Pacific Division "failed to explain its rationale for reaching a different conclusion from the District; indeed, it did not even acknowledge the District's different conclusions," Gleason wrote.
In its defense, the Corps argued that the tribal plaintiffs' allegations were "vague and ambiguous" in the way they defined terms including "pristine, ecological valuable estuary," "haven for subsistence users" and "first such suction dredge mine project," it said in its July 16, 2025 answer to the complaint.
The plaintiffs, the Village of Solomon, the King Island Native Community, the Village of Council, the Chinik Eskimo Community and the Native Village of White Mountain, welcomed the ruling as protecting an area they say is critically important to their food security and cultures. Deilah Johnson, treasurer and tribal resources director for the Village of Solomon, which has the closest geographic ties to the channel, said tribal members return regularly to fish, pick berries and connect with their heritage. She said Solomon serves as a seasonal village used for annual youth and elder camps, and that year-round Solomon residents were displaced from the site in the 1950s when the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the school. “When we're there, we feel whole,” she said. “We always say, you know, 'Our heart is in Solomon.'”
Separately, IPOP has been unable to perform development work at the site. The project lacks a land-use permit from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, which rejected the application last year and rejected IPOP’s appeal in March. In a 34-page decision signed by DNR Commissioner John Crowther, the department said IPOP failed to demonstrate that surface use of the land was necessary to dredge what it says would be up to 900,000 cubic yards of material a year. The department said that failure conflicted with requirements in Alaska's constitution, laws and regulations. A large-scale dredging project not supported by exploration data “would result in unnecessary and undue degradation,” the rejection said.
Johnson said she expects IPOP to keep trying to obtain permits, and that the groups that have fought the project for years will keep doing so. "I feel like we've really bonded over some of this, because it's kind of like trauma bonding," she said.