Photo by Jason Morrison
The Pending Pebble Mine Disaster By Jon Lyman
A mineral prospect known as the Pebble Mine squats atop the greatest salmon fishery in the world in western Alaska. While water from these tussock-covered hills sustain salmon, trout and grayling that rear or live in the Bristol Bay water-
Inset photo by Brian Okeefe
shed every year, these same waters may soon put the fish at risk. The headwaters of Upper Talarik Creek and the Koktuli River are fed by the winter snows and groundwater running off the rolling alpine tundra. It is a high, empty prospect wandered by thousands of caribou and hundreds of bears and is home to nesting waterfowl and raptors. For the past several years the area has also been the seasonal home to drill crews and exploratory rigs belonging to Northern Dynasty Mines, Inc. Although the mining company pledges to follow the highest environmental standards, its drill mud and oiled sites already discolor what has always been a pristine wilderness. The high tundra above Lake Iliamna is wandered by the second-largest herd of caribou in Alaska. Remnant snowfields often provide respite from insects to tens of thousands of them after calving each spring. Even so, the Mulchatna herd is dwarfed by the number of salmon the watersheds produce. For millions of years, rainbow trout and Pacific salmon have spawned and reared their young there. For tens of thousands of years, native Alaskans harvested these fish as part of
their fishing, hunting and gathering subsistence lifestyle. For the past hundred years, the incredible abundance of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fed America and the world salmon packaged by commercial fisheries. In the past 30 years, anglers have joined the quest for trout and salmon by staying at high-end lodges near Lake Iliamna. Today the pristine waters of Bristol Bay continue to supply resources to a wealth of fisheries. But the Pebble Mine may bring all of that to an abrupt end. If the mine owners have their way, by 2015 a “world-class” mine will open to develop two mineralizations. The Pebble West mine will carve a hole thousands of feet deep and miles square to remove huge gold and copper resources. The Pebble East will be an underground mine, but its footprint and tailing deposits will add substantially to surface debris and the adjacent environment. The Pebble East mineralization begins between 1,500 and 2,000 feet under the earth’s surface and reaches depths of over 6,000 feet. All of the waste rock has to
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Photo by Ben Knight
The plans for Pebble West would place a larger scar on a pristine wilderness than the Bingham Canyon Mine southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah.
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go somewhere, and, of course, it will be on the surface where it can contaminate this pristine, headwaters area. The proposed earthen dam that would hold back the heavy metals and tailings would span the headwaters of one of Bristol Bay’s most important salmon-producing rivers and be large enough to be seen from space. It would dam both the north and south forks of the Koktuli River, stand taller than either Hoover or Grand Coulee dams and be longer than the Three Gorges Dam on the Yellow River in China. Cyanide leaching for gold would create a toxic brew. This great containment of cyanide and heavy metals would have a surface depth of more than 50 feet of toxic water and rest uneasily in an area of high seismic activity, subject to the slippage along the same fault that brought the Good Friday earthquake to south central Alaska in 1959. This is the same earthquake where old Valdez disappeared and the bluff homes in Anchorage slid into the sea. Lance Trasky, former Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) habitat regional division supervisor for Bristol Bay, warned the board of fisheries: “If permitting for the mine is allowed to proceed under current state and federal standards, the very largescale mining of sulfide-based copper ore in the Nushagak and Kvichak drainages will physically destroy thousands of acres of very high-quality spawning and rearing habitat. Over time it will almost certainly seriously degrade fisheries habitat and production in downstream portions of these drainages.” Former Governor Jay Hammond once put this a bit more succinctly: “I can’t imagine a worse location for a mine of this type unless it was in my kitchen.” Given that no large mine on this scale has ever been developed without adverse impacts to the environment, it would only be a matter of time before many of the salmon and trout in the Bristol Bay system either no longer existed or would be considered tainted for human use. Salmonids exist at the end of an evolutionary line of fishes that stretch back over 100 million years. They require very clean, cold, well-oxygenated waters to thrive. Much of that pristine water will be needed by the mines. Even
Photo by Lynn Scott
if the water was scrubbed and filtered before being returned to the rivers, spills will happen. As evidenced by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, even a few parts per million of pollutants can kill developing fish. Knowing this, many Alaskans have come out in strident opposition to the mine, but the state remains an extraction-based economy. Whether that extraction comes in the form of crude oil, natural gas, fish, timber or mineral wealth, Alaskans still pause before condemning any development that promises jobs. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources has a team to coordinate review of permits for such projects. While the Pebble prospects sit wholly on state property, the adjacent federal lands are also open to mineral entry. Accordingly, the state’s Large Mine Permitting Team has been instrumental in developing a steering committee that includes federal agencies to oversee technical working groups reviewing baseline studies for the proposed mines. Large Mine Coordinator Tom Crawford expressed frustration because no permit application has yet to be received from the developers. He qualifies the entire effort as an advanced exploration project, even though millions of dollars have already been spent. Other team members can only work on baseline studies and analysis until they know what is actually being proposed. ADF&G is only one voice in this process. And under previous Governor Frank Murkowski, regulations on polluting salmon streams were relaxed to allow for “mixing zones.” Even so, the proposed Pebble mines face stiff opposition from native Alaskans, commercial fishers and outdoor sports enthusiasts. Throughout Alaska’s history fishing has sustained the economy when all else has failed. Between the Russian’s rush for furs, the military buildup of World War II, the timber clear cuts of the 1950s, and the ongoing black gold rush of North Slope oil, the one constant has been Alaska’s fisheries. Even after New England-based fishing companies raped the runs of salmon just prior to statehood, Alaskans were willing to sacrifice by adhering to a severely restricted harvest to rebuild the once-great runs of fish.
This fish came to hand only to be released. What future, if any, does it have should the Pebble Mine invade its home?
In all but one of the past 10 years, that sacrifice on the part of all Alaskans paid off in harvests of more than 100 million salmon annually. Today, Alaska may draw much of its money from oil, but Alaskans still know that their greatest wealth is wild salmon. So why is Pebble steamrolling on? What would possibly possess the State of Alaska to consider this trade of its certain wealth of fishes for gold and copper? Huge wealth may be contained in the two mineral deposits under the Pebble claims. Beginning in the 1980s, Cominco, a minerals exploration company, identified a large ore body in the area. In 2001, Northern Dynasty Mines, Inc., a Canadian firm, took over. As stated on its Web site (www.pebblepartnership.com) in the Project Information section on Overview & History, “By early 2005, extensive drilling had confirmed a measured and indicated resource of 4.1 billion tons containing 42.1 million ounces of gold, 24.6 billion pounds of copper, 1.4 billion pounds of molybdenum and additional silver.” Northern Dynasty has now confirmed two prospects, Pebble West and Pebble East. The pebble partnership web site states, a “deeper but richer deposit” at Pebble East “now stands at 3.7 billion tons containing 42.6 billion pounds of copper, 39.6 million ounces of gold and 2.7 billion pounds of molybdenum.” That is more than a few shiny stones. Along with a tiny portion of this
wealth, the state of Alaska stands to gain about a thousand new, good-paying jobs and a hundred-mile road from Cook Inlet to the mine site. No one is mentioning the additional costs to the state for schools, social services and bureaucrats. Nor has anyone started the equations necessary to factor in the additional costs for the huge amounts of electricity needed for copper extraction. The two villages nearest the mine would be completely overwhelmed by the thousands of new residents creating a small city that could become one of the largest rural communities in Alaska. To see the nature of the impact and sensitivity to both the environment and local concerns of such a company town, we need to consider the corporate players. The Pebble partners now include Northern Dynasty Mines, Inc. and Anglo American Corporation. Anglo is the international firm responsible for the application in Patagonia to dam four great rivers to produce the hydropower needed for the one of the few copper prospects in the world that may rival the Pebble Mine. According to several Web sites, both Northern Dynasty and Anglo American have, at best, dubious environmental records. On Wikipedia.org, the Anglo American entry reads in part: “In August 2007 British charity War on Want published a report accusing Anglo American of profiting from the abuse of people in the developing countries in which the company operates. According to the charity, ‘in
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. Photo by Brian Okeefe
The beauty of this area is too pristine to forever change it with the proposed Pebble Mine.
the department, it would now be wholly autonomous, following the protocols and permitting structures of the Department of Natural Resources. I was told that two senior habitat biologists, who somehow escaped the first purge under the Murkowski administration, have been told to find other work. Meanwhile, the ADF&G commissioner has taken no position on the mine. No one I spoke with at the ADF&G will even comment that the mine could impact salmon fisheries. But others are speaking out. Two voter initiatives are now working their way through the Alaska court system. Those initiatives could stop the mine, but mine supporters believe the initiatives will be set aside by the state’s high courts. The most far reaching of the petitions was ruled unconstitutional by a state judge in March 2008. But the battle is just beginning; the sorry story of the Pebble Mine has yet to really start. Now is the time to shut it down!
Protection will get to try to reclaim the Philippines and South Africa, whatever is left. local communities threatened with Some residents are waiting for the Anglo American mines have faced ADF&G to re-assume responsibility severe repression in their fight to stay for the Division of Habitat and on their land, while in Ghana and Permits on July 1, 2008. The Habitat Mali, local communities see little of the huge profits being made by AngloGold Ashanti but suffer from fear and intimidation and from the damaging impact of its mines on their While I live thousands of miles from western environment, health and Alaska and have never been there, livelihoods.’ ” I was able to compile the accompanying story Remember, however, using material from Web sites and phone interthat Alaska remains a views. There is an incredible amount of material circulating on the Pebble Mine prospects resource-extraction state. even though no permit application or plans are The mindset is still one of in place. I encourage FFF members to do a litdevelopment amid fragtle research using the following list of some mented regulations. Former Web sites: Governor Frank Murkowski www.renewableresourcescoalition.org/northern_dynasty_plans.htm attempted to give the state’s www.pebblepartnership.com/ natural gas to the oil comwww.dnr.state.ak.us/mlw/mining/largemine/index.htm panies (at no charge) for 30 www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo_American_plc years to get a gas pipeline This problem will be with us for a long time, and the stakes are high on both sides of the built. Much of southeast equation. Learn what is at risk for the greatest wild salmon and trout fisheries in the world. Alaska’s timber went to Japan for nearly 50 years, with the stumpage on 500Division was stripped from ADF&G year-old Sitka spruce less than the cost Education Committee chair Jon Lyman is from Juneau, Alaska, where he worked for the state of a Big Mac (the stumpage fee on a during the last administration and of Alaska for 25 years; 23 of those years was single Sitka spruce that resold in assigned to the Department of Natural with the Fish and Game Department. He is writJapan for tens of thousands of dollars Resources, where it faced the classic ing a book detailing aspects of our fly-fishing was often under $3.50). The fox-in-the-hen-house situation. Not history. We are certainly looking forward to its Department of Natural Resources is many “Fish and Game habitat chickpublication. charged with permitting developments ens” remain after their time with the like the Pebble Mine. The Alaska engineers whose charge was opening Editor’s note: This story could very Department of Fish and Game gets to the larder door. As the division is well be one of the most important we’ve being readied to return to ADF&G, discuss fisheries values but has no real ever shared with our readers. Please don’t one habitat biologist confided that leverage. Once the damage is done, take the threat to Alaska’s salmon fishwhile the division will be housed in the Department of Environmental eries lightly.
Researching Pebble Mine
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