WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT FOOL'S GOLD
Nature’s Salmon Factory Threatened
By Bill Schneider, 7-05-07
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There's still gold in those hills, and not just the fool's gold people wear around their necks or fingers, but real gold. Now, we have to work together to make sure the fool's good doesn't destroy the real gold.
If we need another reason, which we don't, to repeal the Mining Law of 1872, consider what might happen to one of the most remote, most productive, fisheries in the world, the Bristol Bay area of southwest Alaska.
Bristol Bay is a long way from the New West, you may be asking, so why should we be concerned? That's the first question I asked, too, and here's my answer.
First, most of us eat salmon, right? And most anglers and hunters I know dream about Alaskan salmon fishing or remote hunts for caribou or moose. And those among us who don't hunt or fish still yearn for a chance to marvel at the scenery of the last frontier, right?
Well, if we want to keep doing this, we should join in the growing chorus to defeat what might be the largest and most destructive mining venture ever conceived, the Pebble Mine.
That mine was the subject of a breakfast session at the recent Outdoor Writers Convention of America meeting in Roanoke, Virginia. Leah Elwell, conservation director for the Federation of Fly Fishers from Livingston, Montana, made eating breakfast difficult with her description of destruction sure to be caused by the proposed Pebble Mine.
Which obviously should be re-named something like the Gargantuan Boulder Mine because it's two miles across, twice as big as the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, and about the same size as the Bingham Canyon Pit near Salt Lake City, which is currently considered the largest excavation on earth.
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| Seventy percent of Alaskans oppose the Pebble Mine. Photo courtesy of the Renewable Resources Coalition. | |
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Elwell then went through mine's stats, which are staggering--a 120-mile haul road through pristine wilderness along Lake Iliamna, which is the size of Lake Erie, 2,000 temporary construction workers and residences and other ancillary development, 1,000 permanent workers to operate the mine and dig a hole you'll be able to see from the space shuttle, and the capper for me, a tailings "pond" created by the largest earthen dam on earth, four miles across and bigger than Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri in Montana and the current largest dam on earth, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze in China. This dam does not create recreational reservoir. It's intended to hold back the toxic byproducts of the massive mine and keep them from poisoning even more water downstream. And we're talking real poison here because the mine plans to use the cyanide-leaching process that has sterilized many streams and that has been banned by the voters of Montana.
Then Elwell really made us choke on our French toast when she said, "This is only the beginning. There are lots of other mines coming, so this is just the tip of the iceberg and it sets the stage for more development."
About 1,000 square miles of federal and state land has been leased in the area around the proposed Pebble Mine site. The remoteness of the area has saved it from the draglines to date, but with the new major road built to the Pebble Mine, more mines would follow.
The Pebble Mine is not just a gold mine. The miner, a Canadian company called Northern Dynasty Mines, also dredge copper and molybdenum out of this fragile landscape. But it's the gold that gets to me. Roughly 85 percent of the gold mined in the world goes to make jewelry. If we were destroying the world's best salmon fishery for a needed commodity, it might be a little different, but for gold chains?
This fact has even brought Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) out in opposition to the mine. Stevens, commonly considered one of the most pro-development, anti-environment senators, joins 70 percent of Alaska residents opposing the mine.
Normally, such a line up would mean denial, but most conservationist still worry the mine will get the great light from the politicians. Right now, the fate of Bristol Bay rests in the Alaska legislature, which has to approve the mine, so let's hope they see the real gold on and under the surface of southwest Alaska--the salmon, the caribou, the bears, the scenic beauty, and don't vote for the fool's gold.
Footnote: If you'd like to get involved, which I hope you do, here are three websites where you can get more information and find out how to make a difference: The Sportsman Alliance for Alaska, Renewable Resources Coalition, and Trout Unlimited.
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Comments
The US population can buy gold, anytime, from anywhere in the world. There is lots for sale. But you can only get red salmon in numbers from Bristol Bay. Not from China, Australia, Africa, Russia, Canada, or Nevada.
Whatever you can do to stop this travesty, please do it. Drilling for oil on the North Slope is 1% of the danger that this mining and roading project will foster. Wells are capped. Open pit mining and the spoils areas, along with the exposed runoff and drainage, are too dangerous to be considered in this watershed. This is a bad, bad deal. Bristol Bay is a gem, a jewel, a goose laying annual golden eggs, and very, very important to a whole subsistence economy. The mine is someone else making a lot of money, with no guarentees for future environmental health. Stop the Pebble Mine!!!
Do humans ever learn?
http://www.alaskacoalition.org
I just spent a week in my home village of Koliganek, just west of the Pebble project, and in the heart of BLM's proposed Bristol Bay mining district. The whole time I was there the river bank was lined with people splitting and hanging fish. Salmon, whether it is smoked, dried, salted, or filleted is the main source of food for the long winter months. If you go to any household in that area, I guarantee you will find a freezer full of salmon, moose, and caribou. These three staples provide for food during the winter where food prices sometimes quadruple the prices of urban areas.
I personally do not feel that this project is for the good, only to line the pockets of NDM and its shareholders, leaving us with a big hole in the ground, and a large toxic waste tailings dam that forever threatens our way of life that has been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.
Like many life time residents say, the fish have been coming for 1000's of years. A mine might only last 20 to 70 yrs. When the land gets ripped up an poisoned where will we turn when the mine plays out? Imagine a 4 mile wide, ??? mile long, and 700 foot high pile of powdered rock capable of producing sulfuric acid for centuries just waiting for an earthquake or major storm to spill down the Koktuli River - a key salmon spawning river - into the Mulchatna and on down the Nushagak. Imagine trucks hauling ore or sodium cyanide, explosive fertilizer and other chemicals breaking down and plunging into Lake Iliamna, Alaska's largest lake and spawning grounds for the world's largest Sockeye Salmon run. This lake where one can watch a small rock sink to the bottom in 30+ feet of water it is so clear - now. Where will this proposed mine put the millions of gallons of waste water that are likely to flow into the pit - especially in the fall when it can rain so hard boaters have to pull over as they can't see to drive. Where in 1992 or 93 I was told we had 83 days of rain in a 90 period starting in June. Where will the mining dust go? All over the lands that now support caribou, moose, and yes into the waters supporting salmon, trout, pike and other important food fish. Even tiny amounts of copper have been shown to be toxic to fish and aquatic life supporting fish.
Alaska needs to ban cyanide processing, strengthen water quality standards, enact mandatory full price reclamation BONDING - no "letters of credit", and create the Jay Hammond reserve in the headwaters of the Mulchatna and Kvichak watersheds. The state should NOT subsidise mine development in any way and mines should share profits with the state citizens on the same schedule as the oil companies do now.
I don't believe for one minute that miners have the technology or willingness to keep the environmental promises their promoters are making to us. A friend of mine who works in the British Columbia mine mitigation and reclamation industry says - there WILL be accidents and spills; most could be "mitigated" but there's always the potential for the catastrophic accident. He said he appreciates my fear of mine development.
Please support our efforts to halt mining in Bristol Bay Alaska.
So the answer is simple: no mine. If you want gold, it is being mined in the Great Basin in Nevada by Canadian companies every day. The market for most minerals is now China. They are buying the worlds mineral supply, and to lose a sustainable fishery of the magnitude of Bristol Bay in exchange for some baubles to hang on some limp wrist in NYC, on some Arab oil sheik, some Chinese concubine's throat, is insane. No Pebble Mine, now or ever. Too much food, good food, produced by that drainage to lose it to some ill conceived mining proposal.