Mining project in Alaska could threaten wild salmon run

In Alaska, a battle over natural resources is pitting mining interests against commercial fishermen and environmentalists. Corporations want to exploit the most significant copper and gold deposits ever discovered in the state's remote southwest. Opponents say the project threatens the largest wild sockeye salmon run in the world. FSRN’s Jacob Resneck reports.

TRANSCRIPT:

Before each salmon season, a group of Bristol Bay fishermen gather in the community of Dillingham, Alaska to honor the names of those lost at sea.

PASTOR: Sea travel is often dangerous to human life as we all know and so for all those that labor to bring the food of the sea to our tables we ask for God’s protection from all harm.

But these days, it’s not the deadly ocean that has fishermen worried; it’s the proposed Pebble Mine near the spawning grounds of Bristol Bay’s salmon. An international consortium estimates the mine's gold, copper and other metals are worth more than $300 billion. But many veteran fishermen like Hjalmar Olson say that's not worth risking the livelihoods of thousands of people who make their living off fish.

HJALMAR OLSON: Well, we have an economy here with an average of $150 million dollars a year or more. Not everybody’s going to work in that mine. Why put an existing economy at risk over something that could kill it completely.

Fishermen like Olson fear that runoff from a giant mining operation would poison the water around Bristol Bay and kill the region's top natural resource. Each year, tens of millions of fish make the run from their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea to return to spawn in rivers and streams along the headwaters of Bristol Bay. Talk to any state official and they’ll tell you that Bristol Bay is a world leader in salmon production, yielding a harvest of around 30 million sockeye during a good season.

MICHAEL BLACK: Bristol Bay is certainly the premier.

That’s Michael Black, deputy commissioner for Alaska’s economic development department.

BLACK: The largest wild salmon fishery in the world and a very, very important part of the economy in the state and certainly the region.

But when you bring up the Pebble Mine, the state’s top politicians aren’t yet willing to take sides. Here’s Alaska Governor Sean Parnell speaking to Dillingham’s KDLG in early August.

SEAN PARNELL: My position is that the permitting has to work. And if a governor makes a decision up front before the science has spoken, and the people have spoken, then I think that’s bad for Alaskans.

At present, the site of the proposed Pebble Mine is only accessible by helicopter. It’s a sweeping, largely treeless and windswept area dotted with freshwater lakes. Mining is big business in the nation’s largest state and not something that can be ignored.

Drilling rigs are boring holes for core samples. The Pebble Partnerships’s spokesperson Mike Heatwole says mining has a tainted reputation but that the Pebble Partnership is committed to the long-haul.

MIKE HEATWOLE: You have to have a closure and reclamation plan as part of your operation, it’s not something that you start to do once you get underway it is part of your permit and your whole application piece. And the closure plan addresses, long-term what the area would like long-term, granted you’re going to change what you see here but once you’re done you’ll move it back to as close as you can.

The Pebble Partnership is a 50-50 split between British mining giant Anglo American and Northern Dynasty, based in British Columbia.

Mining means jobs and also royalties for the state. That's why many Alaskans whose livelihood isn't tied to Bristol Bay's salmon run support the idea of a giant gold mine that would enrich their state. In fact many of the mine's opponents have tempered their rhetoric to say they aren't against mining in general, they are against Pebble Mine.

Many indigenous Yup'iks are also concerned, as salmon caught in subsistence nets are a major food source for remote villages accessible only by air and sea. Tom Tilden is chief of the Curyung Tribe. He described his message to the British mining giant Anglo American when he traveled to London in 2008 to address the corporation's Board of Directors.

TOM TILDEN: I talked about how we are not misinformed folks. That we have a culture, a lifestyle and we were a proud Yup’ik people to live here. And that salmon is not only part of our culture, it was our art, it was in our music it was who we are, it was our lifestyle. We were not misinformed on how important salmon is to us because it is who we are and who we want to remain to be.

The Pebble Partnership hasn’t applied for permits yet and has asked Alaskans for patience until the plan was on the table.

But it has caught the attention of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency whose top official, Lisa Jackson, paid a visit to Dillingham recently after being invited by local tribes. She says EPA could very well have a say but that everyone is waiting for the mining companies to lay their plan on the table.

LISA JACKSON: We all are sort of all of us operating without very good information on that sector. And I’ve said from the beginning we should make our decisions based on science, based on the law, we will enforce the Clean Water Act, that is our job that is the oath I took when I became administrator, but also we are going to be transparent about it.

Meanwhile, big money is lining up to fight the $1 billion partnership between Anglo American and Northern Dynasty. The California-based Moore Foundation has been bankrolling millions of dollars in opposition efforts through campaigns as well as research into the salmon spawning grounds near the mining site.

On the lobbying front is former state Senate leader Rick Halford, a Republican who lives on Bristol Bay. Here he is addressing a rally this summer in Dillingham.

RICK HALFORD: Broadbased, multinational corporations’ responsibility is to its shareholders and its shareholders in the sense of profit. Its their obligation to leave as little in Alaska as possible, except waste and get as much money as they can out of any project.

The Pebble Partnership says they’ll file their mining plan next year, which will emphasize safety and sustainability.

But the political wrangling is already afoot with Alaska’s sole House member Rep. Don Young introducing legislation that would strip the EPA of a key power to regulate mining. The move is largely symbolic as Young's bill has little chance of progressing. But it’s a good indicator of this looming battle that’s dividing those who want to exploit the state’s mineral resources and those who  fear for the future of world's last great run of wild salmon.

Jacob Resneck, FSRN, Dillingham, Alaska