They wanted to give me a look at the mine site before we left for the river expedition, so on my second day we chartered a floatplane. We landed first at a native Athabascan village called Nondalton, where locals’ subsistence lifestyles are based almost entirely on salmon runs. (“Pebble always promises jobs to pull us out of poverty,” said one village leader, “and we say, ‘What poverty? We have the salmon.’ ”) Then we flew toward a series of rounded emerald-green hills. Helicopters began to appear, ferrying loads of equipment between core-sampling rigs — small drill sites surrounded by temporary fencing.
The Pebble Partnership, a consortium of foreign mining companies sharing the claim, has gone out of its way to build community support for the project, pouring tens of millions of dollars into preparing a thorough environmental impact statement. “Many of us are Alaskans and want to bring forward a win-win,” partnership public affairs VP Mike Heatwole told me. “We’re not going to compromise one industry for another.” Partnership officials have asserted that the big dam will be “built to withstand seismic events larger than could actually happen in Alaska,” and again and again they’ve insisted they won’t begin mining unless they see a clear way to protect local fish and wildlife.
“But they’ve drilled more than 700 test holes already,” Woody said, into her headset’s microphone. “And as soon as you break up that ore and expose it to water and air, even in small amounts, you’re leaking sulfites.”
The Pebble mine proposal that could go before state, local, and federal regulators this year calls for two main sites — one an open pit and the other underground. Both will require enormous volumes of water to be diverted from nearby rivers in order to separate ore from the waste minerals, and big holes will penetrate so far below the water table they’ll need vast pumping systems to be working at all times to keep the pits from becoming toxic lakes. More than 100 miles of new roads will have to be built to connect the mine site to a brand new deepwater port city out on Cook Inlet; slurry pipelines will have to go in parallel to that road to carry the ore to waiting ships; and all of this will require so much electrical power — more than the entire city of Anchorage uses — that a new power plant will have to be constructed, possibly across the Cook Inlet on Kodiak Island, with more than 200 miles of transmission lines to carry the current.
“Duane, you paying attention?” Woody asked into her headset. “We’ll be coming down the Mulchatna River, which runs east-west, just over that next rise.” That got my interest. The Mulchatna was the last leg of the canoe trip we’d begin the next day.
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The starting point for our river expedition was well to the east, on a big lake called Lower Twin Lake, at the junction of the Aleutian and Alaska mountain ranges, where they merge to form the Chigmits. The Chilikadrotna River, our main waterway for the trip, drains out of that lake and runs 60 miles through watersheds upstream of the mine before joining the Mulchatna.
After arriving by floatplane, we sloshed back and forth to the beach, carrying three inflatable canoes, numerous dry bags, and two bright yellow steel barrels to protect our food from hungry grizzlies. Oberlatz wanted to wait until the next day to get started, so we pitched camp in low trees and set off to get the only overview we’d have, from a ridgeline high above.
Wild blueberries grew everywhere, along with low-bush cranberries, and we could see shredded areas where a grizzly had eaten entire bushes. He’d ripped a big trench in the dirt, too, hunting a ground squirrel dumb enough to think an underground tunnel would keep it safe from a hungry predator with rototiller claws.
Then, a quarter-mile off, we noticed a grizzly standing tall.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Oberlatz. “He’s spent his whole life out here, and he’s never seen anything like us. He’s just trying to figure out what the hell we are. Let him get our scent.”
Oberlatz, who once shot dead a grizzly that charged him, a friend, and that friend’s 12-year-old daughter, carried a .44 Magnum revolver in a hip holster. He kept it loaded but with the hammer on an empty chamber.
The grizzly ran off, so we kept pushing upward. Thunder cracked. Rain started and then turned to hail as the temperature dropped and lightning flashes grew more frequent. The time delay to thunder was never more than a second, putting the strikes at well under a mile from our position.
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March 16th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Mr. Duane,
I am glad you had the chance to see some of the Great Alaskan Wilderness and realize what is actually at stake. Did anyone on your trip mention to you the $300 million a year the Bristol Bay fishery is worth? That doesnt even include processors/wholesalers, shippers to get product to market, grocery stores, restarants or many other outlets that utilize this resource.
Glad you might also understand that the final price of a leakage by the mine would not be just valued in dollars but as a costly loss of such a grand resource as our environment actually is.
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David Otness Reply:
March 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Thanks for articulating to a larger audience what is truly at stake here.
I have lived in the Bristol Bay country and there is no way on earth Pebble can be developed without harming if not destroying a significant part of the salmon runs.
Trace amounts of copper disrupt a salmon’s ability to navigate, it has been proven; as has their ability to hide from predators when another salmon fingerling emits distress pheromones they can no longer discern, triggering an escape function.
It should also be considered that this is part of the North American Flyway and massive amounts of swans, ducks, geese and shorebirds transit this area two times a year, nesting in the watersheds of the Yukon Flats, the Kuskokwim and Bristol Bay.
They will want to land on the toxic lakes when bucking into the southeastern storms of the equinox.
They also must run the gauntlet of Tar Sands development in Alberta
twice a year. Same story, toxic lakes that use propane cannons to scare them away when most vulnerable and tired.
500 birds died in one sitting last year when the cannons were unattended.
We have choices, hard choices to make as we sit at the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements.
Will we fail ourselves and heirs to the earth or is this where we begin to make the choices we would wish to be remembered for?
Would you eat a gold fish or use that gold to buy a farmed salmon?
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March 17th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I visited Alaska in August 2008 and was totally overwhelmed by the raw beauty and magnitude of the wilderness. I now proudly display the “Stop Pebble Mine” decal on my car here on the coast of North Carolina. I flew to Port Alsworth, backpacked and drank water directly from the lake. Returning to Anchorage, I flew to Nondalton and saw the spawning salmon in the river below. We,as humans, have messed things up enough. Leave this area ALONE!!!!!!
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March 22nd, 2009 at 4:29 am
What a spectacle? I wonder who else will be motivated to have a travel adventure up there now? Great eco-tourism opportunity, no?
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March 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Good story. You did a nice job summarizing the issue with Pebble Mine and describing one of my favorite rivers in Alaska. The sad thing is that there are hundreds of wild rivers in Alaska like the Chilikadrotna, and nearly everyone of them faces some threat from development or human encroachment. Most of the great salmon streams starting at Lake Iliamna and continuing down the Alaska Peninsula lost their pristine character when fishing lodges were built on the big lakes that feed them. The only reason why Twin Lakes (headwaters of the Chilikadrotna) and Turquoise Lake (headwaters of the Mulchatna) were spared was because they are located within the wilderness boundary of Lake Clark National Park. I was very sad when a lodge was built just recently at the outlet of the Alagnak River on Kukaklek Lake as this was the last of the big lake and river systems that was not developed. The ‘wild and scenic’ status does not protect these rivers from this type of development.
One comment: you mention thousands of elk in Alaska. The only elk I am aware of in Alaska are the roosevelt elk that were introduced to Afognak Island near Kodiak and in southeast Alaska and the farmed elk near Delta.
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April 9th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Having fished the Bristol Bay area 5 times now (looking forward to my 6th this summer), and investigated fishing opportunities for trout and salmon around the world, it is clear that this area of the world is unparalleled as a fishery. Losing it would harm not only the fish, and the fishing industry, but the entire bioenvironment of the region-everyting from the bugs to the bears would be adversely affected and the world would lose a tremendous resource. The problem I see as I visit each summer is that while people like us debate this issue and hope the mining project will not occur, the reality is that every day in this area there are helicopters in the air, and people and equipment on the ground moving forward with the implementation of infrastructure needed for this mine to be created. In other words, we’re talking while they’re working. Unless powerful people with the ability to stop this activity are engaged quickly, all of our words and worries will be wasted and our worst fears realized. If anyone knows how to get the right people to put a stop to this, please let the rest of us know. So far, postcards to congresspeople and local government officials have seemed meaningless.
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Trudy Glass Reply:
April 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I have been in touch a friend who forwarded this to a former EPA regional supervisor. Hopefully that will be of some benefit!
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October 13th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Thank you all so much for your positive comments, as well as the eloquently written article. As a Yup’ik Eskimo born and raised in Bristol Bay, it is especially concering because we depend on our fisheries and wildlife for subsistence food and commercial income. We’ve been carrying on our Native hunting and fishing traditions for thousands of years. It’s a David vs. Goliath struggle, and I hope that a pristine bountiful renewable resource that can be here for another thousands of years will be preserved against a short term toxic proposal like the Pebble Mine. It will last a few decades and leave generations upon generations a permanent scar. It’s a human rights issue, so thank you all for your support and please join us in protecting Bristol Bay!
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