Alaska Chooses Largest Gold Mine Over Clean Water

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet. Posted August 29, 2008.

Editor's Note: Check out the video to the right from the film "Red Gold" by Felt Soul Media.

The spawning of salmon is something of a primal, epic drama. After spending their life of several years in the sea, the fish make their way up streams to the places where they were born. They don't eat, all their energy focused on their single-minded goal of spawning, after which they will die. Their flesh turns red from the effort, and hormones cause the males to develop a hump and a sinister-looking, toothy hooked beak.

The salmon life cycle is also part of the cycle of life for thousands of Alaska natives and Alaskans in general. Bristol Bay is known as the world's largest wild salmon fishery. With more than 30 million salmon worth hundreds of millions of dollars caught per year, it is a bedrock of commercial fishing and Alaska natives' subsistence fishing as well as a popular sport-fishing destination. Even people who have dispersed to Anchorage or other towns return yearly, like the salmon, to fish in Bristol Bay. The state's fishing industry is highly regulated to ensure the salmon population is not overfished.

But on Aug. 26, Alaskans voted down a ballot measure that proponents had cast as crucial to the future survival of Bristol Bay salmon. Ballot measure 4, which survived a challenge that went all the way to the state Supreme Court to remain on the state's primary ballot, would have prohibited large metal mines from contaminating salmon streams and drinking water sources. Though by law the ballot measure couldn't name a specific project, everyone knew it was aimed at the proposed Pebble Mine, which if developed as planned would be North America's largest open pit gold mine, also mining copper and molybdenum (a crucial element in steel).

Opponents of the ballot measure, which was defeated by 57 percent of voters (95,338 to 71,456), called it a "mining shutdown" and said it could not only block the Pebble Mine but paralyze Alaskan mining in general and force existing mines to close. Much of Alaska was settled during the gold rush of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and like oil, mining is seen by many as central to the state's economy and identity. It is also seen as an economic lifeline in a time of astronomically high energy prices and stagnation in fishery profits partly because of competition from Chilean and Norwegian fish farms.

Multinational mining giant Anglo American and its Canadian partner in the venture, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., say they will safely contain waste from Pebble Mine, namely the sulfuric acid that results when sulfide ore is disturbed and exposed to oxygen -- also known as acid mine drainage. But opponents of the mine say no sulfide mine has ever operated without leakage, and they also fear cyanide, which is normally used in the refining of gold.

John Shively, CEO of Pebble Partnership, notes that the mine proposal is only in the early stages and must still undergo numerous environmental studies and permitting processes including being subject to state and federal water protections. The partnership promises that no harm will come to salmon.

But given the record of resource exploitation in Alaska, many are skeptical. Alaska native communities around Prince William Sound are still feeling the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 and are disgusted with the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision holding the company's punitive damages at $507 million. Residents of small towns like Tatitlek on the sound say they are still unable to eat local shellfish and seabirds, since thousands of gallons of oil still contaminate the beach.

The Pogo gold mine in northern Alaska, run by Teck Cominco, has the nation's eighth-highest releases of the neurotoxin mercury, with more than 2,000 pounds in 2005, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Likewise, Teck Cominco's Red Dog mine, the world's largest zinc mine, near the Chukchi Sea in northwestern Alaska, has been blamed for contaminating the Ikalukrok and Wulik rivers after melting permafrost contributed to acid leakage. Only 32 people live near the mine, so critics say it has been able to get away with contamination with little oversight. It also benefits the NANA Regional Corporation, which owns the land and is one of 13 native corporations formed by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

The EPA ordered remediation at Red Dog in 1991 and several years later lodged a $4.7 million penalty against Teck Cominco. Teck Cominco also originally explored and owned the rights to the Pebble Mine project before selling to Northern Dynasty. Critics of the Pebble project, including former Cominco environmental affairs director Bruce Switzer, say the fact that this company sold such a potentially lucrative project shows it is not practically or environmentally viable.

"How can Vancouver stock promoters (Northern Dynasty) and inexperienced South Africans (Anglo American) protect this environment when the best and most experienced northern mining company had so many problems for so long in the far more benign environment at Red Dog, and, in light of all their experience, walked away from Pebble?" asked Switzer in an editorial in the Anchorage Daily News.

See more stories tagged with: alaska, salmon, clean water, mining, pebble mine

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.

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