EPA Warns Pebble Mine Could Affect Sustainability of Bristol Bay Fishery
~Image by Alaskan artist Ray Troll
On Friday, the EPA released the results of their long-awaited draft environmental impact statement on potential large scale mining operations in the Bristol Bay watershed. Their conclusion was not a surprise to anyone who has gone beyond a superficial look at the controversial issue of mining in this sensitive and highly seismic region.
The notion of a 700 foot tall earthen dam that would need to remain intact forever, while sitting atop one of the most seismically active regions in the world is one of those things you don’t need to be a scientist to feel nervous about. But now, the scientists have weighed in.
Even if a large mine operated smoothly, with no engineering failures and no human-caused disasters, the EPA said in its analysis that miles of salmon rivers and streams could be lost or blocked, as could thousands of acres of wetlands that are vital to juvenile salmon.
“The report does conclude that there is a potential for certain activities associated with large-scale mining to have adverse impacts on the productivity and the sustainability of the salmon fishery in the watershed,” Dennis McLerran, administrator of Seattle-based EPA region 10 told reporters.
At stake is the world’s largest remaining wild salmon fishery that provides 14,000 jobs, and almost a half billion dollars a year in salmon.
Proponents of the mine say it will bring jobs, and the mineralogical riches of gold, copper, molybdenum and other precious metals could top $80 billion. What they don’t remind us is that local jobs would be few, the benefit to the state of Alaska is almost non-existent compared to the benefits we get from oil with our current tax structure, and the beneficiaries of all that money are not Alaskans, but huge multi-national mining conglomerates, not even based in the United States.
At risk is not only the fishery, and the already existing sustainable jobs, but a native culture and subsistence traditions that span thousands of years. Alaskans take the risk, and the reward goes to Anglo-American in the UK. Something’s wrong with that picture.
Locals in the immediate area don’t want the mine. Fishermen don’t want the mine. Native Corporations don’t want the mine. Most of the people in the state of Alaska don’t want the mine. And yet, the plans still seem to move forward, heading to the permitting process. In Alaska, the “permitting process” is more of an initiation ceremony really. I can’t recall a permit being denied.
“We conclude that, at a minimum, mining at this scale would cause the loss of spawning and rearing habitat for multiple species of anadromous and resident fish,” according to the EPA watershed assessment released Friday. And that’s even without the failure of one of the massive tailings dams the agency said could be as high as the Washington Monument.
In that case, agency scientists said, more than 30 miles of salmon-bearing streams would be destroyed, and others would have “greatly degraded habitat” for decades.
And, of course, the Parnell administration who has never met a multi-national corporation it didn’t bend over backwards for, is saying that the EPA has no jurisdiction and no right to tell us what fisheries we can and cannot destroy. The EPA has been in the cross-hairs of Republicans across the nation, and Pebble Mine is set to be the place where the confrontation comes to a head.
“Until now, no one in Alaska has been willing to listen to people in Bristol Bay about what they want,” he said. “The governor has turned a deaf ear. The attorney general has been outright hostile. No one has listened to the tribes or the fishing industry, and it’s gratifying that somebody is taking seriously the responsibility to protect those resources,” said Tim Bristol of Trout Unlimited in Alaska.
So, what can be done? Fortunately, the situation is not hopeless. Despite the whining from Captain Zero in the governor’s mansion, the EPA actually does have the legal authority and obligation under section 404c of the Clean Water Act to prohibit the disposal of mine waste into the Bristol Bay watershed if the science indicates that the fishery is at risk. Well, the science is now in, and it said exactly what opponents of this project have been saying for years – the fishery is at risk. In an unacceptable way.
You can click HERE to visit the Eartworks (No Dirty Gold) website where you can submit a letter to Lisa Jackson of the EPA, asking her to stop the mine. Remember, the government can stop this dangerous project right in its tracks by invoking its privilege under section 404c.
Wrong mine. Wrong place.
For now, I like Occam’s Razor. There has never been a mine of the size of Pebble that did not seriously pollute the local land and watershed. We are not yet ready to develop Pebble.
My own rule is, “No” is no longer a sufficient answer for progressives. We have a good land grant university for reasons just like the Pebble conundrum. Alaska has a wealth of mining opportunities along a large mineralized arc from Pebble north and east toward the upper Kuskokwim region, including west of Denali Park.. We should charge the University with examining the problem of safe mineral extraction, looking at different processes and different economic models, in balance with with our fisheries.
SM & KN,
KN, you seem quite preoccupied with my background and qualifications to ask questions of those who are so obviously my superiors, so I’ll restate them. I have lived in Alaska for 69 years, almost all of it in coastal communities (including, as noted, the Bristol Bay area and the Prince William Sound area). For the past 28 years I have lived in our Capital City.
I have been a commercial fisherman and a cannery workerf, and even a would-be public policy maven. My first substantive involvement in large environmental threats was the oil pipeline issue in the early 1970s. I advocated that it not terminate on the shores of Prince William Sound, for the reasons that became tragically clear in March 1989. I was also very involved in the effort to develop coherent energy policies for Alaska (including opposing the Susitna Dam), and to provide a legal framework to protect village subsistence activities during the 17(d)(2) debate, and to fighting the repeal of the state subsistence law when it was on the ballot in 1982.
In the 1970s, I had the opportunity to work on the pipeline, to make those “big pipeline paychecks” sought by SM, but opted not to do so — out of principle.
I ran a statewide non-profit organization for a number of years, dedicating my professional and personal energies and skills to assisting rural Alaskans shape their own futures. In my almost 30 years in Juneau, I have been devoted to thorny fishery management issues regarding providing equitable access to the public’s resource while stabilizing and sustaining ecological and economic conditions in Alaska’s coastal communities. I am an Alaskan, the husband, father and grandfather of Alaskans, a mariner, and an American citizen. I am also not at all ashamed to say that John Shively, whose contributions to Alaska over the last 40+ years have been legion, is my friend.
As for my failures, I am not a geologist, nor am I working on a mine in Brazil. Nevertheless, I feel as qualified as any other American to concern myself with, and to comment on, public policy issues. Further, I believe I have the right to do so without being patronized by either of you.
A call out to fill the Wendy Williamson Auditorium on the UAA campus on Monday, June 4, 5:30 pm.
The EPA has scheduled five days of public comment meetings regarding the assessment, starting yesterday in Seattle. Anchorage is on for Monday.
Here’s a summary of the draft assessment in a short easy nutshell, links to the schedule and EPA on-line public comments.
http://callanx.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/pebble-mineepa-hearings-this-week/
Public comment will be taken through July 23rd, including on-line.
This is everybody’s business, not just Alaskans or fisherman.
See: http://www.bbrsda.com/layouts/bbrsda/files/documents/bbrsda_pebble/Copper%20River%20and%20Bristol%20Bay-COmparison%20of%20Salmon%20and%20Mineral%20Resources.pdf
excellent!
Thanks, Alaska Pi. And one last thing:
I also have lived in Cordova and participated in the commercial fishery near the mouth of the Copper River and in the incredible Prince William Sound. There was an active copper mining operation for about 30 years on a major tributary to the Copper River. The mining shut down in 1938; I am not familikar with any assessments of that rather primitive (by today’s standards) mining operation had any negative impact on the salmon runs (or, for that matter, caused any other environmental degradation). Pure luck?
The Kennicott/Kennecott?
Only one of the 5 ore bodies mined there was open pit if I remember correctly and only mined in the summer.
Pebble West is envisioned as a huge open pit mine- like 2 mi across and all ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
Therein lies much of the concern .
Along with the water they want to run their operation
And the tailings dam dealie.
National Parks has Kennecott town/mine now. Maybe someone there could root out info for you ?
My maternal grandfather was a blacksmith in Cordova during early 1900s before he moved on to become a powder monkey for the building of the Alaska Railroad.
Big state, small town.
Well, I was surely chastised for seeking reporting, not propaganda or prejudice, in my attempt to analyse the public policy question of whether permitting the Mine is in our collective interest.
Sad to say, I have my own prejudices. Among them are that the Pebble is too risky a venture to permit and to support. That “prejudice” comes from my own background as a 69-year Alaskan, who lived in the Brisol Bay area for several years and who participated in the Bristol Bay setnet fishery. It also comes from my uncertainty about the safety of the proposed Mine and my penchant for using the precautionary principle when such dout exists.
But I wasn’t looking for an article to reinforce my biases. I was looking for something to challenge them, so that I can maintain an even keel when evaluating the process. I’m sorry if that offended some of you. But you are right; this is a “blog” and, as such, should not be considered a source of “news.” I won’t make that mistake again
hang in there Joe-
1- we regular visitors here tend to get testy if there is any “feel” that someone is /may be/might saying something derogatory about our hostess- sometimes to the point of snapping off before finding out what someone is really saying. sorry you got caught in that.
2- blog or not, there is a fair amount of real news here oft times and sometimes before it makes the “real” news.
3- if you want to challenge your biases , start here. It is a rebuttal to a no-Pebble law review article from the year before.
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=alr_onlineforum
4- hoping you caught Hig’s guest editorial in the ADN about geology questions Pebbles’ own geology report stirred up-
5- Don’t be sad to say you have your own prejudices. We all do and it is a good thing to be aware of what they are 🙂
And a “gooder” thing to challenge them.
JH – since you appear to be somewhat apologetic I will let the points I made slide. However, I did ask you about your own qualifications since you questioned those of AKM. I think I characterized AKM’s qualifications accurately enough, if I was wrong she is welcome to correct me. For my own part and to preempt an obvious challenge, I am an exploration geologist with 40+ years of experience currently working in Brasil on a copper porphyry prospect. Mudflats is not a scientific blog, nor an economic blog, nor a policy blog, it is a general interest blog that touches upon many topics mainly of local interest and thereby stimulates discussion. I too am often dismayed to a certain extent that people here do not seem to devote as much thought as they could or perhaps should to some issues, but rather than question them, or chastise them, I try to provide a perspective they might not otherwise come in contact with.
So tell us a little about yourself, and tell us even more about your methods of analysing public policy issues so we can all benefit by your insights and/or help you refine them by critical examination. The terms propaganda and prejudice seem rather pejorative to me, perhaps you would care to justify your use of them?
Do you think that the Pebble Mine consortium has studiously avoided using propaganda? If so how do you explain the concept of a tailings reservoir that is confined by a 700′ high earthen dam in a seismic zone?
I really do not mean to be confrontational, but one of the great assets of this particular blog is that it does not attract the attention of those whose purpose is disinformation. Yes it does come off as a little too much of a cheerleading section as a result, but that is not in itself invidious or misleading and therefore cannot be propaganda.
I hope you can accept this comment in the spirit in which it is given.
JH – No need to feel “chastised”. Its never a fault to ask questions. … I have a degree in geology, but it is now far back in time. I came to Alaska 40 years ago looking for adventure and big pipeline paychecks. Found plenty of the former, not so much of the latter. Anyway, among my interests in Pebble is the public policy aspect of the development. In the case of utilization of a common resource, that resource will be preserved only insofar as the participants have an interest in preserving it. While this was confined to pastureland and town squares, it mostly worked. However, the development of the immensely powerful multinational corporation has created a massive disconnect in this situation. Despite all the cute TV ads showing happy Native Alaskans sitting in front of computers or walking around in hardhats, the driving force of this mine will be Anglo-American, a British corporation. Whatever you might say about Anglo-American’s long and checkered history with respect to its treatment of the environment and local people, it is safe to say that Anglo-American has no interest in protecting the Bristol Bay fishery except to the extent that regulators and potential penalties make it so. (If anyone should think that our regulators are capable of doing that, I have one answer – Sean Parnell.) Even if our regulators could suddenly become more effective, the corporate form that Anglo-American will set up will assure that the only human beings who will be asked to personally risk their life and livelihood will be the people of Bristol Bay. In short, if the Board of Directors, top executives and principal shareholders of Anglo American were to pledge their personal and family fortunes in perpetuity to repair any damage caused by Pebble, maybe we could talk. That is the risk they are asking of the people of Bristol Bay.
Simple Mind – spot on. Anglo and Northern Dynasty are gambling with other people’s lives. Not their own.
But a corrupted government will not protect the populus.
There is a limit to the tolerance of the disenfranchized. I do not know what it is, but when it is reached, there will be hell to pay.
This is not quite germane to the conversation, but it’s not off topic, either. Ocean fish are being depleted by the (over)fishing industry way too fast to be sustainable. Apart from food for the assembled billions of people on Earth, there’s another reason not to deplete fish (and shellfish) stocks that I found out about only recently (and I read a lot of science):
Fish (and shellfish) feces ABSORB carbon dioxide. This is a very serious issue in light of continued ocean acidification (and what it’s doing to corals, etc.). If we don’t leave enough fish in the ocean, that CO2 will not be absorbed. Let’s not harvest all the fish, just because we can. Let’s leave the algae to create oxygen via photosynthesis, and let’s stop diminishing the fish in the sea, since their feces are vital to a healthy ocean.
Zyxomma – actually it is germaine, that is one of the things about ecology that is hard for many people to grasp, everything is connected, the connection may be distant and obscure but it is real and my soap bubble analogy (above) is fitting because we can all observe it readily. However, it is also worse than you say. While it is true that overfishing and the huge toll we take upon the ocean ecosystem to feed our hungry populations has an impact on overall carbon absorbtion, it doesn’t have any real effect on the release of sequestered carbon in the form of burning fossil fuels.
It is late here, and I am weary and a little drunk, whiskey is a paliative against the slow death of reason.
We just wrote an e-mail to “Stop the Pebble Mine” using the Clean Water Act. The more people that write, the better.
First thing – is there a link to the EPA draft report that we could read? That would be helpful.
It may be overly pedantic but I think it is vital to start from the truth to be convincing, so I will offer up these split hairs.
The relative value of the Pebble mine versus the fishery should be stated in clearly comparable terms, because doing so, given that almost all of the benefit of the mine goes offshore while almost all of the benefit of the fishery stays in Alaska, will make clear the stark difference between profits for share holders (mostly big banks and other big corporations) and the benefits of living wage employment for 14,000 people.
I think the estimate given here is far below the potential value of the pebble mine and I do not thing it is useful to underestimate it. I recall that when I first looked at the pebble prospectus I did a BOTE calculation that it was worth roughly $500 billion and had an estimated lifetime of 40 years, hence it would have revenue of $12.5 billion per year. or 25 times the productivity of the fishery. But that raises the issue of how much of that revenue actually lands in the local economy?
I see it as a clear case for corporate domination of a whole region and many established life styles.
The only way to stop these kinds of things, to take a more reasoned approach and consider the consequences of different actions realistically, depends upon having a representative government and an informed electorate. At the moment, it appears we have neither.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/R10/ecocomm.nsf/bristol+bay/bristolbay
The report is readily available. The pdf file was linked to reports in Alaskan newspapers though not here.
Missing in all the talk is that ,while people in the BB area are overwhelmingly against the mine, the state
( and by default the rest of us) has by and large ignored this area for years. The assumption that the local economy is fine because of the fish industry is patently false.
Poor fish years which led to the sale of far too many permits to out of state fishermen and consolidation of processing companies/facilities ( with J-1 seasonal employees making up too much of the seasonal hires) have seriously shifted the amount of money which attaches itself to the area.
The state’s continued hoo-bobby over support of sustainable energy projects in these communities threatens most of the area in the sense that people are still having to spend way too much of their income on energy. School closures are imminent because of continued decline in enrollment as people who do not want to leave feel they must to support their families.
There are 3 distinct political divisions in the area- Lake and Pen Borough ( where the mine would be situated) , Bristol Bay Borough, and Dillingham census area ( which is a part of the huge unorganized borough of Alaska ) so to some extent there is local argument about effects which might be felt by each- it is a mistake to think of it as a single area.
I would suggest Alaskans listen more carefully to their neighbors in these areas. If we manage to stop Pebble, they need our full attention as regards infrastructure, energy, and general parity at the table in state affairs. Somewhere along the way urban Alaska , esp ANC, needs to step up to the plate and understand its own prosperity is directly linked to the prosperity of rural Alaska and that supporting outlying areas is appropriate and necessary to support itself.
The continued quiet on a lawsuit over 2 years old still intrigues me. It has finally moved to another judge but so far nothing is really moving.
The suit strikes at the heart of the DNR BB Area Plan under which permitting is proceeding.
http://ourbristolbay.com/pdf/NondaltonTribalCouncil-v-StateDNR.pdf
Thinking about what I said here…
Whether we stop Pebble or not , the area deserves full attention by the state, as do most rural areas here. The bounty of this state comes from rural Alaska.
Also too-
http://www.courtrecords.alaska.gov/eservices/home.page.8
and a check on dockets in the case referenced above
3DI-09-00046CI
show a flurry of activity in April of this year
but we haven’t seen any reporting about what is going on in the news that I can find.
Alaska Pi, you’re always so well-informed, and I often learn something when I read your posts. It’s not just the residents of urban areas (Anchorage, Fairbanks) who should be paying attention. It’s ALL of us. This concerns me, and I’m thousands of miles from Alaska. I’m concerned about Fukushima, too, and that’s thousands of miles farther than the thousands of miles I am from Alaska: some things are of concern to everyone; not just the “locals,” whomever they may be. Among those concerns to all: Pebble Mine, because of its threat to salmon.
Our planet is relatively small. The human population continues to explode. We didn’t reach one billion humans until 1820; now there are more than seven times that number, all needing food, water, energy, housing, transportation, medical care, clothing, education, and meaningful work. By the middle of this century, that number will, barring unforeseen circumstances, rise to nine billion. What do you think is more important to these billions? Metal or a meal?
Zyx-
I’m not sure what you are getting at here.
I hope you don’t think I have one pro-Pebble atom in my body because I do not.
I chose this Alaska -centric view because this area is under multiple sieges- @$^&&$#$ing Pebble , major shifts in commercial fisheries which mean most of the money leaves the area, failure of the state to disharge its duty on multiple levels (mostly based on the phony per capita dealie) to do with infrastructure, energy, and the like. The people in the area are truly squeezed and they are getting forgotten in the larger flap.
This is very important to me.
The things I brought up are real and abiding- they are also the basis for mining interests to pooh-pooh the salmon fishery. Somewhere or other I have a link to a set of arguments made by mining attorney(s) shredding the value of the fishery- makes my blood pressure go so high I almost expire but will have to go find em and share em because that is what we’re up against.
The picture in the area for local residents is an important piece of the whole and we do ourselves no favors ignoring the downsides-esp as the mining industry is working day and night to exploit them while the state and all snooze instead of doing their dang jobs.
KN rightfully pushes for more detail- here’s some:
—————————————————
While what stays in the area is relatively small, the overall BB salmon fishery generates 4.1-5.4 billion/yr in all economic activity associated with it by current estimates
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/how-many-billions-does-bristol-bays-salmon-fishery-pump-economy
so the argument that the whole shebang, if properly cared for, may continue to provide value , while not on par with the proposed mine in dollars, is certainly on a level which makes it considerably more than a gnat to be brushed off by mining interests, especially in the longer term.
14K employed in the total fishery well exceeds the 1+K assumed to be employed in first 25 years of the proposed mine and has a value which cannot be understated- even though not nearly enough of that payroll lands in the region.
—————————-
“Northern Dynasty Minerals, Ltd. estimates that Pebble contains over $300 billion worth of recoverable metals at early 2010 prices”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
how do you knock that promise of that kind of money out of people’s eyes and get their feet back on the ground- about food, clean water, and the like?
Alaska Pi – Very good insights, I was dimly aware of the fact that the BB ‘fishery’ is not at all an entirely local enterprise but that is a critical point. And thank you for the links and brief summaries. My Internet connection will simply not work when trying to connect to some sources for a wide variety of reasons. If you project the value of minerals in the proposed mine over its lifetime allowing for the probable change in prices over that period my $500 billiion is about right. I guess reporters have a dislike of binomial equations.
People such as yourself who have a passionate desire to deal with our situation in a reasoned and knowledgable way are unfortunately too few and too easily ignored. I reside on a notch lower even than that simply because I have chosen to take the global perspective since I have so few local roots and because I am half fox and half hen.
All that said, there are ways in which a Pebble mine could occur that would not actually endanger the fisheries, the spawning grounds, or the migration routes of the salmon. But they are considerably more expensive to implement and therefore change the profit equation. Or what the financial interests like to obscure by using terms and calculations such as the Internal Rate of Return On Investment to obscure and redecorate the proposal to spend a pot of money to return a lake of money.
I doubt if I can do anything that will help the situation with Pebble. As it stands, the game is mostly fixed. This EPA look might help some but unless the next elections are a watershed event for progressive politics I am unable to be optimistic.
Thank you for the insights.
I knew you didn’t have a pro-Pebble atom in your being, Alaska Pi. I’m just saying this is more than a local issue. The fishery has a long reach. I know, personally, people who are, apart from a piece of Alaska salmon once a week, vegan (they feel better with a little concentrated protein, and don’t like the vegetarian sources of Omega 3 essential fatty acids). The food web spans the globe.
Mining companies pretending they care about the welfare of natives would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Indigenous peoples all over the planet have been/are being effed over by megacorporations, in concert with governments, so valuable resources can be extracted.
The US government STILL hasn’t compensated the Sioux for the theft of the Paha Sapa (Black Hills) which are theirs by treaty (has the US ever made a treaty with the First People that has NOT been broken?). The reason is that the Lakota, Minneconja, and other Sioux tribes refuse to take money for the mountains. They believe future generations would never forgive them.Of course, there’s gold in them thar hills. Elsewhere, it took only ONE year for a mountain in Brasil to be turned into a giant hole in the ground, once gold was discovered. And this was ages ago, when gold was worth a couple hundred dollars an ounce.
Meanwhile, I know someone who finds pennies so annoying that he used to throw them in the trash. I convinced him that, if he must dispose of them, to do so in the recycling, with the other household metal. I’m done ranting for the time being. I just wanted you to know there are many Outsiders who care about Bristol Bay, and not all of us are Washingtonians with fishing permits.
Zyx-
ok. Whew on the knowing I’m not pro -pebble!
I do know many, many people care and that the issue touches many far from here but in the end Pebble is a peculiarly Alaskan problem. The fed has to be involved and I’m glad to see the EPA report and am wishing for more concern on the federal level.
But do read this carefully- this is the opposition.
They are real and well-versed in their fields.
The mind set here is the one to best- and so far between DNR falling all over itself to make permitting a done deal and politicos like our current gov blithering on about development for development’s sake being good for all alaskans we’re not gaining much ground here.
There’s still a $750K study the leg was supposed to commission, there’s still a court case which alleges that the whole area plan is flawed and the permitting done under it therefore unacceptable … and DNR merrily permitting away.
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=alr_onlineforum
I think a meal is more important to the majority of the people on earth. Metal can stay where its at until we need it. Food resources can be obtained by all. Metal is only for the rich to get richer.
I beg to differ when it comes to this part statement”…given that almost all of the benefit of the mine goes offshore while almost all of the benefit of the fishery stays in Alaska….”
The reason there is ANY support for Pebble, and there is in the area more than people are lead to believe, is that a great number of the benefit will come directly to that area due to Pebble.
Everything from monies to help villages and small businesses, to a power grid with lower energy and let’s not forget JOBS.
The fishing industry in BB, especially in that part of the ‘bay’ offers little any more in the way of even part time income to the residents.
Look up how many fishing permits are actually owned by BB and Lake & Pen residents and you will see other ‘truth’.
There are many misconceptions about the fishing industry and what all is ‘gives’ to Alaska versus what goes out of state, the vast majority of the value of the fish, and even the country. It is not just as easy to spot because it is broken up between a number of major companies that do not ‘live’ in Alaska.
I would not be thrilled to see Pebble open but I can say that at this point much more of their money and attention has been paid to that area of the state than by those yelling to ‘stop’.
The Pebble Mine is like the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline – an environmental apocalypse waiting to happen with benefits that go directly to foreign companies. We (the US citizens) get nothing but the risk and the damage, and they (the foreign companies) get the natural resources and the profit that comes from extracting them.
It’s a losing proposition that could become an environmental and economic nightmare and there is NO upside for people within the affected area.
I expect the pro Pebble public relations freaks to start a campaign claiming copper as being in low supply.
Pro Pebble can carry this on for years because of the huge tax write off for exploring, investigating and starting up the extraction of ore.
In any case, copper isn’t a renewable resource, while the BB fisheries continues to “renew” even in lean years.
While copper is not a renewable natural resource, its tax write capabilities are. Just keep changing ownership and watch a new round of tax write offs play out.
Ah yes capitalism at its finest.
tallimat – copper is a metal on the cusp so to speak. Here’s a link to the issue intelligently discussed.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/5/1209.full
This is clearly not a news story, so I am curious: Who wrote this piece? What is that person’s background and qualifications?
this is a blog, the owner can post or write whatever they deem relevant, news or otherwise.
it seems clear to me that proposing to mine in a pristine watershed is news and holding those that want to do it accountable for the miss information they spread is necessary.
Actually, an article was posted in today’s Seattle Times. I’m happy that our WA Senator Maria Cantwell is also putting pressure on the EPA to use the Clean Water Act in their deliberations. Whether one approves/disapproves of WA State being involved, IMO there is simply no reason WHATSOEVER to take such a huge environmental risk. …says Kath the Scrappy
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018240528_pebblemine19.html
EPA warns major mining would pose a threat to Alaska salmon
Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian company, this week announced it would spend roughly $107 million to prepare its Pebble Mine project for permitting by the end of the year.
[snipped]
Cantwell, the first U.S. senator to encourage use of the Clean Water Act to halt the project, has noted the issue also is crucial to Washington state’s economy. Bristol Bay provides more than $100 million a year for its commercial fisheries.
“Nearly 1,000 Washingtonians hold commercial fishing permits in Bristol Bay, supporting thousands more fishery jobs in my state,” Cantwell wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last fall.
In a statement Friday, Cantwell said, “This draft report validates the concerns of the Alaska and Washington fishing fleets that the proposed Pebble Mine could have devastating impacts to the Pacific Northwest’s maritime economy.” [snipped]
This newly released EPA report is news by definition. it’s is both “new” and noteworthy. Surly your bias can not blind you of the most basic of samantic understanding? (see what I did there? I refuted the core of your comment, then used a double binding question to point out your obvious criticism)
Joe Huber – clearly, it is what is called reportage, reporting things, sometimes more than one thing.
As to your second question you appear to have a reading impairment, the author is clearly named. That person’s background and qualifications ARE that she has been following this issue for a couple of years at least and she is qualified to comment by virtue of being a living citizen of the USA.
So what is your background, and what are your qualifications?
wonderful commentary everyone. i continue to be educated and informed by the Mudflat’s Bloggers and Pups.
i just want Alaska and indeed all of our precious food sources in all our States and Territories to be preserved for the generations to come.
Quotes from Attorney General Geraghty during his nomination process: “Geraghty talked of his interest in fighting those battles on behalf of the state, and hopefully getting past the “somewhat liberal” 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and into a “somewhat sympathetic” U.S. Supreme Court.
Geraghty said the polar bear endangered species listing action is based on modeling of the future effects of global warming, and questioned the validity of the science behind it.
“I mean, who can tell 100 years out,” he said. “It just boggles the mind.”
He called global warming itself a controversial subject, and said the listing process had “gotten away from good science.”
Magnets, how do they work?
In all honesty, I don’t think “backwards” is the direction Parnell & Crew bend over.
Pebble / Anglo-American’s written response calls the EPA’s draft report “rushed”. “speculative”, “fundamentally flawed” and “a federal intrusion” (an odd criticism for a foreign corporation to be making – I mean, who is intruding where?). Does this response to a draft report give you some idea how Anglo-American is going to cooperate with regulators once their mine is up and running? or when their mine is played out? … So the EPA finds that a major surface mine development in the headwaters of a salmon stream could detrimentally affect that fishery. Ummm… does anyone in their right mind dispute that proposition? I would respect Pebble’s management alittle bit if they’d honestly say, “Sure, there is a risk this mine could injure the fishery. We think its a small risk relative to the benefits, so let’s talk about that.” Instead, they give us TV commercials showing an attractive young native woman in her brand-new REI backpacking gear breathlessly babbling in astonishment that it took her a whole week to walk from the mine site to Bristol Bay so the plan to maintain an enormous toxic waste reservoir in the headwaters of the salmon streams FOREVER must be okay. …. No, I take it back, I still wouldn’t respect them at all.
Simple Mind – their adjectives are quite humorous it is true. Take for example “rushed”. After nearly 40 years in the exploration business I have never once heard any direction from managment to slow down. Take time, you might miss something important if you are too hasty. “Speculative”, well to some extent that is the whole game in mining. Yes there is some rigor to the elaborate and expensive methods used to try to define a mineable deposit, but few succeed and many fail. But the best of all is the “fundamentally flawed”. All three are projections of their own motives and methods onto the EPA. In my opinion the whole development plan for the Pebble mine is fundamentally flawed because it is predicated upon one mandate, do it as cheaply as possible. The mandate of the EPA is to do things as responsibly as possible. The reasoning behind that is simple, it minimizes the externalization of costs. That is to say, leaves less of a mess to clean up at taxpayer expense.
Personalized profits, socialized losses.
Capitalism in a nutshell.
The minerals will still be there in one hundred years, the fish might not. Changing climate and ocean patterns may affect the fish but the gold and other minerals will be right there until that part of the crust disappears under the adjoining tectonic plate. Let’s keep the fish as long as we can.
The good news is that the Bristol Bay region is the area behind the subduction zone at the Aleutian Trench. The Pacific plate is disappearing into the trench to the south of the Aleutian chain. The Bristol Bay region is in no danger, thus you are correct, the minerals will be there for much more than 100 years as the land mass behind the trench is stable, in tectonic terms, not to mean that there aren’t threats of earthquakes, but all of Alaska, to the North of the trench, will be present as a landmass for quite some time. How much of this landmass remains above water due to sea level rise, is the real question. If enough time passes then the Pebble site might just succumb to sea level rise and be lost to mining much sooner that it would to crustal recycling due to tectonic movement. Sea level rise covered the land bridge that is now the Bering Strait with between 90 and 160 feet of water; this was dry land that allowed for the migration of Asian nomads merely 15-16,000 years ago. The minerals and the land will remain, either above or under water. It would be nice if they could just sit there until such a time that we can responsibly mine them, if there even is such a thing. This just reminds me of the tar sands in Alberta. It is such a dirty operation with so much by-product and environmental destruction left in its’ wake. It would have been much more environmentally responsible to leave those sands intact until such a time that we truly were running out of more environmentally friendly ways to fuel our lives instead of wreaking such havoc. Mineral and petroleum extraction technologies should improve through time. Instead of greed being the driving factor in this process perhaps some of these areas should be left alone until our technology improves, if it ever does, or supply and demand mandates that these products are so critical to a functioning society that they are mined and extracted regardless of possible environmental impacts. I can’t help but think that food sources will become much more precious to our burgeoning population that will oil or gold. Oil and gold can’t feed billions, sustainable food resources can.
Sorry to be so long winded but I just reconnected with my second cousin recently, who was a bit of a hero to me because he had spent his career as an environmental consultant to oil and mineral extraction companies. He counseled oil and mining interests in “doing the right thing” when it came to environmental concerns. He now works for one of the largest corporations mining the tar sands in Alberta and consults with other big dirty companies and rather than assisting them in taking the path of “doing the least harm” he now advocates for their methods and takes the approach that “anything that they might break can be fixed”. He also doubled his salary, which was already generous. There are hardly any existing examples where we can “fix nature once we’ve broken and ecosystem”. I’m dubious as to whether our technology will ever advance to that point. I’d say we not experiment with a food source such as Bristol Bay/Illiamna.
Thanks for providing information on the geology of the Bristol Bay area. I commented without making sure of the tectonic plate action specific to that area. You are so right about the tar sands extraction. Shale oil extraction would be even worse, but presently I believe that it takes more energy to extract it than it yields.
AKPetMom – Nice summary of the tectonics, you are quite correct they will not affect this issue in the short term (e.g. < 1 to 10 million years) except in terms I will suggest below. The rates of plate movement are very slow though the combined velocities of the NA plate and the NP plate are fairly high if I recall correctly, ~ 5-7 cm/yr.
I am of the opinion that it is not an open question whether we can continue to invent technology that will ultimately rescue us from folly. I would also have to point out, as politely as I possibly can that our food supply is already inextricably linked to the petroleum extraction business and a variety of other industrial mining operations. All those tractors plowing fields run on gas or diesel. All the millions of tonnes of fertilizer are made from industrial processes and some such as phosphate are mined. So I have to caution you about attributing criticality to one or another aspect of a complex and totally interdependent and very complex system. Think of it as a foam of soap bubbles. As long as it is stirred and there is enough soap, the bubble foam increases. At some point the liquid supply of soap is exhausted, then what you observe is the more bubbles in the foam burst than form, soon they only burst and none are formed. If you stop stirring, the foam will perhaps survive a little longer than if you don't, but eventually the foam will vanish. The foam is our ecosystem.
I have to ask, your last paragraph implies your cousin has become a sell-out to the greed culture?
We can't fix nature, we might be able to come to terms with it if we abided by the same rules. Unfortunately we do not yet know even what the complete set (if there is one) of those rules is, so in the short term the best policy to my mind is not to break nature.
AKMagpie – You are right, the environmental changes that are coming as a result of continued AGW are more likely to affect the salmon fishery than anything geological. Sea level rise per se will not necessarily have a great effect, ocean acidification is a more likely game changer. It has the potential to change and possibly imbalance the whole food chain of the ocean ecosystem. There is some evidence that it has happened several times before but at rates much slower than what we are doing to the environment now.
The minerals will still be there for at least as long as they have already been there if left alone and perhaps much longer. That time scale is millions of years.