Alaska Politicians Exposed – Stooges, Shills & Shenanigans
TALL TALES from Juneau and the DC Debacle AND IT’S ALLLL ON TAPE Sometimes you know things, but it’s nice to have them proven right out loud, through dramatic and surreptitious means. Such is the case with the immediately infamous “Pebble tapes.” If you haven’t heard them, make yourself a beverage and get ready to be a fly on the wall as your beautiful state and all its salmon get sold down the river (not the beautiful blue Nushagak of today – the contaminated, cyanide-filled Nushagak of tomorrow). We now know what our elected Republican leadership thinks of us,…
Alaska Mining Project Threatens Salmon, Water, and Native Communities
Trump Administration officials have fast-tracked permits for the largest open-pit mine in North America. The proposed Pebble Mine had previously seemed paralyzed, after more than a decade of relentless opposition by Alaska Native elders and youth. Now, plans for the mine are being rushed forward. The final public comment period for the proposed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) permits ends on June 29, 2019. Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote that it would result in a “complete loss of fish habitat” (PDF) in a proposed determination to block Pebble Mine. The mine is planned to…
Court Delivers Double-Whammy Over Pebble
Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court issued two decisions that will have far-reaching impacts about how the Department of Natural Resources conducts business in hard rock mineral exploration, and the ability of the State and others to chill opposition. While the two cases involved the Pebble Prospect exploration, neither will impact the development of that mine. Background In 1988, Teck Cominco drilled the first exploration wells in what would become the 360 square-mile Pebble Prospect. By 2010, ownership of the Pebble claims would change hands from Teck Cominco to Northern Dynasty Minerals to the Pebble Limited Partnership. Collectively, those entities would…
Money Machine Steamrolls Alaska
This week I received an email from a Republican friend. (Yes, I have those.) She requested a different kind of column from me this week. “Instead of adding to all the ugly, negative political comments out there why not a column about the economic stimulus this election is having on Alaska with all the Outside money coming into the state?” Really? Yeah! We have Outside money trying to get a guy elected that wants to get rid of Social Security! That’s the opposite of economic stimulus. So the short answer is, no. I won’t be riding that unicorn this week….
Salmon: Feel the Love, Have the Party
I fell completely in love with an ad campaign. I know. Between the halibut haters at Domino’s and “The Salmon Project,” I should have whiplash. The campaign is brilliant. It’s got a fantastic kiss mark with a salmon in it! If I were a tattoo girl, that would be my pick. It’s genius. Salmon is more than something on a plate — it’s a lifestyle. I first noticed all this when I stopped to get supplies at the Seward Safeway on the way to my very own salmon project: Operation “Acrobatic Coho!” (Mission accomplished. Thanks for asking!) Even if…
UPDATED: Massive Landslide at Bingham Mine – Is this what Pebble will bring?
UPDATE: Quoted from Dow Jones 4/16/2013 RIO Tinto has asked employees to take vacation or unpaid leave after a massive landslide at its Bingham Canyon mine in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, one of the world’s largest copper producing mines. Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Utah Copper unit said it has asked for workers to volunteer to take leave because the operation isn’t running at full capacity. “The slip has destroyed the main access decline into the pit, so a new decline will need to be constructed before mining can resume. We have no guidance from Rio on how long this will take, but…
Pebble Has Rocks in Head
Behold the latest gripe from the Pebble Partnership about the oh-so-restrictive permitting process required to put the largest open pit copper and gold mine on the planet at the headwaters of the planet’s largest wild salmon fishery. The project requires permits for lots of things. It pays to be assured someone knows what they’re doing when they have to build 700 foot tall earthen dams that will last forever in a highly active seismic zone, holding back giant lakes of poison from a thriving fishery. You know, stuff like that. Check out the latest. We know they’d like to compare…
Pebble Buys Signature Thugs (UPDATED)
*THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH NEW INFORMATION. SEE BELOW! Ahhh. Take a nice deep sniff and enjoy the smell of desperation and deceit. It seems to be wafting over from the Pebble Parntnership. You see, when you’re a consortium of foreign mining companies with crappy track records and nobody likes you, or the idea of your giant open pit copper mine at the headwaters of the world’s largest wild salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, you start having to resort to all kinds of things. The latest bit of skulduggery they’ve pulled out of their hat is to activate their…
Pebble Mine and History
Butte, Montana has a couple of distinguishing claims to fame; one controversial, the other, not so much. What is controversial is that Butte boasts to being the headwaters of the Columbia River. The Canadians and Wikipedia would sharply disagree, but state and federal government and non-profit websites point to Silver Bow Creek in Butte as the headwaters to the Clark Fork River, a “major headwaters stream” of the Columbia River. Anyone who knows rivers knows that if you start with forks, you end up with the main body of the river sometime downhill. If you trace the Columbia River upstream from the Pacific Coast, you will…
State of Alaska Sues Lake & Peninsula Borough Over No Pebble Vote
Those darned uppity citizens. The Pebble Partnership already sued them once to keep an initiative off the local ballot. It didn’t work. The Save Our Salmon initiative on the Lake & Peninsula Borough ballot was recently passed by local residents near Bristol Bay. It will give the Borough and its residents the right to decide if they want the continent’s largest open pit mine in their back yard, which happens to also be on the shores of the largest wild salmon fishery on the continent. Not surprisingly, and even after the success of the mining proponents to invalidate scores of…