When they’re not talking about when and where the reds are running and the lousy price they’re getting for fish, Bristol Bay fishermen are probably jawing about the mine. And not just any old mine.The proposed Pebble Mine, which is located north of Lake Iliamna at the head of the Bristol Bay watershed, has been a hot-button issue around the 49th state for the past 10 years. That’s when Northern Dynasty Minerals, a small Canadian company acquired the mineral rights to Pebble and subsequently hooked up with London-based Anglo-American, the second biggest mining company in the world, and a who’s who of the world’s largest mining companies like Kennecott Copper and Rio Tinto to develop the mine.
What worries Bay fishermen and processors about Pebble is the massive size of the proposed project and the fact that it is on pristine state-owned land in a state that has never denied a large mine permit application.
If developed, Pebble, which sits atop the largest known concentration of copper ore in the world, would be the largest open pit mine in North America. In addition to 70 billion pounds of copper ore, the mine could yield almost 80 million ounces of gold and three million pounds of molybdenum worth between $150 to $200 billion. The problem with Pebble, though, is that it contains low-grade ore, which will have to be mined in a sprawling open pit mine several miles wide and two thousand feet deep.
Each day some 200,000 metric tons of ore will be dug by a work force of some 1,000 miners. However, because it is such a low-grade ore, less than 1 percent of the earth mined will be usable. As a result, the Pebble Mine will have to construct a tailings pond to contain as much as 10 billion tons of sulfur-laced mining waste, a byproduct of extracting minerals by using fresh water (the mine will use 35 billion gallons of water a year). To hold the toxic tailings in a pond that big, the mine developers propose building a dam 740 feet high and 4.3 miles long – a dam bigger than China’s Three Gorges Dam.
The problem with that, though, say critics of the mine, is that the dam is located just 14 miles from a significant fault in one of the most seismically active regions of the world. And since the toxic mining wastes remain toxic forever, a breech in the dam would cause immeasurable damage to waters that flow into the Nushagak and Kvichak rivers, which are the two main sockeye runs in Bristol Bay, which boasts the most valuable single salmon resource in the world. According to one recent study, releases of copper into fresh water in concentrations of as little as two parts per billion can damage a salmon’s olfactory senses, causing them to become disoriented and preventing them from successfully migrating upriver to spawn.
Although Pebble would provide employment in a region where the few steady jobs available are with government agencies, more than 70 percent of Bristol Bay residents oppose the mine according to a recent survey. To help organize opposition to the mine, a variety of organizations (and Robert Redford) have jumped in to help, in some cases making for some odd bedfellows. Trout Unlimited, for example, a sport fishing advocacy group which sometimes finds itself at odds with commercial fishing interests, has teamed up with Bristol Bay fishermen and processors, and founded WhyWild to educate consumers and chefs about the issue, while helping promote wild salmon and teaching people how to “vote with their fork.”
Even investors in Anglo-American have expressed their concern about Pebble. This April, 29 investment groups that own 13 million shares of Anglo-American petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to initiate a review process of the mine’s impact under the Clean water Act. “This proposed mine has potentially devastating consequences for the people and the ecosystem of Bristol Bay," said Jonas Kron, vice president at Trillium, one of the large investment funds.
Whether the mine gets developed is anybody’s guess at this point (Northern Dynasty is trying to cash in by selling its stake to one of its deep-pocketed partners). In the meantime Anglo American, which has invested $325 million in Pebble so far, continues surveying the area by blasting and drilling. Last April, the state fined the company for 45 clean water violations.