By Hal Herring

There is nothing like a good anti-federal-government advertising campaign to rally support for, well, almost anything. In this time of Internal Revenue Service scandals and accusations that the Environmental Protection Agency has charged so-called “conservative” groups for Freedom of Information Act requests that they handed over to environmental groups for free, the time was ripe for a smart advertising professional to tap in to the zeitgeist and try, yet again, to sell a highly skeptical American public on the Pebble Project—a huge gold and copper mine proposed by two foreign mining corporations to be built on public lands in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

On June 4, Northern Dynasty Minerals, Limited, a Vancouver, Canada-based corporation that owns 50 percent of the Pebble Project, ran an ad in the Washington Post and on various political websites that demands an end to what it calls EPA’s “black box bias” against the mine. The ad also claims that the EPA is manipulating public opinion and denying science in response to the results of the EPA’s 14 month-long comprehensive Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment (BBWA). The EPA's assessment shows that the Pebble Project does indeed threaten the greatest salmon fishery on earth (a $500 million industry annually) and the estimated 14,000 jobs that depend upon it, and will industrialize one of America’s wildest and most pristine expanses of public land, which would forever changing the culture and economy of the 7,500 people, mostly Native Americans, who now call it home.

I’m not sure what the Canadian mining executives thought the report should have said. The Pebble Project would build the first road, first power-generating facility, and first deep-water port in the region, opening up mining opportunities on tens of thousands of acres of public land in the trackless headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers. The Pebble mine alone would be North America’s largest open pit mine, using 35 billion gallons of water a year taken from groundwater, from the Koktuli River, and from Talarik Creek (that feeds the extraordinarily pure freshwater Lake Iliamna, home to some of the world’s largest rainbow trout). At the very least the Pebble Project would obliterate between 55 and 87 miles of salmon streams and rivers, and attempt to contain—forever—10 billion tons of waste rock and contaminated water behind earthen dams 740 feet high and 4.3 miles long. That’s all bound to have some environmental effects, many of which are described in the EPA’s doorstopper of a report.

In a June 4 press release, Northern Dynasty President & CEO Ronald Thiessen said this of the EPA’s report:
“We believe the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment process to be a cynical effort to manipulate public perception about a project before it has been proposed or undergone federal and state permitting. And we believe the draft BBWA to be a fundamentally biased report that should have no bearing on the future of America's most important undeveloped mineral resource.”

But if you are not Northern Dynasty, or the other half of the partnership, British mining giant Anglo American PLC, the EPA’s assessment seems pretty reasonable. Jason Metrokin, President and CEO of Bristol Bay Native Corporation, commenting on the BBWA to the Alaska Business Monthly in May, said, “BBNC appreciates EPA’s scientific effort in creating its Draft Watershed Assessment, which provides Bristol Bay residents an unprecedented resource for reviewing current scientific knowledge about our region and helping determine the sustainability of potential development. What we have read so far suggests that EPA’s draft findings regarding mining the Pebble deposit largely align with our own: The science exists now to show that the proposed Pebble mine does not fit with a sustainable future for Bristol Bay, and should not be allowed to proceed.”

Former Republican Alaska State Senator Rick Halford predicted Northern Dynasty’s attack on the Watershed Assessment in a November 2012 Alaska Business Monthly:
“As Pebble’s backers have done throughout, they will attack the process and the EPA rather than looking at the facts. But the fact is, the Pebble Mine is a bad deal for Alaska. Pebble will never be able to account for the many risks associated with the mine, and the peer review report makes these risks abundantly clear. The time to protect Bristol Bay is now.”

Trout Unlimited, which has been involved in the conflict over the Pebble Project since the mine was first proposed, praised the assessment in an April 26 blog post on the organization’s Alaska Program website.

“The science is clear: developing Pebble Mine will harm salmon and destroy streams even if nothing ever goes wrong at the mine,” Tim Bristol, director of the program, said. “Pebble is far bigger and more threatening to renewable resource jobs than any other mine proposal in Alaska, and it's planned for the worst location possible: the headwaters of Bristol Bay. Clearly, the time for action to protect Bristol Bay under the Clean Water Act is now."

Although Northern Dynasty’s Ronald Thiessen refutes the EPA’s report on the damage his project will do is inaccurate because it’s based on a “hypothetical mine,” that’s really all anybody has to work with, due to the mining companies keeping their actual plans to themselves.

“As a policymaker who spends most of my days saying there is a process we need to follow, I have a tough time telling the state to chop it (the Pebble Project) off at the knees. But I'll tell you one thing: Pebble isn't doing itself any favors by not giving more definition to its plans,” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Laine Welch of the Anchorage Daily News. “They have documents to the moon, but no images or mine plans. The best thing Pebble could do is lay it on the table so we have something real to deal with."

What is most interesting about Northern Dynasty’s ad is not just the image of our EPA depicted as a “black box,” linking the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment with the current government scandals. More interesting is that Northern Dynasty feels compelled to take out such an ad, which is presumably very expensive. I look at that ad, in support of a project that I oppose, and I feel very, very proud of my country. In almost any other nation on earth, giant foreign mining companies would have no need whatsoever to pay for and run such an ad. The mine permits would be paid for in some unpublicized handshake deal, and the mining would begin, and to the Devil with the people, the salmon, and the rest of the consequences. There would be no functioning EPA to rail against. My country is still in the fight to give its citizens a say over what happens to them and their lands and waters and fisheries, and right has every chance to prevail.

Due to the controversial nature of the Pebble Project, the public comment period has been extended to June 30.

Comments (8)

from Todd Tanner wrote 3 days 17 hours ago

The people who run Northern Dynasty seem to think that if they keep shouting “EPA!” at the top of their lungs, we’ll forget that they’re trying to trash one of our most important fisheries. They must think we’re stupid. They're wrong about that.

+3 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from rock rat wrote 3 days 10 hours ago

I too am proud my country doesn't allow mining interests to run roughshod over our natural treasures by simply spending some cash to buy their way as they do in other places.

I only wish our country also had the fortitude to not gobble up so many resources and metals for our diversions and entertainment. I wish all tourism to Bristol Bay ended tomorrow. Not because I wish the tourism industry there any hard luck but because we can't continue to build and fuel airliners constructed of metals and high tech composites controlled by miles of wires and circuits mined from other people's rivers and creeks. People who eat the fish of those waters to live.

Recently I learned of two villages that are relocated to make way for a dam to power the mining of copper and also to sell electricity maybe to Thailand when the mine runs out. It's a long way across the border and through the corner of Burma to Thailand. I emailed International Rivers, they'd seen the tentative plans drawn up a decade ago but hadn't realized the dam and mine were going forward. Of course there is nothing they or anyone can do. Chinese private funding.

I know those people by name. I've eaten the muntjak they've killed and the food from the fields they've grown. They have been moved out of the thick trees of the never yet cut river bottom. Animals that you only hear of in magazines live in those trees. Sambar and tiger, civet and guar, clouded leopard and pangolin. Those trees rise over a hundred feet in the air, still 3 feet thick at half way. All logged, and drowned, to smelt minerals dug from the ground to manufacture the electronics and circuits and gadgetry that modern life demands.

I've been a lot of places but I won't be going to Bristol Bay. I try to go to places only close to home now. I try to lessen my footprint. To tread lightly upon the earth.

+3 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from Dcast wrote 3 days 9 hours ago

"I only wish our country also had the fortitude to not gobble up so many resources and metals for our diversions and entertainment." You realize your comment was typed on a computer made of plastic, gold, silver, lead, platinum, and various other products originating from the earth? I understand what your getting at but others probably read your comment and think hypocrite. What you should be saying is to recycle and use what we already have taken from the ground and produced else where. I have little to no knowledge of the Pebble mine other than what I've read here and a few things mentioned in different hunting and fishing shows. It doesn't sound good anyway you cut it. The truth being said the EPA is really ineffective and won't have any say in this matter when all is said and done, and that's why I advocate States rights. You and I know d@mn well some bureaucrat in far off DC will go stiff arm the EPA, in return for more power, money, and namesake. I must commend you for pointing out the environment's biggest enemy being China!

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from labrador12 wrote 3 days 2 hours ago

People who live in Bristol Bay towns are probably not huge fans of Richard Windsor, the ethics award winning EPA executive. Living in an area where there is 18 plus hours of darkness in December and using diesel to run generators is not a cheap place to live. I'm no fan of the Pebble mine, but the EPA is guilty of making the cost of living higher for everyone in the country. The EPA is in cahoots with wealthy urban elitist green organizations who may well visit the area from May to Sept but who get out of dodge as soon as the daylight starts to seriously shrink. I wouldn't mind seeing a way for more jobs to be had in Ak. I'd like them to be jobs that leave behind a reclaimed environment, not a hole in the ground and millions of tons of toxic wastes. Even the Oilsands in Alberta have been reclaimed in time. Surely a project in the 21st Century can accomplish that much?

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

typical of a mining company.

in wisconsin they had to re-write the regulations in order for a mining company to come here. there are no rules regarding ground water pollution plus the company can pump water out of trout streams and lakes. they called the people who were opposed to the new regs "as "job killers". the truth of the matter is they could've still had the mine even with the old regs, it just would cost them a more money and a little more time.

"job killing regulations" has become the go to slogan to sscream by certain people with certain agendas

+2 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

typical of a mining company.

in wisconsin they had to re-write the regulations in order for a mining company to come here. there are no rules regarding ground water pollution plus the company can pump water out of trout streams and lakes. they called the people who were opposed to the new regs "as "job killers". the truth of the matter is they could've still had the mine even with the old regs, it just would cost them a more money and a little more time.

"job killing regulations" has become the go to slogan to sscream by certain people with certain agendas

0 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

but labrador thanks to regulations like the clean water act there are ospreys all over the place!seems like you like to talk out of both sides of your mouth.

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from jbird wrote 2 days 6 hours ago

I watched a documentary on the Pebble project on public tv last year. It was truly fascinating, and scary as He**. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of precious metals in the ground there, and the mining corp.s will stop at nothing to try to get their hands on the biggest motherload ever found on Earth. A permanent protective order is the only solution to saving this entire ecosystem, because with so much money on the line, they will never ever stop trying to get to it. I don't agree with everything the EPA does by a long shot, but anyone who cares at all for the outdoors should be thankful they're on our side in this. The adverse effects of this mine would be utterly devestating for centuries. Just research how big the containment lake is going to be. It's 20 times bigger than any containment pit EVER. Hundreds of millions of gallons of what basically boils down to battery acid. In a manmade pit, that must never ever leak a drop for eternity! Eternity. All at the headwaters of the greatest fishery on Earth. The fact that doing this is even up for debate is sad.

+2 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

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from Todd Tanner wrote 3 days 17 hours ago

The people who run Northern Dynasty seem to think that if they keep shouting “EPA!” at the top of their lungs, we’ll forget that they’re trying to trash one of our most important fisheries. They must think we’re stupid. They're wrong about that.

+3 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from rock rat wrote 3 days 10 hours ago

I too am proud my country doesn't allow mining interests to run roughshod over our natural treasures by simply spending some cash to buy their way as they do in other places.

I only wish our country also had the fortitude to not gobble up so many resources and metals for our diversions and entertainment. I wish all tourism to Bristol Bay ended tomorrow. Not because I wish the tourism industry there any hard luck but because we can't continue to build and fuel airliners constructed of metals and high tech composites controlled by miles of wires and circuits mined from other people's rivers and creeks. People who eat the fish of those waters to live.

Recently I learned of two villages that are relocated to make way for a dam to power the mining of copper and also to sell electricity maybe to Thailand when the mine runs out. It's a long way across the border and through the corner of Burma to Thailand. I emailed International Rivers, they'd seen the tentative plans drawn up a decade ago but hadn't realized the dam and mine were going forward. Of course there is nothing they or anyone can do. Chinese private funding.

I know those people by name. I've eaten the muntjak they've killed and the food from the fields they've grown. They have been moved out of the thick trees of the never yet cut river bottom. Animals that you only hear of in magazines live in those trees. Sambar and tiger, civet and guar, clouded leopard and pangolin. Those trees rise over a hundred feet in the air, still 3 feet thick at half way. All logged, and drowned, to smelt minerals dug from the ground to manufacture the electronics and circuits and gadgetry that modern life demands.

I've been a lot of places but I won't be going to Bristol Bay. I try to go to places only close to home now. I try to lessen my footprint. To tread lightly upon the earth.

+3 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

typical of a mining company.

in wisconsin they had to re-write the regulations in order for a mining company to come here. there are no rules regarding ground water pollution plus the company can pump water out of trout streams and lakes. they called the people who were opposed to the new regs "as "job killers". the truth of the matter is they could've still had the mine even with the old regs, it just would cost them a more money and a little more time.

"job killing regulations" has become the go to slogan to sscream by certain people with certain agendas

+2 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from jbird wrote 2 days 6 hours ago

I watched a documentary on the Pebble project on public tv last year. It was truly fascinating, and scary as He**. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of precious metals in the ground there, and the mining corp.s will stop at nothing to try to get their hands on the biggest motherload ever found on Earth. A permanent protective order is the only solution to saving this entire ecosystem, because with so much money on the line, they will never ever stop trying to get to it. I don't agree with everything the EPA does by a long shot, but anyone who cares at all for the outdoors should be thankful they're on our side in this. The adverse effects of this mine would be utterly devestating for centuries. Just research how big the containment lake is going to be. It's 20 times bigger than any containment pit EVER. Hundreds of millions of gallons of what basically boils down to battery acid. In a manmade pit, that must never ever leak a drop for eternity! Eternity. All at the headwaters of the greatest fishery on Earth. The fact that doing this is even up for debate is sad.

+2 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from Dcast wrote 3 days 9 hours ago

"I only wish our country also had the fortitude to not gobble up so many resources and metals for our diversions and entertainment." You realize your comment was typed on a computer made of plastic, gold, silver, lead, platinum, and various other products originating from the earth? I understand what your getting at but others probably read your comment and think hypocrite. What you should be saying is to recycle and use what we already have taken from the ground and produced else where. I have little to no knowledge of the Pebble mine other than what I've read here and a few things mentioned in different hunting and fishing shows. It doesn't sound good anyway you cut it. The truth being said the EPA is really ineffective and won't have any say in this matter when all is said and done, and that's why I advocate States rights. You and I know d@mn well some bureaucrat in far off DC will go stiff arm the EPA, in return for more power, money, and namesake. I must commend you for pointing out the environment's biggest enemy being China!

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from labrador12 wrote 3 days 2 hours ago

People who live in Bristol Bay towns are probably not huge fans of Richard Windsor, the ethics award winning EPA executive. Living in an area where there is 18 plus hours of darkness in December and using diesel to run generators is not a cheap place to live. I'm no fan of the Pebble mine, but the EPA is guilty of making the cost of living higher for everyone in the country. The EPA is in cahoots with wealthy urban elitist green organizations who may well visit the area from May to Sept but who get out of dodge as soon as the daylight starts to seriously shrink. I wouldn't mind seeing a way for more jobs to be had in Ak. I'd like them to be jobs that leave behind a reclaimed environment, not a hole in the ground and millions of tons of toxic wastes. Even the Oilsands in Alberta have been reclaimed in time. Surely a project in the 21st Century can accomplish that much?

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

but labrador thanks to regulations like the clean water act there are ospreys all over the place!seems like you like to talk out of both sides of your mouth.

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from wisc14 wrote 2 days 8 hours ago

typical of a mining company.

in wisconsin they had to re-write the regulations in order for a mining company to come here. there are no rules regarding ground water pollution plus the company can pump water out of trout streams and lakes. they called the people who were opposed to the new regs "as "job killers". the truth of the matter is they could've still had the mine even with the old regs, it just would cost them a more money and a little more time.

"job killing regulations" has become the go to slogan to sscream by certain people with certain agendas

0 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

Post a Comment

 

All submitted comments are subject to the rules set forth in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.