Gigantic mine proposal tests values of Alaskans

NONDALTON, Alaska — Fly overhead in a bush plane — there are no roads between native villages — and see eight giant rivers braiding across hundreds of miles of wetlands, carving ribbons through snow-coned mountains before emptying into Bristol Bay.

For more than 100 years, the wealth of this southwest Alaska watershed has sprung from the salmon nurtured by those wild rivers. Bank-to-bank, gill-to-gill, tens of millions of the silvery fish thrash upstream to spawn each year, unrestrained by dams, untainted by pollution.

It is the largest sockeye run in the world, accounting for more than one-quarter of wild salmon harvested in the United States, feeding millions at a time fisheries are dwindling around the world.

But if fish have made the region's past and present fortune, the future sparkles with the promise of precious metal. Beneath the rolling tundra, straddling the headwaters of two of the watershed's most productive rivers, a Canadian company has discovered North America's biggest deposits of gold and copper, worth about $300 billion in today's soaring commodities markets.

The question is whether Alaskans will have to choose between the two — and whether the watershed, its fish and a variety of other wildlife will be casualties of what could be one of the world's biggest mines. The project would entail five earthen dams, of which two would be bigger than China's Three Gorges Dam.

Fueled by daily pro and con advertising on Alaska television, the debate is engaging state and federal politicians, commercial fishermen, Eskimo and Indian villages, the international sportfishing community, environmental groups, major foundations and multinational conglomerates in a state that rarely turns down a major mine permit.

Northern Dynasty Minerals, of Vancouver, B.C., and partly owned by London-based Rio Tinto, already has drilled hundreds of exploratory holes, some more than a mile deep, on state-owned land in what's known as the Pebble claim. London-based Anglo-American, one of the world's largest mining companies, said this summer that it would spend $1.4 billion for a 50 percent partnership to mine the metal.

Opponents say a proposed Pebble mine would destroy one of the planet's last sustainable fisheries, dry up spawning streams and poison lakes and groundwater with acid runoff. Biologists have found that microscopic particles of copper dust can ruin salmon's genetic radar, which enables the fish to return from the bay to the streams where they were spawned.

Bristol Bay's other wildlife — including one of the world's largest brown bear populations, a 45,000-head Mulchatna caribou herd, moose, wolverines, beavers and eagles — also depends on clean water.

Northern Dynasty officials scoff at what they call an alarmist campaign. "We know Bristol Bay is a sensitive area," said Sean Magee, vice president for public affairs. "But there've been tremendous changes in the mining industry in the past 25 years. These projects can be done safely now: Mining and fishing can coexist."

Huge project

What is clear is that the mine — wedged between Lake Clark and Katmai national parks — would entail a staggering scale of industrialization.

If the full resource were developed, up to 12 billion tons of earth would be excavated and milled to extract the tiny flecks of metal: about 82 million ounces of gold, 67 billion pounds of copper and 4 billion pounds of molybdenum.

Ten square miles of impoundments would fill two valleys, to store in perpetuity more than 2.5 billion tons of waste rock and toxic residue.

To transport equipment and ore, a 104-mile road would be cut through undeveloped forest and wetlands, skirting Lake Iliamna, Alaska's largest body of fresh water. The lake is host to rare freshwater seals and is a primary spawning bed for sockeye, the red-fleshed salmon that are among the world's most prized edible fish.

Mining would mean high-paying, steady jobs at a time fish prices remain volatile and the North Slope oil that buoyed the economy is dwindling.

Pebble would be run for 50 to 80 years, said Bruce Jenkins, Northern Dynasty's chief operating officer, and "go a long way toward eradicating poverty in southwest Alaska forever."

More to come?

And Pebble may be only the beginning.

Northern Dynasty's exploration has sparked a surge of claim-staking, with eight other companies asserting rights over more than 700 square miles nearby. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management this month will decide whether to allow hard-rock drilling on 3,300 square miles of federal land in the area.

"A massive mining district would carve the heart out of the watershed," said Richard Jameson, president of the Renewable Resources Coalition, a statewide anti-Pebble group that backs legislation and ballot measures to halt the mine.

Northern Dynasty's environmental studies won't be ready until 2009, and obtaining the 67 required state and federal permits could take three more years. But already, Northern Dynasty's Magee said, "Debate is at fever pitch."

Opponents are waging an uphill struggle. Because Pebble is on state land, the key decisions will come from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, whose commissioner, Tom Irwin, is a former mining executive and whose mission is to promote development.

"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Norman Van Vactor, Bristol Bay manager for Peter Pan Seafoods, which operates the area's oldest cannery.

The outcome may hinge less on environmental values than on which economic resource Alaskans value most.

"You can't eat gold," said Robin Samuelsen, a commercial fisherman and chief of the Curyung Tribal Council in Dillingham, the region's principal town.

Bristol Bay's fishery, with $450 million in annual economic benefits, employs 10,000 people in seasonal jobs, including 6,800 fishermen. It could grow in value: Contaminants have come to light in farmed seafood, and consumers increasingly are turning to wild salmon for health benefits and superior taste.

This time of year, the rivers that feed Bristol Bay are bedecked with racks of drying salmon, ready to be stored for winter. In an area where imported food is prohibitively expensive, several thousand Athabaskan Indians and Yupik Eskimos depend on fish, moose, caribou, wild greens and berries.

"I'd rather eat porcupine than hamburger," said Jack Hobson, tribal-council president of Nondalton, the village closest to the proposed mine. An Athabaskan outpost of about 220 residents, with its homes of clapboard and corrugated steel, it's plastered with anti-Pebble signs.

Hobson has been a vocal opponent of the mine since the Renewable Resources Coalition flew him and other native leaders to see mines in Nevada. There, he said, they saw landscape that looked as if it had been "bombed": huge pits, contaminated water and depleted aquifers that forced a local Indian tribe to truck in drinking water.

Northern Dynasty's helicopters, he said, have scared away caribou for the past two years, depriving villagers of a diet staple. Once the mine is built, he added, "dust will blow all over the plants and the animals will eat this stuff, and — oh boy!"

The region's 50 commercial lodges also are threatened. The international sportfishing mecca attracts anglers who pay up to $8,000 a week.

Fighting for approval

In the past two years, Northern Dynasty has mounted a public-relations campaign, helicoptering in nearly 1,000 politicians, business leaders, teachers and other influential Alaskans to the site.

The company has made 800 presentations, in remote villages and in Anchorage, offering residents expense-paid trips. Tribal leaders have been hired as "community-outreach people," and more than 120 local residents are on Northern Dynasty's payroll as $17-an-hour drill assistants, bear guards and in other mine-related jobs.

Opponents accuse the company of buying influence, but Magee replies: "We don't apologize for hiring local people."

Opponents also have deep-pocket patrons, including Anchorage investor Robert Gillam, head of McKinley Capital Management, who has a private lodge 24 miles from the Pebble claim. The foundation of another wealthy angler, Intel pioneer Gordon Moore, has awarded $5 million to local conservationists, including Earthworks, a Washington, D.C.-based group organizing jewelers to boycott Pebble gold.

"Most Americans will never get to Bristol Bay," said Brian Kraft, who owns a local fishing lodge and works for the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "But they see our bears playing in waterfalls on the Discovery Channel. They can experience the taste of wild salmon.

"They know that we can destroy places like this, but we can't create them."