Jewelers oppose Alaska mine

Environmentalists want you to buy organic roses, and human-rights groups advocate conflict-free diamonds.

Now, just in time for Valentine's Day, jewelry retailers are stepping up a campaign that aims to discourage the mining and sale of "dirty gold."

A group of prominent jewelers, including Tiffany & Co., Helzberg Diamonds and Fortunoff, will announce today that they oppose the gold and copper Pebble Mine planned for Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, site of the world's largest sockeye salmon run.

The jewelers' "Bristol Bay Protection Pledge" marks a new front in the "No Dirty Gold" initiative waged by groups against destructive mining practices.

It is the first time that retailers, who previously have limited themselves to supporting general rules for mining, have joined in a campaign to halt a specific mine.

An estimated 80 percent of the gold mined in the U.S. is used in jewelry. And gold mines — typically huge open-pit operations where tiny veins of metal are ground from millions of tons of rock — produce an average of 76 tons of waste per 1 ounce of gold.

The resulting air and water pollution has made metals mining the leading contributor of toxic emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"There are places where mining does not represent the best use of resources," Michael Kowalski, Tiffany's chairman and chief executive officer, said in an e-mail. "In Bristol Bay, we support ... the salmon fishery as the best bet for sustainable, long-term benefit. For Tiffany and Company, and we believe for many of our fellow retail jewelers, this means we will look to other places to source gold."

Sean McGee, a spokesman for the Pebble Mine, said the jewelers have not contacted the mine's developers, a partnership of Vancouver, B.C.-based Northern Dynasty Minerals and London-based Anglo-American.

The campaign to clean up gold mines echoes the opposition to "blood diamonds," sold to finance conflicts in developing nations.

In the past few years, jewelers, working with nonprofit groups and the mining industry, set up a system to ensure diamonds are "conflict-free." Now the "ethical jewelry" movement is preparing to expand with a certification program for gold and silver.

"It's what's happening in the marketplace," said Stephen D'Esposito, president of Earthworks, a Washington-based advocacy group for mining reform. "Jewelers are highly sensitive to consumer concerns about the impact of the products they buy. It is a trend you see with food, coffee, wood, even sneakers."

At the moment, retailers cannot tell where their gold has been mined. But in the coming year, D'Esposito said, jewelers will take the first steps to establish a chain of custody from mine to store.

Worldwide shortages and skyrocketing prices for gold and copper are fueling the push for Pebble Mine, which holds an estimated $300 billion in gold, copper and molybdenum.

If the mine, which lies on the edge of two national parks, gains the necessary permits from Alaska, it would involve excavating as much as 12 billion tons of earth, which, after extracting the ore, would fill 10 square miles of impoundments. Two dams, higher than China's Three Gorges Dam, would be built to hold the waste.

"These lands were selected by the state of Alaska for their mineral potential, an important part of the rural economy," McGee said.

But Dan Consenstein, head of the Renewable Resources Coalition, an Alaska-based opposition group, said pollution from the mine would destroy the fishery.