Notes From Alaska
Returning to Lake Iliamna To Understand Pebble Mine Controversy
By Betsy Beardsley, Arctic Environmental Justice Program Director
My father spent his career as a hunting and fishing guide in Alaska. His guiding business started from a small log cabin outpost on the Kenai River that he and my mom built in the 1970’s. Over time, he accrued enough seed money and client interest to build a fly-in fishing lodge near Lake Iliamna in Southwest Alaska.
Lake Iliamna of the Bristol Bay Watershed is one of the largest lakes in Alaska. It’s a stone’s throw from Lake Clark National Park and about a 20 minute float plane ride to Katmai National Park. Century-old game trails zig zag across the land where bear and caribou have roamed through the seasons. Nearby streams are the spawning grounds of the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. John Denver once called the area God’s country.
As a child, I would spend many summers exploring the woods and hills around the lodge. My dad and I would fly in his small airplane to fish a quiet stream for grayling or rainbow trout. Sometimes we’d take a skiff from the lodge to a secret fishing hole for the largest rainbow trout on Earth. The wise old fish mostly watched us from the deep waters below the boat. They were too smart to test our line, but their quick movements sometimes tricked us into thinking we had them.
There are several tiny Alaska Native villages nestled along the shores of Lake Iliamna. I can remember taking the boat up to Pedro Bay village for fuel or visiting friends in Igiugig. A few times a week we’d fly in to the village of Iliamna for supplies or to check the mail. My dad kept an old Suburban in Iliamna for us to drive around while we were in town. It was mainly used to transport guests from the tiny airport that received flights from Anchorage a few times a week.
All that has changed now. My last trip to Iliamna was for work. I received an invitation from Northern Dynasty Mines to learn about their Pebble Mine proposal to build the largest open-pit mine in the world just seventeen miles from Lake Iliamna. I flew in to the village a few days early to meet with locals and get a sense of what the public sentiment was in the region. Most people felt helpless. Native land allotment owners are worried they’d lose their land for the road Northern Dynasty needs under eminent domain. Rumors were flying that the tailings from the mine would be dumped into the lake itself. I couldn’t believe it, and was glad for the invitation to meet with the mine executives.
To my dismay, the locals were right. Northern Dynasty is indeed pushing an alternative to dump toxic tailings into the lake. They want to use a cyanide-leach method to extract the gold and have plans to build an eighty-mile road along the border of Lake Clark National Park to Cook Inlet. What dumbfounds me is that the CEO of Northern Dynasty says no fish will be harmed during the mine’s life.
The Pebble Mine project is on state land, but its road proposal and infrastructure plans occur nearby federal BLM land and private native allotments. Today, BLM released the Bristol Bay Resource Management Plan with recommendations to lift over one-million acres of mineral withdrawals in Bristol Bay. These mineral withdrawals are scattered across the Bristol Bay Watershed and border the Pebble prospect. There are several rivers that qualify for Wild and Scenic protective status that the plan ignores. It basically paves the way for future industrial development in the region.
Alaska Wilderness League’s BLM Wildlands Program is preparing a formal protest of BLM’s Bristol Bay Resource Management Plan. Working with local stakeholders, fishing interests, and other conservation groups, we hope to influence the final decision in a good way. Let’s hope the BLM listens.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:54 pm
You are right on track. Keep up the diligence and good work.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
This is an outrage. My family and my husband’s has been in the fisheries industry for more than 4 generations. Bristol Bay is the largest wild salmon run in the world and a delicate waterhsed. KEEP PEBBLE MINE OUT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH_TzBju8rU
I hope Alaska Wilderness shares more about this issue and helps to gain support.