Mining News: Obama hears mixed views of Alaska mining

Dillingham residents worry large mines could hurt salmon; Northwest Alaskans see balance between mineral development, nature

Shane Lasley

Mining News

On the final leg of his three-day tour of Alaska, President Barack Obama visited Dillingham and Kotzebue, two remote Alaska communities with starkly different views on the development of Alaska’s rich mineral endowment.

On Sept. 2, Obama travelled to Dillingham, the largest community in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska and ground zero of the movement to prevent the development of Pebble, a world-class mineral deposit that contains an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper, 107.6 million ounces of gold, 5.6 billion lb. of molybdenum and 481 million oz of silver.

In December, the president permanently barred leases for oil and gas drilling in the North Aleutian Basin, including Bristol Bay off the coast of southwestern Alaska.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Obama’s action caps decades of work by the community to protect the region’s economic and cultural heritage.

“With its pristine waters, rich fisheries and strong tourist economy, Bristol Bay is a treasure that should be off limits for oil and gas development,” Jewell added in a statement.

Anticipating Obama’s arrival in the Bristol Bay region, anti-Pebble advocacy groups made fresh appeals for the President to “protect Bristol Bay from the Pebble mine proposal.”

“We’re thankful for his commitment to protecting our salmon from off-shore drilling, but we still need his help to protect the salmon’s Bristol Bay spawning grounds from the Pebble Mine,” Nunamta Aulukestai Executive Director Kimberly Williams said in a statement coordinated with the arrival of Obama in Dillingham.

Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken strides towards using a special provision under the Clean Water Act, Section 404(c), to severely restrict or even outright ban the permits needed to develop a mine at Pebble.

To support such a decision, the EPA commissioned the Bristol Bay Assessment, a study that investigates the potential impacts large-scale mining would have on salmon and other ecological resources in the Bristol Bay Watershed.

In a lawsuit filed a year ago, the Pebble Partnership alleges EPA secretly collaborated with private anti-Pebble environmental and tribal groups to complete the assessment with the ultimate aim of stopping development of the enormous store of copper, gold and molybdenum.

“We are convinced the EPA has pursued a biased process against our project that then drove their actions toward a predetermined outcome,” said Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier.

U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland believed Pebble’s allegations have enough merit to issue a preliminary injunction that prevents EPA from advancing it plans to restrict or pre-emptively veto permits to develop Pebble until the case runs its course.

Obama, whose visit to Dillingham was more focused on the effects of climate change on the coastal community, did not wade into the contentious Pebble issue. He did, however, indicate that he read the anti-Pebble signs hanging around town.

“There are other threats to this environment that we’ve always got to be alert to,” Obama said while he was in the Southwest Alaska community.

Upon leaving Dillingham, Obama flew to Kotzebue, making him the first sitting president to travel to Alaska’s Arctic.

While coastal erosion and other climate-related issues are similar farther north, the Native peoples of Northwest Alaska largely embrace the economic benefits responsible mining brings to remote regions.

In a speech at the opening of the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic (GLACIER conference) in Anchorage, which marked the start of Obama’s Alaska visit, Northwest Arctic Borough Mayor Reggie Joule said the Inupiat people of Northwest Alaska “have learned with diligence and oversight that you can balance resource development and still have the animals and the fish and the plants flourish.”

“We have the Red Dog Mine, where we have worked to ensure the subsistence renewable resources are not sacrificed as we develop these non-renewable resources,” the Kotzebue resident observed.

Located on Native-owned lands about 90 miles north of Kotzebue, Red Dog is among the world’s largest producers of zinc, accounting for roughly four percent of the global supply of the galvanizing metal.

Joule characterized Alaska’s rich stores of renewable and non-renewable and human resources as a gift and a responsibility that should be developed to the benefit of the people who have lived in Alaska for more than 10,000 years.

“Our message is quite simple: ‘Development of our resources must include food, cultural, energy and economic security for Alaska’s First People,’ ” the Inupiat leader told to the GLACIER delegates.