Random Musings - PebbleMusings
By Devan Mitchell | July 14, 2007
Thoughts on Pebble Mine
Those who support this project say that the mine would affect only a miniscule sliver of Southwest Alaska’s abundant resources. Relative to the vastness of Southwest Alaska that is, technically, true. Let’s see if it’s true, really.
To find the Pebble Mine site you start at the town of Dillingham, trace your finger up the Nushagak river to where Mulchatna enters, then up the Mulchatna, past the Stuyahok, to the Koktuli, where you’ll take a right and drag your finger more or less to the East, to the headwaters of the Koktuli, a few miles north of Lake Ilaimna. Everything you’ve dragged your finger over (downstream) would be devastated were a “worst case scenario” to happen, and that INCLUDES Bristol Bay.
The worst case scenario, they assure us, will never happen. They will simply build the world’s largest poison pit and hold it strong in North America’s most wild and natural environment.
The best case scenario is the one Northern Dynasty has already proposed. They will simply de-water – divert - the water of the upper Koktuli river for their needs, and that’s it. Seems reasonable enough, yes?
Except that the upper Koktuli is, itself an ecosystem. Devoid of any magnificent mountain view, it is splendid enough for it’s bleak and isolated location and the wildlife it supports. Most everything there is dependent on this stream of water. Salmon spawn, bears come, caribou drink, wolf prints plaster the sand and gravel bars, eagles scavenge, the extremely shy and rarely seen river otter makes it’s home here. To suck dry the Koktuli’s headwaters would not only destroy this immediate environment instantly, it would eventually affect salmon runs far down stream. For the love of nothing better than gold. And that, in my opinion, would be a crime against nature.
(You have noticed that anyone who utters a word of environmental concern in certain circles tends to be shouted down with sneers of “Environmentalist!”, as though the word itself is just so loaded with icky–ness that no further conversation is necessary. That’s not me, and I hope it aint you.)
The locals on the upper Koktuli…1998
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