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Giant Mining Dam Would Endanger Alaskan Salmon Fishery

Giant Mining Dam Would Endanger Alaskan Salmon Fishery

The company that wants to mine copper and gold in southwest Alaska at the site of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, hired a firm to design mine waste pond dams that was behind one of the worst mining disasters in Canadian history.

The Knight Piésold firm designed a dam that failed in 2014 in Mount Polley, British Columbia, releasing about 24 million cubic meters of a toxic slurry of mine waste and water into a creek and a once-pristine glacial lake. That’s as much water as all four million residents of Los Angeles use at home in 19 days.

At least 50 mine dams have failed worldwide in the last decade, including a dam that collapsed in Brazil in January, killing at least 186 people; 122 people are still missing.

Alaskan fisherman Mike Fricerro told the Alaska Dispatch News that “modern history has shown us that (catastrophic dam failures) are more likely than they want us to think.”

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.of Vancouver has been proposing the mine for more than decade. Tom Collier, the CEO of the subsidiary that would build the mine, would receive a bonus of up to $12.5 million if the Army Corps of Engineers approves the mine quickly.

AECOM, the engineering firm that did a  preliminary environmental review for federal regulators, looked at the possibility of a dam failure The experts AECOM assembled included employees of Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of the company that plans to build the mine, and Les Galbraith, an engineer for Knight Piésold who inspected the Canada dam before it failed.

Those experts appear to have minimized the risk of a dam collapse by focusing on just 20 years even though the dam may be needed to hold back toxic waste for centuries and despite the actual recent mining dam failures like those at Mount Polley and Brazil. Considering these actual dam failures “does not benefit from evaluation of spill scenarios that are so remotely improbable that the risk presented is negligible,” according to the AECOM engineering report.

After an October 2018 workshop on  “Failure Modes and Effects Analysis,” the prospect of a dam collapse in the next two decades was  “ruled out as remote during the 20-year operational life due to likelihood of successful detection and intervention.”

Fishermen in Bristol Bay downstream of where the mine could be built hired another firm, Lynker Technologies, to look at what could happen if a dam failed.

That report found toxic mine waste could contaminate 50 miles of the Koktuli River system and about 155 miles of streams where salmon are harvested. The mine waste could flow into Bristol Bay. A clean-up would be nearly impossible.

Under former President Barack Obama, the EPA said the mine would result in a “complete loss of fish habitat” in the region.

The sockeye catch in Bristol Bay, near the proposed dams, accounts for a third of the value of all the fish caught in the 49th state. Its value is greater than all the commercial fishing in 41 other states. The local fisherman put the total value of the sockeye catch, measuring retail sales and multiplier effects from harvest to plate, at $1.5 billion in 2010.

The proposed Pebble Mine dam would be higher than the Washington monument. Mining companies favor dams because they are cheaper than the safer alternative of drying the mine waste and stacking it. These dams could hold mine waste for hundreds to thousands of years, long after the mine would be depleted and closed.

In Mount Polley, a section of the dam that had been built on glacial clay failed. Imperials Metals Corp.,  the company that operates that mine, said it is suspending operations at the mine because of falling copper prices.

Obama Protects Alaska’s ‘Precious’ Bristol Bay From Oil, Gas Development

Obama Protects Alaska’s ‘Precious’ Bristol Bay From Oil, Gas Development

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

In a boon to commercial fishermen, conservationists and Alaska Natives, President Barack Obama on Tuesday withdrew the waters off Alaska’s Bristol Bay from oil and gas development, vowing to protect the world’s biggest sockeye salmon fishery.

Calling the region “one of America’s greatest natural resources and a massive economic engine, not only for Alaska but for America,” Obama said he was taking it “off the bidder’s block” and would “make sure that it is preserved into the future.”

“Bristol Bay has supported Native Americans in the Alaska region for centuries,” Obama said. “It supports $2 billion in the commercial fishing industry. It supplies America with 40 percent of its wild-caught seafood. It is a natural wonder, and it’s something that’s just too precious to be putting out to the highest bidder.”

In 2010, Obama temporarily withdrew the area from oil and gas leasing, a protection that was set to expire in 2017. Tuesday’s action protects the important habitat area indefinitely.

Conservation and Alaska Native groups hailed the decision.

“We have the largest wild salmon migrations in the world coming through Bristol Bay and heading to spawning grounds in river systems along the Bering Sea,” said Ralph Andersen, president of the Bristol Bay Native Association.

“That’s why 50 tribes and regional Native organizations from Bristol Bay to the interior and the Bering Strait region support the Department of the Interior in putting Bristol Bay permanently off-limits to offshore drilling,” he said.

Photo: Todd Radenbaugh via Flickr

EPA Moves To Protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay From Proposed Open-Pit Mine

EPA Moves To Protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay From Proposed Open-Pit Mine

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times

SEATTLE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took the first step Friday toward possibly halting construction of the largest open-pit mine in North America, declaring that Alaska’s Bristol Bay — home to the most productive sockeye salmon fishery on Earth — must be protected from what could be irreversible damage.

“Extensive scientific study has given us ample reason to believe that the Pebble Mine would likely have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed and its abundant salmon fisheries,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters Friday in announcing the agency’s decision.

“It’s why EPA is taking this first step forward in our effort to ensure protection for the world’s most productive salmon fishery from the risks it faces from what could be one of the largest open-pit mines on earth,” she said. “This process is not something the agency does very often, but Bristol Bay is an extraordinary and unique resource.”

Conservation groups hailed the decision to use provisions of the Clean Water Act to potentially stop Pebble Mine as a victory for the critical ecosystem, for Alaska Natives who depend on the salmon fishery for their survival, and for the commercial fishing industry.

Chris Wood, president of Trout Unlimited, said in a written statement that “it is difficult to overstate the significance” of the EPA announcement. “If the EPA follows the science and follows through on this, it will rank as one of the most significant conservation achievements of the past 50 years.”

Tom Collier, chief executive of the Pebble Limited Partnership, vowed that his company would fight the EPA and prevail.

“I think we’ll drive a stake through this notion that there ought to either be a veto or restrictions placed on this project before we even file our application for a permit,” Collier said. “We don’t think they have the authority to do a veto before a permit has been filed.”

Pebble Mine is a potential source of gold, copper and molybdenum, but the low-grade deposits are located at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay fishery next to a national park.

Whether to allow the mine and its promise of jobs to go forward has been a fraught proposition even for Alaska Republicans, because it pits three of the state’s biggest industries — fishing, mining and tourism — squarely against each other.

Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, could not be reached for comment Friday morning. But he called the EPA’s January scientific assessment of the damage from Pebble Mine “little more than a pretext for an EPA veto of the state’s permitting process.”

And Alaska Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, gave a mixed grade to the EPA’s announcement that it would initiate Clean Water Act protections.

“While I am a strong supporter of responsible resource development — including mining — I have said the Pebble Mine is the wrong mine in the wrong place,” Begich said in a written statement Friday.

“However, I am skeptical of federal overreach,” he said, “from an administration that has already demonstrated it does not understand Alaska’s unique needs.”

Photo: Todd Radenbaugh via Flickr