Bristol Bay: The Dangers of Mining the Earth

Early each morning we would motor through the crisp Alaskan air and into a region of natural pristine wilderness. The scientists were looking for one ocean species in particular, and as our boat approached a wide bay we heard them – an exhalation at the surface, a white sliver, a series of squeaks – and before we knew it an abundance of Beluga whales were appearing before our very eyes. Their beauty and playfulness brought smiles to our faces; yet, we knew this population of Belugas was in fact facing new, and ever growing threats from expanding human development in Alaska. Today, this population of Belugas happens to be threatened by foreign interest groups seeking the rich mineral deposits buried beneath the Alaskan land.

In this eastern-most arm of the Bering Sea lies an unspoiled region of the Alaskan wilderness, abundant and teeming with wildlife from the lush forests and cascading rivers feeding into the ocean – a paradise known as Bristol Bay. Home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run – Bristol bay is the region’s “life-blood” – as these massive salmon runs feed the wildlife of this luscious landscape ranging from Alaska’s iconic grizzly bears and wolverines on land, to fishes, belugas, and endangered whales in the sea. It is a sacred natural wonderland filled with plentiful life and abundant resources.

Bristol Bay is also the “life-blood” of the regions economy, producing 40% of America’s wild caught seafood, including halibut, herring, crab and over half of all wild sockeye salmon on earth. It contributes $1.5 billon dollars to the economy each year and supports on average, over 10,000 year-round jobs to Alaskans. However, foreign corporations have taken an interest in another aspect of Bristol Bay: its wealth of mineral resources – a literal “gold mine” for outside investors.

Mining companies Anglo-American and Northern Dynasty Minerals partnered in 2007, with investments from Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi Corporation, and the “Pebble Partnership” was formed in the hopes of establishing Pebble Mine in the heartland of the Bristol Bay region. They proposed to construct one of the largest-open pit mines in the world (and the largest in North America) at the head waterways of the world’s largest sockeye salmon run.

For thousands of years, Bristol Bay has remained relatively unchanged – a natural wildness untouched by human development. The residents, mostly native Alaskan’s, continue to live and work off the land, subsisting on the bay’s rich resources, particularly salmon, as a part of their cultural way of life. It has only been in these recent years that large multinational corporations have begun exploring these remote regions with the plans of making enormous profits from the rich minerals that lie beneath the surface.

In Bristol Bay, Pebble Mine is the name of the mineral exploration of the region, which plans to mine the region’s ore deposits using large-scale operations and infrastructure. The goal is to extract the gold, copper, and molybdenum sulfide deposits from the land. However, due to the relatively low-grade quality, the mine must be enormously large for their business to be cost-effective. Stretching 2 miles across and carving 1,700 feet deep into the earth – Pebble Mine would be the largest open-pit mine in North America – deep enough to contains more than half of the tallest buildings in the world.

Not only does the “Pebble Partnership” propose to build one of the world’s largest mines, but they also propose to build an open-pit mine – a more destructive mining method that creates a massive pit or borrow in the ground as the miners extract ore, a rock type containing scant quantities of mineral resources. Open-pit mining requires blasting huge quantities of earth and rock, and produces eight to ten times as much waste as the more expensive, alternative underground mine shafts. Pebble Mine is expected to leave up to 10 billion pounds of toxic waste, contained in the tailings, in Alaska’s heartland if this project is approved.

Since the early days of human civilizations, we have been mining the Earth for its resources. Originally, people mined for stones, clay and metals found near the Earth’s surface to build their societies and enhance their lives. As civilizations expanded and evolved, the methods used to mine the Earth grew to accommodate larger regions and more material resources. Today, mining ranges from small-scale operations to now more commonly large multinational conglomerates seeking the highest profits from the mineral resources. This requires massive, large-scale operations and therefore, the potential for massive, large-scale environmental consequences.

In August 2014, the biggest environmental disaster in Canada’s modern history occurred when the tailings pond for the Mount Polly Copper and Gold Mine collapsed. Its contents – year’s worth of dirty water, toxic chemicals, dirt, and debris surged into the nearby streams, rivers, and lakes. In only days, the region declared a local state of emergency, due in part to concerns over drinking water quality to the hundreds of local residents, and a temporary closure was issued to local salmon fisheries.

The engineering company that designed the Mount Polly Copper and Gold Mine is the same company hired by Northern Dynasty Minerals in 2006 to build the Pebble Mine tailings dam. If a disaster of this magnitude can happen in British Columbia, there is no doubt a similar disaster could happen to Alaska. A 2012 report by Earthworks, a non-profit advocating for sustainable solutions to mining mineral resources, found that of the 89% of U.S. copper-producing mines, 28% of them had full or partial tailings dam failures.

Through the hard work of numerous non-profits fighting to protect the value and fragility of Bristol Bay, as well as the help of the Environmental Protection Agency, the “Pebble Partnership” has been met with fierce opposition by an overwhelming majority of Alaskan natives, fisherman, and industries. Understanding the threats a large open-pit mine could have on the environment, many Alaskans felt the high risks of environmental catastrophe for the salmon, and the cascading effects it would have on the ecology and economy of the region, far outweigh the benefits of a mine in the Bristol Bay region. While these honorable advocates have encouraged three of the major corporations to abandon their “Pebble Partnership” in 2014, leaving only Northern Dynasty Minerals as the sole owner, the discussion is not over until Bristol Bay is safe from the dangerous exploitation of Pebble Mine.

The largest open-pit mines it the world can be seen from space – they are the scars of the Earth. They come from our obsession with exploiting more resources and cashing in on larger profits. Many of the techniques used to mine today are invasive, removing huge quantities of the Earth’s crust to find tiny pieces of minerals. Those minerals must then be removed from the ore – requiring toxic chemical treatments – most commonly with cyanide, arsenic, and mercury that leaches into the environment, moving from the earth and soils, through the plants, and into the animals that eat them, until ultimately – they end up back to us.

Our modern lives undoubtedly rely on the exploitation of our Earth’s precious resources. However, the extraction of mineral resources can be done much more safely than in the past. Certainly, as with the Pebble Mine, there are environmentally pristine or sensitive areas where no mining should take place. Elsewhere with rigorous and high quality environmental standards mining can proceed with the condition that the best technology is involved in environmental protection and that post-mining landscape restoration is implemented. Finally and most importantly we should be reducing the need for more mining by recycling metals that have already been produced. The good news is that industries and individuals are seeing the benefits of reusing metals but much more can be done. The energy involved in recycling an aluminum can to produce another can is a mere 10% of what would be needed to create that can from raw aluminum ore called bauxite. For each of us it’s simple: reduce, reuse, and recycle what you buy. On a larger scale, we need to invest in new technology for non-destructive methods of acquiring important resources, and stop using chemicals that are poisoning our environment and ourselves.

The first at risk are the animals that call Bristol Bay home: including the playful, curious, and sophisticated Beluga whales. Scientists studying the Bristol Bay population come to this lush region to tag these magnificent animals and learn how their population is doing in the midst of natural and man-made disturbances. On top of enduring increasing noise pollution from shipping traffic and dwindling fish populations from overharvesting, belugas could potentially face the threat of losing their main food source, salmon, if Bristol Bay is poisoned by unsustainable mining practices. It is our responsibly to find sustainable solutions to our growing needs, for the belugas sake, as well as our own.

Warm regards,