Saturday - September 17, 2011

Pebble East, Pebble West, Does The EPA Know Best?

One the one hand we’ve got an “almost” mine where investors have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars exploring the strata, and have found themselves on top of two of the largest copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, rhenium, palladium, and porphyry deposits on the planet. We’re talking billions of tons here. Billions. Of tons. 50 million ounces of gold, perhaps more. All proven. No conjecture. Mining jobs for 100 years. And I’m calling it an “almost” mine because it’s not really working yet, nearly 20 years after the deposits were first found. It’s taken that long to go through the beauracratic process. And it might suddenly get worse if Washington Senator Maria Cantor has her way.

On the other hand we have some fish. No, I don’t mean that sarcastically, like the Snail Darter that caused so much Endangered Species fuss some years ago. I mean fish, as in, a large part of the entire Alaskan salmon industry.

See, the Pebble Mine is on watershed land up behind Bristol Bay, which is where all the salmon swim through when it’s breeding time. And the rock that would be mined is called chalcopyrite - a porphyritic granodiorite mineral that is gold, copper, iron, and sulfide all bonded together. Add water and it turns into sulfuric acid, and the minerals drop out. Oh, and the area is seismically active, like most of Alaska. So we’re talking about a two mine approach, both of gargantuan size: an open pit mine that could be 2 miles across, and a deep shaft mine that could swiss-cheese the underground strata for miles in every direction. And to get billions of tons of minerals, that means hundreds of billions of tons of waste rock. Mine tailings. Acidified muck in giant, giant piles. Giant lakes full of toxic runoff behind earthen dams ... just waiting for the next earthquake. But let’s not mislead ourselves: though headwaters they may be, they are many miles back from the bay itself. Dozens of mile I think. 15 at least. Sorry, I’m new to this topic, and I’m suffering a bit of information overload. But the mine area is not right on the bay. It’s back in the hills. Still, the salmon swim some distance upriver to spawn, right?

Can a giant mine be run without destroying a fragile environment? Is the environment all that fragile anyway? And of course, there’s the Indigenous Native Angle, who have lived off of the salmon for centuries and feel some kind of spiritual bond with them. Not to mention the whole salmon fishing, canning, sport fishing, and state licensing industries that swim right along with them. What you’d call seriously vested interests. And let’s not forget that whole Alaskan Beneficiaries thing; I gather that the state wealth is shared out to the population, and everybody gets an annual check from the oil and gas industries. I don’t know if that concept applies to mining.

I told ya, it’s a tough one. And it gets worse.

First, a little tiny bit of background, because the scope of this thing is just so damn huge I have to paste some data on it:

In recent years, however, another potential source of immense wealth has emerged around Bristol Bay. At the headwaters of two drainages that flow into the bay, beneath lands owned by the state of Alaska, a company named Northern Dynasty Minerals has discovered a gargantuan mineral deposit. The granitic rocks hidden beneath an otherwise ordinary upland basin and rounded foothills contain riches beyond anything ever discovered in North America – and possibly the world.

The find is known as Pebble Mine, and, with its full extent yet to be determined, officials estimate that it contains 67 billion pounds of extractable copper, 82 million ounces of gold, and 4 billion pounds of molybdenum. At current prices [as of 2008], the mine’s metals are worth $345 billion to $500 billion.

Seeing how much copper has gone up in the past few years, I’d put those numbers at $750 billion or more today. And those numbers may have been before the Pebble East deep continuation was even found, and it may be just as large as the western part. So we could be looking at a trillion. Maybe more.
Years worth of exploratory drilling has shown that the recoverable deposits go down 1700 meters - more than a mile deep.

The salmon side is also quite large, in it’s own way:

Bristol Bay is home to some of the largest runs of salmon in the world, all five Pacific species spawn in the bay’s freshwater tributaries. Commercial fisheries include the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, which along with herring and other fisheries, account for nearly 75% of local jobs

Sport fishing is also an important part of the area’s industry. There are many lodges catering to sport fishermen exploiting the tremendous salmon and trout populations in the freshwater tributaries. Freshwater species include humpback whitefish (Coregonus Pidschian), Dolly Varden trout (Salvelinus Malma), and Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

Not only the commercial and sport fish harvest is important: seasonal subsistence harvesting of salmon and year-round subsistence harvesting of freshwater fish is a critical part of life for rural residents of the Bristol Bay region, most of whom live downstream of the Pebble site.

If fully developed, the roads and other infrastructure for Pebble mine would cross - and perhaps impact - nearly two dozen of these spawning streams.

The place was first discovered in 1986, because the ore beds go right up to the surface and can be seen from airplanes. A few years worth of investigation were done, then folks took a decade off. Money problems I’d bet. Since about 2001 another company has come in and has been doing all sorts of exploration, planning, environmental studies, and filling out government forms. For a decade. Meanwhile, it’s been something for the folks in Alaska to fight about, in case hockey and dog sled racing get boring. In that Big Empty land of ice and cold, this one is a hot potato that never cools off.

just a few links - you can Google up hundreds more with ease:
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2062
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/pebble-no-mine-alaskas-ever-seen (this one describes the rocks as acidic, yet Wikipedia tells me they are alkaline. I’m no geologist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
http://www.pebbleminealaska.com/
http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/mining/largemine/pebble/



And now we get to the story that reader Beth wrote me about, from her work at resourceful earth news, a pro industry blog from what I can tell. Well, at least the place doesn’t seem to ooze self-righteous Greenie Sap like a Sierra Club meeting.

Hi,

We need your help in stopping a critical assault on the environmental review process. We cannot overstate the importance of making people aware of this behind-the-scenes attack.

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) recently wrote a letter to the EPA urging the agency to halt the Pebble Mine Project in Alaska. The Alaskan copper and gold mine project has been in limbo for more than three years – with $120 million spent to research how to have minimal impact on the surrounding environment near Bristol Bay. Once it has been officially proposed, the Pebble site will have to go through 67 federal, state, and local agencies for approvals and permits. If this isn’t stringent enough, I don’t know what is.

Now, Cantwell won’t even let the process work. She is changing the game altogether by moving to preempt the environmental review process the EPA put in place. The consequences couldn’t be more serious if Cantwell succeeds in her efforts. If she succeeds, *ANY Natural Resource Extraction in the United States will not be safe from the EPA and radical environmentalists.*

As Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski wrote, a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project will expand the powers of the EPA and “could have widespread and unintended consequences for any development project, including airports and other infrastructure.”

Cantwell’s actions make a mockery of the federal environmental review process and leave Americans even more dependent on foreign sources to meet our needs for natural resources and energy. More American jobs will be lost and it will be another blow to our already shaky economy.

I think the implication is that, having followed all the rules to the letter, crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is, the mine was set to proceed, so in desperation it was time for the Gaia Squad to pull a fast one out of their bag of dirty tricks.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell said Monday she would oppose a proposed huge copper and gold mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay if studies find it would harm salmon and thus put jobs in her own state at risk.

In a letter sent to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Cantwell described Bristol Bay’s salmon population as an economic lynchpin for commercial fishermen both in Alaska and Washington. Nearly 1,000 Washington residents hold Bristol Bay commercial fishing licenses, she said.

“Thousands of my constituents have contacted me expressing their concerns regarding the potentially catastrophic and widespread long-term impacts of the proposed Pebble Mine, which would be the world’s largest man-made excavation,” Cantwell said in her letter.

Cantwell called on the Environmental Protection Agency to consider using the Clean Water Act to prohibit or restrict large-scale development around the bay if it would harm the world-class salmon-producing rivers in the region. She also expressed her support of the agency’s decision to conduct a thorough analysis of large-scale mining near the Pebble Mine project site.

Mike Heatwole, a spokesman for the Pebble Limited Partnership, told The Associated Press the senator never sought any information from the companies involved about the project or the scope of its environmental studies.

In addition to commercial fishing jobs, nearly all major seafood operations that process Bristol Bay fish are based in Washington. Cantwell’s letter said Bristol Bay commercial and recreational fisheries are worth at least $500 million annually.

The EPA announced in February that it would analyze the potential impact of the Pebble mine proposal on watersheds feeding Bristol Bay.

The Bristol Bay Native Corp. and nine federally recognized Bristol Bay Alaska native tribes have asked the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to stop the mine from being developed. The analysis is expected to be released this fall.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today released the following statement in response to a news report that Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell may seek a preemptive veto from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the proposed Pebble Mine:

“Attempts to prejudge development in the Bristol Bay area before a permit application has even been submitted would make a mockery out of the federal environmental review process. A preemptive veto makes no more sense than a preemptive approval.

“I am fully committed to protecting Bristol Bay and the fishing industry it supports, but a preemptive veto represents a serious violation of Alaska’s state’s rights and would undermine the science-based approach long promised by this administration.

“When and if a permit application is submitted – for Pebble or any other project – an independent scientific review is exactly what happens under the environmental review process that NEPA provides,” Murkowski said.

On Feb. 7, in response to being petitioned to preemptively veto development, EPA announced plans to conduct a watershed assessment of the Bristol Bay area in Alaska. In response, Murkowski sent a letter to EPA, and recently toured the Pebble site with EPA Region 10 Administrator Dennis McLaren. During that visit, Murkowski pointed out that the wetlands throughout the Bristol Bay region are similar in character, and a preemptive veto could have widespread and unintended consequences for any development project, including airports and other infrastructure.

Today, Murkowski once again stipulated her support for the normal environmental review process and her opposition to EPA attempts to expand its authorities to include preemptive vetoes of development.

Murkowski is the Ranking Member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Please read Beth’s post on the Pebble Mine situation. She wants people to get involved and put some “drill here drill now” pressure on the dear Senator. And her post has more info on Pebble, some neat videos, and a bit of dirt she dug up (hur hur hur) on her. Actually, the whole blog looks like a pretty good resource to me.

Can such a mine be made and not kill all the nice fish? I bet it can. Can we afford to let yet another vast national resource lie dormant forever? I bet we can’t.

Oh, and just so you know: there is a green movement afoot that is pressuring Obama and his power mad EPA to stop ALL mining in the entire country. ALL OF IT. Coal, oil, copper, iron, trap rock, you name it. It’s bad for the environment you know. And you know what? Their tactics are EXACTLY the same ones used by Washington State Senator Cantwell.

Environmentalists love the moras of federal regulation and rulemaking as they can almost always find one rule or law that contradicts another, thereby opening a means to sue. And if, by chance, the government does actually clarify contradictory rules the environmentalist merely attempt to move the goal posts.

That’s the tactic employed by Earthworks, an environmental Non-Government Organization (NGO). The group has been running a national campaign this week aimed at pressuring the EPA to provide additional federal regulations to close what they’ve deemed “loopholes” in the Clean Water Act. Their website claims that the bill as it stands now is confusing and allows American mining companies to “dump their toxic mining waste directly into our waters!”

They’ve selected the language “closing loopholes,” but the truth is that Earthworks and its supporters are looking to add layers of federal regulations to the Clean Water Act so that it is nearly impossible for the mining industry to function in the U.S. The fact that such a move would cripple American jobs and stall economic growth isn’t an issue for Earthworks.

Gosh, follow the rules to bring your product or service to market and still find yourself damned? That sounds a whole lot like the attitude the left had towards the gun companies during the AWB days. Because, gosh, the new government rules were supposed to SHUT DOWN that whole manufacturing industry, weren’t they? Crivens, what a bunch of one trick ponies. SSDD, forever.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/17/2011 at 08:02 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • Environment •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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