Pebble struggle stirs memories

The battle over development of the Pebble mineral prospect in Bristol Bay gives me deja vu all over again.

I was manager of public relations at ARCO in the 1970s and was in the middle of the struggle to win approval for construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline from the beginning.

The managers of the Pebble organization are going through many of the problems we went through after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay prompted the major companies with North Slope leases to apply for permits to build the pipeline 800 miles from Prudhoe to Valdez. About half of the route was virgin territory with no roads.

The Pebble prospect is a large copper, gold and molybdenum deposit in the salmon-rich country of Bristol Bay. It is about 20 miles north of Lake Iliamna and the same distance from the villages of Nondalton, Newhalen and Iliamna.

Alaska’s commercial fishing community and the people of the region are understandably nervous at the prospect of developing a large mineral deposit in the middle of such a biologically rich area. But the potential problems of such a project have been thoroughly studied and the many federal and state agencies doing the work agree that the risk is very minimal.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency has signed off on the project, saying the risk to the area’s fish, people and their environs is minimal. Its critics refuse to accept the EPA’s conclusions, to nobody’s surprise. But there is good reason to believe that the project can and should be carried out as is now proposed.

I use the word now proposed because the project and its tailings dam have been drastically downsized, government recommendations have been adopted and the Pebble organization says it is ready, willing and able to move ahead once the final go-ahead is issued.

Mark Hamilton, retired president of the University of Alaska, is executive vice president for external relations at the Pebble Limited Partnership. Hamilton gave a presentation on the project at the Anchorage Senior Activity Center this week and filled in a lot of the blanks that many of us were wondering about.

The big worry from the beginning about the Pebble project is that it might be vulnerable to a disaster like the one British Columbia experienced at the Mount Polley mine in 2014. In that one the barriers around a toxic tailings pond were breached and the river and land area downstream of it suffered devastating environmental damage.

But the Mount Polley problem was compounded by the fact that its operators were operating the facility at well over its capacity for a long time. The accident was just waiting to happen.

The Pebble project is extremely unlikely to have anything comparable befall it. For one thing every agency — state, federal and regional — that has applicable jurisdiction will be watching it like a hawk throughout the life of the project. If you doubt that, talk to the people at the trans-Alaska pipeline.

Hamilton mentioned something at the Senior Center Wednesday which I did not know, that Pebble President Tom Collier is a green lawyer, a zealous advocate for the environment. Since Collier took over in 2016 he has initiated changes like a major downsizing of the project and a decision to avoid using arsenic in processing of ore from the mine. Arsenic is an extremely harsh chemical which is safely used at many mining project, including many or all of the other six mines already operating in Alaska.

The tailings dam will have openings at its base through which the river water will flow. The water will undergo a cleansing process to remove any toxic residues from the tailings and, Hamilton says, the water going back into Talarik Creek will be cleaner than the water flowing into the valley above the tailings pile.

The Pebble Mine is now in the final stage of federal permitting. Another three years or so will be required for the state process. When finally launched the mine will generate millions of dollars in taxes and royalties for the state of Alaska, taxes and high-paying jobs for the Bristol Bay Borough (something like 1,000 jobs that pay more than $100,000 a year) and have an invaluable economic impact on the entire region.

It has been studied and studied, the agencies and relevant professionals are satisfied that the risk is minimal, and it’s time to move ahead on this project.

The people of all Alaska have a lot at stake here and it should become a reality. State officials should move as expeditiously as possible on their permits.