As an Alaskan who deeply loves my state, I am most alarmed by the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Pebble Mine issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.<\/p>\n
The Army Corps has clearly been compromised. They fail to take seriously the most looming threat from Pebble — a catastrophic tailings dam failure like the tragedy at Mount Polley in 2014. This dam failure resulted in a slurry of toxic water and millions of cubic meters of silt into pristine Quesnel Lake. Until then, Quesnel Lake had been the cleanest deep water lake in the world.<\/p>\n
Salmon were caught with their skin disintegrating. Can you imagine the outrage if that happened in Alaska?<\/p>\n
[Opinion: Defend Pebble Mine review on its merits instead of blaming critics]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n Knight Piésold, the company responsible for designing the dam that failed, is the same company hired by Northern Dynasty to design the earthen dams at Pebble. How can we possibly entrust our children’s most precious earthly resources, like the world-class Bristol Bay salmon run, to the likes of them?<\/p>\n Even if we were lucky enough to avoid a catastrophic dam failure into the pristine salmon-bearing waters of Bristol Bay, the threat remains of slowly leaking mine waste for many, many generations long after Northern Dynasty has gone bankrupt and ceased to exist. It would fall to future taxpayers to clean up the mess, and that is unacceptable.<\/p>\n It is likewise unacceptable to drill for fossil fuels in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is presently our obligation to sit tight on such fuel reserves. Future generations will surely need access to these energy stores so they may build the infrastructure to transition to clean and sustainable energy sources. This is the only remaining wise use for these reserves.<\/p>\n