The naked arrogance and greed of the pirates at Alaska's Pebble Mine really pisses me off. They are a threat to my fishing. They actually believe that they can pay off the local politicians to turn a blind eye while they rape Bristol Bay. This might have worked with the Wasilla hillbillies they took to bed but now their dark deals are exposed to the harsh glare of the public forum. Their claim that an open pit gold mine in Alaska's best salmon fishery will provide jobs to the natives and revenue to the state just stinks. I'll tell you why in my heated rhetoric.

The jobs and revenue story is another get rich quick scheme for elected politicians. We have enough of this bullshit in Washington. We don't want it in Alaska. The amount of money these looters can potentially put in their pockets is a staggering $300 billion based on commodities futures. But the state tax revenue is less than 1% of mined resource value, with an additional 1% paid to municipalities. If this sweetheart deal offends you as much as much as it does me, complain to your congressman. There's no business like it. By comparison, the state revenue from oil and gas is about 20% with 2% paid to the municipalities. Even the total production value from fisheries is taxed at 2.8% with 2.5% paid to municipalities. At best Pebble Mine will employ 2,000 workers for 75 years. At worst it threatens a centuries old salmon fishery that employs 17,000 people and generates $360 million annually. Sport fishing revenues contribute $60 million to this figure. The fishery is sustainable and ecologically stable. The mine is a destructive short term ticking time bomb.

That $300 billion windfall is driving the Pebble Mine development company Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. to grab profits without regard to Bristol Bay's fishery or future. On a personal note, I've enjoyed a comfortable life buoyed by the profits earned from the free market system I totally support. But the right to make a profit does not include the right to destroy the environment. Just like the right to bear arms does not include armor piercing bullets and heat-seeking missiles. In this case the mine and the fishery cannot coexist. Northern Dynasty is using its money to buy political votes for mine development. We, as fishermen, have to use our political and legal clout to stop this inchoate disaster. Time is running out. Northern Dynasty formed a partnership with Anglo-American, a London based mining company in 2007 to begin production by 2013. More than $1.4 billion has been committed to start drilling.

The plan is to dig a 2 mile long, 1.5 mile wide 1,700 foot deep open pit with a 20 square mile toxic waste lagoon bubbling with cyanide, arsenic, sulfuric acid, lead and mercury held back by a 4.3 mile long, 740 foot tall, earthen dam. Under any circumstances, that's a bad plan. But when these geniuses decided to put this nightmare across one of the most seismically alive areas of Alaska with several active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes, it’s no longer a question of if the dam will burst but when. Read this site's Out There posting above about volcanoes threatening trout fisheries around the world. Didn’t it dramatically document the recent eruption of Mt Redoubt less than 100 miles from the Pebble Mine site?

Here's the worst part. After the Bristol fishery has become contaminated for generations Northern Dynasty walks and will not be held liable for environmental damages because it is not a U.S. company. At least with the Exxon Valdez disaster there was compensation, although delayed and partial. The best scenario, IF the dam lasts 75 years, is that Northern Dynasty is gone and we Americans have to pay to maintain the site for all eternity.

To keep the project alive Pebble has bought politicians from the State House to the outhouse. The pay-offs range from $25,000 monthly rentals for tribal elders homes to Pebble workers to the $14 million spent annually in community outreach. When state representative Jay Ramras asked for an investigation of Pebble's payments to native officials who would vote on the project the Department of Natural Resources, which regulates mines, ignored the request. Not surprisingly, Alaska's environmental commissioner is a former lawyer for Red Dog, Alaska's largest mine with a history of clean water violations. Both agency heads are former Governor Palin's appointees.

In August ‘08 Alaskans defeated a clean water ballot measure written to prevent mines like Pebble from releasing pollutants into salmon streams. This was the result of a massive $12 million ad campaign by Pebble and then Governor Palin speaking out publically against the measure. But only two years earlier at Ekwok, a native village, Sarah Palin said " I am a commercial fisherman. I could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world's richest spawning grounds, over another resource." What caused this change of heart?

The reasons were both personal and political. Todd Palin, Alaska's Irondog champ, gets shares in a native corporation that has a service contract with Pebble because he is 1/8 Yup'ik. Sarah Palin got all her information from the mining industry. Scientists paid by Pebble are conducting the state's geological and biological studies. The conflict of interest is nauseating. Palin can't hide her mendacity behind those designer frames. She was even planning to use a $7 million federal earmark (the kind she campaigned against) to build a 200 mile road through the Chigmit Range between Pebble Mine and the Pacific Ocean. The project is so tainted that even the venal former Senator Ted "I never saw a mine I didn't like" Stevens opposed it.

That it all has gone this far infuriates me so much that I was originally going to rant on and on about if Sarah Palin can't even save her daughter, ironically named after Bristol Bay, from the perils of teenage pregnancy, how can she be trusted to save the environment that she proudly exploits? But that would have been a cheap shot, and besides she’s no longer Governor. The future of the state of Alaska and perhaps that of Pebble Mine is now in the hands of Governor Sean Parnell, who as the previous Lieutenant Governor succeeded Palin at the top post when she stepped down on July 26, 2009 to pursue God knows what. The buzz on Parnell is that he hasn’t exactly given anyone any warm and fuzzy feelings that he’ll be any different than Palin, and so the obvious politics of that succession continues to churn my gut.

But what really makes me shit fire is the possible loss of Alaska's best fishery so that Pebble Mine can sell another gold chain to hang around the scrawny neck of a ghetto thug. We don't need more gold. We need more fish, water and air. The mine development impacts the upper Talarick Creek and both forks of the Koktuli River in the Nushagak and Kvichak drainages as well as Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and Iliamna Lake. I've fished there and loved it. I want to keep coming back. If you're reading this I don't need to share my fishing fantasies. You've got your own. They are worth saving.

Since the politicians aren't going to help blow up Pebble, we have to do it. This fight is way beyond bumper stickers and State House sit-ins. President Obama showed us that a million small Internet contributions can gut the fat cats and their unholy grip on politics and courts. There must be enough fly fishing lawyers to help us launch a class action suit against Northern Dynasty. Just like Obama we need a web site to include fishermen, naturalists and people who care. If you Google Pebble Mine you'll get about 4000 sites. Three great ones are www.sportsmansalliance4ak.org, www.bristolbayalliance.com, and www.renewableresourcescoalition.org. But we would be better served by one single site consolidating the effort to cut the legs out from under Pebble. There is now talk amongst the noble eco-warriors on the Pebble Mine front line to use a new redesigned version of the Trout Unlimited hosted site www.savebristolbay.org for just that purpose If Northern Dynasty can be dragged into court then two good things happen. First, the playing field is leveled. The arguments are considered not bought. Second, with any luck, the wheels of justice will grind so slowly that Northern Dynasty will finally lose interest and go away to exploit some third world country that can't fight back.

The Pebble Mine site sits on state lands but it is surrounded by over a million acres of BLM land – considered to be the largest and most important wild salmon fishery in the world – and just the Federal protection of those lands against future mining claims would have a powerfully negative effect on the development of the nightmare known as Pebble. Just this September 17th Trout Unlimited activated an Action Alert providing concerned citizens an easy online way of writing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey asking them to protect the Federal lands in Bristol Bay from this modern day gold rush.

Pebble will also have to apply for over 60 state and Federal permits including some from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corp of Engineers. Recent developments in Appalachia regarding the EPA determining that all 79 mountain-top removal mining permits submitted to it for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act might reflect a new environmental attitude at the Federal level and provide a ray of hope in protecting the lands surrounding Pebble Mine. Tim Bristol of Trout Unlimited was heard to rejoice that, “After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia.”

So the battle rages on, and it’s far from lost. A recent opinion poll commissioned by Bristol Bay native leaders reflects a waning of support across a coalition of eight native village corporations which have now filed suit in Anchorage, charging that the state is violating its Constitution by allowing drilling and other exploration to proceed without full environmental review. The Pebble controversy received further public exposure far beyond Alaska and the greater fly fishing community when an updated version of the film Red Gold was broadcast on PBS Frontline. This was followed by a surprise announcement (the significance and ramifications still unknown) by the CEO of the Pebble Partnership that they will not be applying for any permits in 2010. And while not directly related, but certainly apropos in its importance to the preservation of wild salmon fisheries, Target Corp., the second-largest discount retailer in America (1,744 stores nationwide), officially announced that it will cease the sale of all farm-raised salmon products due to negative environmental impact, and that all salmon now sold under the Target brand will be only "wild-caught Alaskan salmon.”

I suspect that probably the only mark that those fat-assed businessmen in London running Pebble will make in life will be in their underwear. I want to do better. Instead of a gaping pit I want to leave the rich and vibrant Bristol Bay fishery for the future. Help out. Consolidate your efforts and your contributions at www.savebristolbay.org. Ask Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for help. You'll feel better about yourself.

Equilibrium - Courtesy of www.CastawayFilms.com