Anglo American’s Bristol Bay Controversy: Wildlife vs. Mineral Riches

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Cynthia Carroll, dubbed Cyanide Cynthia by critics, sees Pebble as a chance to prove that Anglo can be "sensitive to the environment" and help the community. | photograph by Chris Floyd

The Pebble Partnership's Web site promises "multiple seepage control and monitoring features" to ensure that contaminants do not enter the water systems, but Carroll says it is too early to say exactly how such a large operation would work. The partnership is still doing field research and exploratory drilling, she explains; detailed plans will not be ready until late 2009. "I'm asking people not to prejudge and take positions before they have the facts and before we understand the science," she says. Sean Magee, spokesman for the partnership, acknowledges that environmental and cost concerns make it likely that less than 100% of the deposit will be mined.

Opponents are wary of any development. "I can't think of a mine site that's more difficult," says Bruce Switzer, a former mining-company executive who is a senior technical adviser for the anti-Pebble group Alaskans for Clean Water. "Carroll and the Pebble people are all nice and friendly, but the reality is that that mine will be the end of the salmon sooner or later."

Brian Kraft, who runs two lodges on rivers near the Pebble deposit, says he considered himself neutral on mining until he flew over the proposed mine site in a small plane with one of his fishing clients, an engineer at a U.S.-based global gold-mining outfit. "The guy looked down and saw all the groundwater and said, 'No way can you do this,' " remembers Kraft, who now heads the anti-Pebble group Bristol Bay Alliance. "He said that for sure there are going to be water-quality problems. He explained that his company has issues [with groundwater contamination] at some of their mines where they have to truck in clean drinking water -- and those mines are in the desert."

Lodge owners like Kraft are often accused of exhibiting the classic not-in-my-backyard response to development projects. It's a charge most often leveled against Bob Gillam, the Anchorage-based money manager who has been one of the biggest single financial contributors to anti-Pebble efforts. Every summer, Gillam invites friends and influential fishing enthusiasts to his house on Lake Clark, some 30 miles from the Pebble site. (Gillam's office referred all inquiries to the Renewable Resources Coalition, which has received the bulk of his donations.)

But there are backyards and backyards. For the native Alaskans in the half-dozen villages near the mine site, salmon is a critical component of life. Jack Hobson, president of the tribal council of Nondalton, population 220, says he eats salmon two or three times a week. This is not simply a matter of tradition -- or taste. Largely because there are no roads leading to the outside world, other kinds of food are exorbitantly expensive in Bristol Bay villages. At the general store in Iliamna, the town closest to the mine, a gallon of milk runs $12, a dozen eggs $5.50, and a box of Cap'n Crunch $8.35.

Hobson, a 49-year-old father of three boys, says he worries about what a massive mine could do to the salmon and the underground water that sustains his village. "I'm not against mining," he says, wearing a T-shirt featuring the word PEBBLE with a line through it. "I just think there's too much risk with that location. If anything gets into the groundwater, they'll never get it out."

He says his eyes were opened to the dangers of mining during a trip around the western United States that was sponsored by anti-Pebble groups. He and 16 other native Alaskan leaders were driven through the desert in a fleet of minivans to the Yerington mine in Nevada, an abandoned copper mine that has unleashed a toxic slew of heavy metals into the groundwater, and the huge Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah, where a plume of contaminated groundwater extends for 20 square miles. Hobson says he learned that metal mining is the biggest polluter in the United States, responsible for 29% of all toxic releases in 2006.

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The balance of public opinion in Bristol Bay has always tilted against Pebble. But Carroll has one compelling counter-argument: The mine will bring jobs and economic development to an area that has neither. The partnership has said that, if Pebble goes ahead, it will hire and train as many local residents as possible for the 1,000 permanent jobs, which will likely pay the state average for mining jobs of more than $80,000 a year.

That prospect has won over some local people, including Myrtle and Elia Anelon, ages 68 and 73, respectively. Hanging in the living room of their house, a small single-story structure overlooking one of the area's many lakes, are a dog sled and wooden snowshoes that Elia once used as a trapper; selling furs used to be both a cultural tradition and a source of income. Now the Anelons are retired, but they worry about their 23 grandchildren. "How are they going to live?" Myrtle asks.