Pebble Point/Counterpoint #1: Comparing to the Kennecott Mine

Around Bristol Bay, the message is unmistakable. Everywhere I looked this summer, I saw boats flying “No Pebble” flags, and almost every truck had the same message stamped on its bumper.

We know that the overwhelming majority of Bristol Bay fishermen see Pebble as a clear and present danger. In fact, when I tell permit-holders that 85% of us oppose the mine, the response is usually, “Who the hell are the other 15%?”

So, as fishermen, we operate in an echo chamber of anti-Pebble sentiment, and we need to be careful that we don’t tune out what pro-Pebble advocates are arguing. In fact, we need to listen very carefully to what they're saying.

After I got home this summer, I spent some time browsing blogs, reading fact sheets and listening to pro-Pebble ads. In a short series of posts here at Alaska Waypoints, I’m going to present some point/counterpoint on the Pebble situation.

POINT: Kennecott didn’t kill the Copper River, so that must mean Pebble won’t kill the Nushagak and the Kvichak

Here is the script of a radio spot that was aired this summer by “Truth About Pebble,” a pro-Pebble group.

“Alaskans are being told that every mine in the world has destroyed the waters around it, but consider this: the Copper River, featuring the worlds most prized salmon, was a mining district. Copper River reds thrive in this river that was once home to the world’s largest copper mine. So the next time you are told that all copper mines destroy the waters around them, remember the Copper River; an example that mining and fishing coexist right here in Alaska.”

COUNTERPOINT: The comparison is not valid

Any comparison between two mines must compare very similar projects. Many Pebble supporters use the Kennecott mine as an example how Pebble will operate, and imply that the success of the Copper River run should reassure us about Pebble’s impact on Bristol Bay. But Kennecott broke ground 100 years ago and there are some very important differences between the two projects.

The Kennecott mine operated from 1911 to 1938 and was at the time the world’s largest copper mine. Over the mine’s lifetime it produced an astonishing 260 pounds of copper for every ton of ore extracted, or a return rate of 13%. That is a very high rate of return in the mining game.

By comparison, the low-grade copper deposit at the proposed Pebble Mine is projected to yield a return of 0.34%. My quick calculations show that only 6.8 pounds of copper can be extracted from every ton of ore.

Okay, so what. Why is that a problem?

Well, use your imagination and think big. Think really, really big.

The Pebble Partnership estimates that the deposit area contains 55 billion pounds of copper. That means that Pebble will have to extract roughly 16 trillion pounds of ore at the headwaters of the world’s largest sustainable sockeye run, to collect their copper.

Now, when chemicals and water are used to remove copper from ore, iron sulfides within the ore are exposed to oxygen in the air and water. The iron rusts and the sulfur reacts with water to form sulfuric acid.

At the Kennecott Mine, large amounts of carbonate materials within the ore helped neutralize acid mine drainage into the Copper River. You can think of it as a kind of insurance. Sure, you create the acid, but the neutralizing carbonates significantly mitigated the risk to the Copper River fish. Happily, the run survived.

Conversely, the geology of the Pebble deposit does not contain significant volumes of neutralizing carbonates. Actually, it contains acidifying elements – these are the sulfides – that make the situation worse. So you have no insurance and no natural mitigation of risk – in fact what you have is natural exacerbation of risk, and dramatically increased potential for acid mine drainage into the Kvichak and Nushagak systems.

Remember, the giant tailings pond envisioned by Anglo American’s engineers that are supposed to hold all this stuff straddles both the Kvichak and Nushagak drainages. I’m not anti-mining, but it is very difficult to imagine a worse place to store this amount of toxic waste.

How much toxic waste does this translate to?

Try 3,000 pounds for every man, woman and child on earth...

• contained behind earthen dams the size of the Space Needle (bigger, actually)

• in a seismically active zone;

• forever.

(Note to Anglo-American: Hey guys, if you pull out in 30 or 40 years, who maintains the dams for the next 30 or 40 centuries? Would that be you? Great. And can we get that in writing, please, so we can all have a good laugh?)

Bottom line: the proposed Pebble project has a high likelihood of causing sulfuric acid to drain into Bristol Bay and endanger not only our salmon runs but our livelihoods.