by Kiley Austin-Young

SILENCE REIGNS OVER the land. Glaciers

and snowfields thaw in the sun, dissolving
into the torrents of ceaseless rivers. The jag-
ged banks show the green shoots of summer,
but there are no commercial fishermen. The
melted, mossy mush of beaver ponds, but
no concrete dams. The stern, white faces
of craggy buttes, but no ski tourers or snow
machines. This is the Wild, the savage, vast
Northland Wild.

Today, there are men here—gainseekers

groping in the Arctic darkness. And they have
found a yellow metal.

A TOXIC WAR IN ALASKA | 1


The place is the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, about two hun-
dred miles southwest of Anchorage and seventy miles from
tidewater at Cook Inlet. This place is the foremost wildlife
area in all of Alaska, the source of the largest salmon runs
on the planet, home to more than one hundred thousand cari-
bou and tribes of moose and bear, and not least, the towns of
Iliamna, Nondalton, and Newhalen—small villages of indig-
enous, subsistence peoples who have been in the region for
thousands of years, carving a culture and a life out of nature.
And here lies a great fortune—a treasure trove tucked in
the tundra, resting as calmly as the grizzly bear and caribou
herds that graze on the doorstep of its vault. The booty, a
vast depository of gold and copper, lies at the headwaters of
the Mulchatna/Nushagak River and the Newhalen/Kvichak
River—two of the most famous salmon-producing river
drainages on the planet. Both feed into Bristol Bay, where
an estimated forty million salmon come to spawn each year.
Experts say the deposit—some eighty million pounds of cop-
per, over one hundred million ounces of gold, and six billion
pounds of molybdenum—could be worth as much as half a
trillion dollars.
On far-away fields, in the courts of Anchorage and in the
corridors of Washington D.C., there is a burgeoning battle
over a proposed open-pit mine of almost mythical size—to be
called Pebble—which would extract the metals while altering
the landscape irrevocably and, many say, pushing the native
salmon, ecosystem, and cultures into extinction.
2 | KILEY AUSTIN-YOUNG
If built, the mine will be one of the largest in the world. Its
open pit will carve twenty-seven hundred feet into the earth’s
crust. Each day, the resource-thirsty operation will soak up
at least twenty million gallons of fresh water and use more
energy than the city of Anchorage. It will include the grandest
dam on the globe, a structure bigger than Three Gorges Dam
in China—made not of concrete but of dirt and rock, in order
to hold back the toxic waste created in the mining process.
The estimated seven billion tons of toxic dust will need to be
responsibly contained.
Ken Taylor, head of environmental assessment for the group
seeking to develop the mine, pitches cleanliness as a cer-
tainty, boasting that the project will result in “zero loss” to
fisheries.
But a rag-tag cadre of conservationists, sportsmen groups,
businesses, commercial fisherman, and Natives—led by an
improbable but powerful ally, Anchorage-based businessman
Robert Gillam—is unconvinced. They think responsible con-
tainment is a fantasy or a fairytale at best, a lie or a scam ped-
dled by Pebble’s backers at worst. They are forging a fierce
oppositional fight.
If a portion of the seven billion tons of rock were not properly
contained, if even traces of the toxic dust—arsenic, mercury,
acid drainage, and copper tailings—were to flow or blow into
the fish-filled streams, the red salmon, and by extension, all
the wildlife in the area, would begin to die. Chemical con-
centrations of three or four parts per billion in fresh water
destroy a salmon’s ability to navigate and thus threaten its
ability to spawn. Gillam insists the mine would mean “the
destruction of the last great salmon run on Earth.”
The impassioned, partisan hullabaloo over the Arctic Nation-
al Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) pales in comparison to the cata-
clysm erupting over Pebble. The Bristol Bay area of Alaska
is shaping up to be ground zero for the most important envi-
ronmental, ecological, and political war this nation has seen
in years. The war—as Bill Lardley put it in a New York Times
feature—is one between economies and cultures, copper and
clean water, gold and wild salmon.
SINCE THE RUSSIAN fur trappers arrived in the 1780s, the
Last Frontier has been a place where man harvested nature,
pressing out of it, like juices from the grape, all the glittery
exaltations and conjured self-values of his race. Fir and oil
and natural gas dwelled among the blind elements and great
forces of nature, where they were found and co-opted, trans-
ported, sold.
More than a century ago, man first discovered the yellow
metal, and with steamship and transportation companies
booming the find, thousands rushed into the Northland. Since
then, mining has been encoded in Alaska’s genes.
Miners are now digging precious metals out of the ground in
Alaska at the fastest clip since 1916. As several of the world’s
most reliable currencies plummet in confidence and exchange
value, precious metals are going for record prices—gold is
now worth over $1,100 per ounce—boosting fervor for great-
er fortunes among mining conglomerates.
The Pebble Partnership—composed of Anglo American, a
London-based company, and Northern Dynasty, a Canadi-
an company that has never built a mine—seeks permission
to build the Pebble mine. If allowed, Alaska could join the
ranks of the world’s largest gold producers, bringing bullion
to market on par with the outputs of South Africa or China
or Russia.
The multi-billion-dollar industrial excavation at Pebble
would require the construction of bridges and dozens of miles
of roads and electric power lines across wild, undeveloped
terrain; the erection of prodigious pipelines for fuel and rock
slurries; the impoundment of large quantities of surface wa-
ter; and the frenzied transport and use of toxic chemicals.
The opposition sees the environmental risks as unacceptably
high. They frame their foes as despoiling, money-minded
mischief-makers with no concern but immediate commercial
success. They point to dire scientific research reports and
enshrine the words of state and federal biologists who warn
that toxic residue from the project could irreparably harm the
salmon, crippling the fishing industry and the entire ecosys-
tem.
Ultimately, the biggest battle is poised to erupt in the politi-
cal realm, where the judgment is split. Three former Alaskan
governors, two Republicans and a Democrat, and former Sen-
ator Ted Stevens, a Republican, have spoken out against the
mine. In November 2009, Governor Sean Parnell shot back at
the Pebble critics, pledging that the state would “vigorously
defend” the permits it grants and its mine-permit process.
Proponents claim the mine would be an economic godsend to
the region. The mining conglomerates say they will hire the
rural peoples who have yet to enjoy the industrial innovations
of the modern era. Others foresee broken promises, as the
mining companies import skilled laborers from abroad.
Local, indigenous peoples are split. The business bigwigs
boast of $70,000 annual salaries—the alluring promise of a
better life and nicer things, the fruits of capitalism to which
many of the peoples sustained by salmon have never been
privy.
Supporters note that mining yields many millions each year in
local and state tax revenue, as well as in payments to Alaska
native corporations; newly swollen government coffers and
villages flush with cash could pave asphalt roads and con-
crete runways, building better schools and post offices and
playgrounds. The new money could buy tranches of Ameri-
can culture’s modern mainstays as well. Copper, credit cards,
and Citigroup subprime. Bullion, Jeeps, and Jim Beam bend-
ers. The Good Life.
THE STORY BEGINS, like so many others, with Sarah Pa-
lin.
When she was a candidate for governor in Alaska, Palin
bragged of her love for the vast and beautiful delta that drains
into Bristol Bay—the salmon-filled province where tens of
millions of the red swimmers come to spawn each year. In
a campaign questionnaire, Palin promised that, “as part of a
Bristol Bay fishing family”—her husband Todd is a part-time
commercial fisherman and was raised near Bristol Bay—she
would not “support any resource development that would
endanger the most sensitive and productive fishery in the
world.” Speaking to residents of a small native fishing village
during her gubernatorial run, Palin gushed: “My daughter’s
name is Bristol…I could not support a project that risks one
resource that we know is a given, and that is the world’s rich-
est spawning grounds, over another resource.”
But in August 2008, Governor Palin dealt a death-blow to a
pivotal statewide ballot initiative, Ballot Measure 4 or Prop
4, that would have enacted stricter guidelines and standards
under which all mines operate. The Pebble-interested mining
A TOXIC WAR IN ALASKA | 3
 companies and the Resource Development Council of Alaska
spent more than $9 million to fight the proposal, an unprec-
edented sum for a political referendum in one of the nation’s
least populous states. The opposition groups, led by Bob Gil-
lam, the initiative’s architect and single biggest individual
donor, pledged hefty sums as well.
Television, radio, and internet advertisements evoked dispa-
rate portraits of the Pebble proposal—exploding mine sites
and suffering red sockeye salmon on one side, sturdy-looking
miners and contented natives on the other. The pro-Pebble
and anti-Pebble portraits clogged the state’s airwaves and
stuffed mailboxes for months. (The total sum spent fighting
the initiative was a state record.)
During the run-up, Palin remained officially neutral—as
governor of the state, she was not permitted to take sides on
ballot measures. Then, six days before the late-August vote,
with the polls revealing a razor-thin difference in sentiment,
Palin broke her silence. “Let me take my governor’s hat off
for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop 4—I
vote no on that.” She went on to defend the permit process
and praised what she saw as the stringent regulatory require-
ments. “We’re going to make sure that mines operate only
safely, soundly.”
The comments rocked the referendum. In less than twenty-
four hours, the pro-mining coalition had placed full-page
newspaper ads with Palin’s likeness and the word “NO” in
large black typeface. The initiative was defeated, with fifty-
seven percent against.
Palin was cleared of wrongdoing by the Alaska Public Of-
fices Commission, which said Governor Palin made it clear
her statement was a personal opinion and not the official po-
sition of the state or the governor’s office. Palin’s stunt irked
many. Former Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who lost
to Palin in 2006, said: “Being a governor is not a costume—
you either are the governor or not.”
On August 29, 2008, three days after the vote, Sarah Palin
was named Republican Senator John McCain’s running mate,
and the referendum was forgotten.
McCain campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton defended
the charges against the then Vice Presidential candidate: “She
supports responsible resource development…this is about
process and ensuring that any company that wants to come to
Alaska and develop our resources is at the very least provided
the ability to avail themselves of the state’s process.”
The permitting process, involving both federal and state
agencies, is a public-private hybrid whereby the agencies
release their findings and conclusions for public comment.
Many of the supporters do not defend the mine; they defend
the process. But unfortunately for the opposition, the process
is set up to approve, not to reject.
4 | KILEY AUSTIN-YOUNG
Alaska has never before denied a proposal for the construc-
tion of a large-scale mine.
THE REFERENDUM DEFEAT bruised the opposition cast,
which remains an unlikely ensemble. At the helm is Gillam,
a lifelong Alaskan with conservative political ties who hap-
pens to own land and a luxury lodge twenty-four miles from
the area of the proposed mine. Ironically, Gillam spends his
days and makes his dollars supporting global economic de-
velopment; as president of an international investment firm
he founded in 1990, he deploys billions of investor capital
into enterprises just like Pebble all over the globe.
For years, Gillam avoided the media spotlight, but he re-
vealed his stance on Pebble publicly in a July 2009 Anchor-
age Daily News op-ed. Gillam wrote: “When all the copper
and gold is gone, we will be left with the largest earthen dam
in the world holding back perhaps the largest toxic dump on
Earth. The mine developers will take our copper and gold,
make their money and be gone. Alaska will be left with a dev-
astated river drainage system, a toxic dump and no jobs.”
In person, Gillam is a stern, gruff, bulk of a man—rotund
but not soft. He’s hard to the core, adorned with a kind of
weather-beaten and war-torn cloak of confidence, the living
product of working-class roots, of days and nights working
for his keep, of millions made and lost, of near-bankruptcy
and fortune. Absent is the regal, haughty bearing of a man
who has amassed an immense wealth. His stature is more
fittingly low-brow, commensurate with his humble origins,
nights spent cooking his catch in his old two-bedroom cabin,
talent for fishing and facility with a shotgun, expert handling
of a single-engine Cessna, and days traipsing the wild he now
wants to protect.
Since his involvement began, Gillam has been the object of
virulent attacks, public scorn, lawsuits, threats, and criminal
allegations. Northern Dynasty employees and other potential
Pebble beneficiaries have painted him as a villain, and a site
called “Bob Gillam Can’t Buy Alaska” pilloried his character
and charged that protection of his nine-bedroom, fourteen-
thousand square-foot home was the self-interested motive for
his opposition effort (the page has since been taken down).
The Pebble fight does not come cheap even to Gillam, report-
edly among the richest men in Alaska. He has, in his own
words, put his money where his mouth is. He was a pivotal
player in the record-breaking political ad war over the 2008
ballot initiative. By his own admission, he contributed $2 mil-
lion to Virginia-based Americans for Jobs Security (AJS) and
more than $850,000 directly to the pro-initiative campaign.
How the money was donated became a headache and a cam-
paign-finance conundrum for Gillam starting in March 2009.
In the aftermath of the vote, trench warfare continued as the
pro-Pebble conglomerate and the Resource Development
Council filed campaign-finance complaints against Gillam
and the anti-Pebble groups.
They squawked to the state of Gillam’s alleged improprieties
and asked for civil and criminal prosecution. At issue was
the connection between Gillam and the groups to which he
contributed, organizations like AJS and the Renewable Re-
sources Coalition (RRC). Both AJS and RRC in turn used
the money to fund Alaskans for Clean Water (AFCW), a non-
profit organization formed to raise money for and advocate in
support of Prop 4.
The charge was that AJS and RRC
used the money from Gillam to
support the ballot campaign while
keeping the original source of the
funds secret according to its internal
policies—an illegal “pass through.”
The Alaska Public Offices Commit-
tee (APOC), the same watchdog
who acquitted Palin of wrongdoing
in the hat affair, dropped two out
of eight charges, and they declined
to recommend a criminal investi-
gation. Gillam, supported by RRC
and AJS, continued to claim that the
decisions to use the money to fund
AFCW were made by those organi-
zations alone—a claim still disputed
by APOC staff, reportedly, due to
the timing of the contributions and
the relationships among the parties. Bob Gillam, an Anchorage-based business-
man, believes the Pebble mine would mean the
In late February of this year, the
destruction of the last great salmon run on earth.
prosecutors and the defendants
agreed to a settlement of $100,000,
which was not a “fine” or a “penalty.” The defendants admit-
ted no wrongdoing but promised not to make “pass through”
donations in the future.
There are outstanding campaign-finance charges against the
pro-Pebble groups as well. In an e-mail, Gillam reminds:
“There are new APOC complaints over the miners that now
show that foreign mining companies spent over $15 million
to defeat [the ballot measure]...and that much of it was not
reported until six months after the election.” Byzantine fi-
nancing aside, there is no doubt that the mine’s backers spent
princely sums in an effort to buy the election.
Gillam is quick to point out that he made contributions—at
least $1 million to AJS, records show—before the initiative
was even approved by the Alaska Supreme Court on July
3, 2008. Gillam pledged the funds after having surgery and
while battling life-threatening blood clots—he contributed
the money, he says in an admission of his own mortality,
“knowing I might not make it.”
Gillam, whose health has since rebounded, believes the com-
plaints were filed by the mining interests to intimidate him.
But instead of running scared, he is emboldened. No longer
press-shy, he wants to proclaim his position to the public. In
addition to his op-ed, he was a willing subject of a lengthy
profile published this spring in Alaska Magazine. He thinks
he has been unfairly vilified and that his critics’ caricature
of him as a well-endowed not-in-my-back-yarder belies his
motive, protecting the interests of his home state. “I’m doing
this,” he told his profiler, “because it’s the right thing to do.”
George Jacko, a resident of impact-
ed community Pedro Bay, wrote
in defense of Gillam as early as
2007: “Bob Gillam has given con-
cerned local folks a voice; without
his involvement and resources, we
would be buried under hundreds of
pages of Northern Dynasty permit
applications, dependant on state
and local borough governments for
understanding, protection and bal-
ance.” Jacko continued: “Agree or
disagree with the way Bob Gillam
wages war against the Pebble Mine,
but agree and give thanks to him for
being a good neighbor, willing to
lend a hand, willing to engage us all
in debate over the pros and cons of
the mine.”
Gillam cites three pillars of cons
in opposing the mine: history and
science—which he says shows that
mines of this size built in environ-
ments of this kind are sure to see problems; business sense—
which he draws on in supporting renewable resources over
non-renewable resources and in siding with profits for the lo-
cal fishing industry over profits for foreign corporations; and
cultural heritage—of which, he says, vibrant local villages
and peoples would be deprived by the mine’s incursion.
When he talks about Pebble, his measured, cocksure voice
becomes rushed with a frenzy of thoughts and words—the
flavor of marked urgency, almost anger, reveals that he’s
driven both by love for what he thinks is at stake and by con-
tempt for those he feels are slighting Alaska, underestimating
and denigrating him, abusing the public trust, and betraying
treasures of unrivalled, if perhaps unexplainable, import.
At summer’s dusk, Gillam is composed before a group of
guests at his lodge. He sits on his spacious wooden deck with
views of Lake Clark, an aquamarine pool in a faraway para-
dise, where he is prone to rock peaceably in his chair, tell a
A TOXIC WAR IN ALASKA | 5
 good story, and argue the finer points of Bourbon and Scotch.
As he rocks, the successes and accomplishments of his life
seem the bedrocks of his ease. But for all the spoils of past
victories, he is now embroiled in a fight for a victory that
could prove Phyrric. He does not say it, but there is a sense
that a loss here would be costlier than any prize he has failed
to capture in life, more pivotal than any bravado or ego he
might have forfeited before.
Listening to him talk about Pebble, fluctuations of sentiment
are apparent, and Gillam tempers bouts of near-manic opti-
mism and upswings of gusto with cautious pessimism and
doubt, as he laments the power of his foe.
Indeed, Bob Gillam is still David to the pro-Pebble Goliath,
which altogether wields more power, more money, and more
motive than Gillam ever will. They are a multi-billion-dollar
mining behemoth vying for the flagship jewel in their fleet.
For 2009 alone, the Pebble Partnership—the joint venture
between Northern Dynasty and Anglo American—allocated
$70 million to advance the project. The companies announced
that they would spend $72.9 million in 2010.
The eight- and nine-figure sums purchase influence even
Alaska’s wealthiest cannot afford, but in Bob Gillam’s case,
votes might help trump dollars. Last year, the Anchorage
Daily News’ gossip section suggested that Gillam’s anti-Peb-
ble editorial in July 2009 was the strongest indication yet that
a rumored run for Governor was in the works. Gillam admits
that he has considered a run for the office, from which he
might wield voter-backed power and squash the Pebble proj-
ect. Alaska’s political climate often looks like a lawless fron-
tier. Given the state’s history of political mavericks and ruth-
less, moneyed power-brokers, Bob Gillam might be uniquely
suited to the task of navigating its terrain—one not dissimilar
to that of the multinational business he already knows.
If he decides to run and wins, Gillam will have an advan-
tage against the enemy mercenaries, so many of whom are
lining up to back the Pebble Partnership. Charles Hawley, a
geologist-geochemist and board member of the pro-Pebble
non-profit group Truth About Pebble, loudly disagreed with
Gillam, whose opinion he derided as “cynical” coming from
a man made by investing capital. In his own op-ed this sum-
mer, Hawley argued that the money from the mine would
stay in Alaska in the form of payment for labor, utilities, and
equipment, all while providing royalties and taxes. As far as
the environmental concerns, he asserted: “Fugitive dust from
surface facilities is controllable and always subject to per-
mit.”
The trouble is, the fugitive dust must be kept from the water
not for the mine’s lifetime, or even for a decade or a cen-
tury after its retirement, but for perpetuity. Controlling seven
billion tons of anything is a shaky proposition in a region
6 | KILEY AUSTIN-YOUNG
fraught with torrential rains, titanic gusts of wind, and winter
temperatures dropping to seventy below. An active volcano
spews its steam nearby. There is also a fault line thirty miles
away, a geologic menace credited with several medium-sized
earthquakes each year—and one capable of producing a cata-
strophic shock sure to crumble the constructs of men.
For a grain of fugitive dust, it is tough to stay contained. The
waterways surrounding the site are less like lines on a map
and more like a spider’s web, the strands of the ecosystem
similar to the overlapping and twisted streets of a poorly
planned city. Organs of marshy tan tundras sit between the
coronaries of mountain brooks and the veins of fledgling
streams. Haphazard conduits of complex hydrology flow
and stagnate—each responding to rain and ice-melt and tree
cover in unique ways according to an invisible mayor, the
arbiter of their biocomplexity. They house life in millions of
minute, fragile microcosms like scattered walk-up lofts and
dilapidated row homes, the mammals and fish and insects and
floral fauna dwelling in undetectable, severed pockets, like
miniature Manhattans.
The list of threatening menaces is long: cyanide leakage, acid
drainage, mercury pollution, dam failures, volcanic events,
torrential rains, and earthquakes. And the menacing forces
are permanent forces, there to remain as long as the fusion
of the sun. “Perpetuity,” Gillam says, asking with a sardonic
about the future of Bristol Bay’s salmon should Pebble pro- Another reader, Ken Green, fired back at Ahrens, scoffing
smirk: “Do you know how long perpetuity is?”
ceed as planned. Pebble supporters called for a boycott of the at the charges of myopia and ignorance. He cited the Exx-
restaurants in their “Save Bristol Bay” campaign. on Valdez spill and the Summit County mining fiasco near
Leadville, Colorado as disasters impervious to any check or
TIFFANY & COMPANY CHAIRMAN and Chief Executive Closer to home, the contentious campaign continues as civil balance—and as messes taxpayer dollars had to clean up.
Officer Michael Kowalski seemed to echo Gillam in lending lawsuits fly. In July of last year, a coalition of eight Bris- Green warned ominously: a screw up in Bristol Bay would
his support: “[The waste] will require containment and per- tol Bay Native village corporations, former Alaska first lady dwarf, in cost and long-term damage, the disasters at Valdez
petual treatment—forever.” Two years ago, Tiffany became Bella Hammond, and state constitutional convention delegate and Leadville.
the most powerful voice in its $3.7 billion industry to oppose Victor Fischer alleged that state regulators violated the state
the precious-metal proposition in Alaska. Since then, Tiffany constitution when they initially approved exploration permits Pebble opponents released a poll in September 2009, con-
has aired its opinion, running a full-page, cyan-colored ad in for Pebble without public knowledge. The group filed suit in ducted several months before, that found seventy-nine per-
the October 2009 trade magazine National Jeweler, which the Anchorage Superior Court, asking the court to halt explo- cent of local residents surveyed believed the mine would
stated that the mine’s threat to Bristol Bay superseded “all… ration at Pebble until a judge could issue a ruling. damage Bristol Bay’s wild salmon fishery. Another survey
immediate financial self-interests.” sponsored by Nunamta Aulukestai, an organization repre-
More recently, letters are being sent and petitions are being senting thousands of Alaska Native shareholders in the Bris-
Tiffany has helped recruit a bevy of other major jewelers to
filed on both sides. In February of this year, the Alaska Board tol Bay region, found that eighty-eight percent of Bristol Bay
the preemptive boycott. The growing coalition of leading
of Fisheries asked for a review of the permitting system. Days residents do not want Pebble built.
U.S. and U.K. jewelers is refusing to buy any gold mined
later, several prominent conservation and business groups
from Pebble in light of the environmental risks. The play- Scott Hawkins, a board member of Truth About Pebble,
filed a petition with state regulators to designate a river near
ers range from small, family-owned boutiques to publicly- denounced the polling techniques of the opposition as ex-
the site a protected resource.
traded juggernauts, from prestigious jewelers like Helzberg tremely biased and unprofessional. He wrote that “phony”
Diamonds and Zale Corporation to department store chains William Ahrens, in a December 2009 letter to the editor pub- polls were “one more well-funded attempt to bias the public
like Sears and Wal-Mart. Kowalski asked: “Is the price of lished in the Anchorage Daily News, wrote in support of against a project that has not even completed its development
developing the Pebble mine simply too high to pay for the Pebble, lobbing a thinly veiled potshot at Gillam: “Those op- plan yet.”
jewelry industry, for Tiffany jewelry?” posing the development of Pebble strike me as myopic or ig-
Polling legitimacy notwithstanding, a recent schism shows
norant or perhaps they’re the wealthy wanting to protect their
The debate spread south in November 2009. Controversy that Pebble opposition support among native Alaskans is far
overpriced luxury fishing lodges where they’re pampered.”
erupted in Seattle after thirteen area restaurants featured wild from unified. Early in December 2009, the board of the Bris-
Ahrens argued that the mine’s cleanliness would be ensured
Alaska salmon on their menus and warned their habitués tol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC) broke its neutrality on
by “state of the art checks and balances.”
the Pebble project with a vote against its development, citing
A TOXIC WAR IN ALASKA | 7
“the unquantifiable impacts the project could have on the natural
resources of the Bristol Bay region.” The BBNC, as the combined
voice of thousands of Alaska Native shareholders residing in the
region, was an important addition to the opposition. The mining
companies expressed disappointment.
But days after news of the vote was released, two Bristol Bay
village corporations said they were outraged by the BBNC’s deci-
sion to oppose the mine. Alaska Peninsula Corporation and Pe-
dro Bay Corporation condemned the opposition by the BBNC,
which they said is endangering their development and growth by
hampering the mine’s progress. The BBNC release was “an out-
rageous and dictatorial act,” and was “…based on irrational fear
mongering, [threatening] our very ability to survive,” said Pedro
Bay Chairman John Adcox and Alaska Peninsula President Ralph
Angasan, respectively.
The pro-Pebble Angasan sung a tale of woe—of the highest un-
employment rates and living costs in the nation, of declining pop-
ulations in villages, of closing schools and withering communi-
ties. He argued that wise development of the area resources was
the cure.
Less clear is what hidden motive Adcox and Angasan might have
in defending Pebble. When exploration began, lawmakers raised
concerns that mining officials were trying to buy the loyalty of na-
tive leaders, paying ludicrous sums to house workers in the homes
of influential locals and showering them with gifts.
Ethel and John Adcox were reportedly receiving $25,000 per
month in rent money for their modest guesthouse in tiny Iliamna.
Pebble was feeding their entire village—literally—with weekly
steak and lobster dinners. Ethel Adcox cooed: “It leaves a good
taste in your mouth.”
THE NEW MONEY taste is foreign to a people who have thrived
on Alaska’s salmon for thousands of years—a bare-bones exis-
tence sustained by the red gold of nature.
And in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, the two precious re-
sources remain. The salmon is a lavish renewable resource, the
lifeline of rural Alaska and the darling of the state’s lucrative fish-
ing industry. The salmon is forever. And so far it has been—from
the time their ancient ancestors crossed the Bering Strait up until
now, red salmon have been the benevolent beings by which the
natives have survived. The precious metals are a finite discovery
that could yield riches now.
Though the prize is from nature, the war over Pebble is a war
among men. It is one of now versus later, instant wealth versus
delayed gratification, lust versus prudence. At issue is man’s use
of the natural world in which he lives; man’s power to harness the
pearls of the planet for his own needs and his own desires; and the
treatment of the gift bestowed upon man and his transformation of
it, for better or poorer, for the re-wrapping, and re-bestowment, of
that gift upon the generations of men who will follow.
8 | KILEY AUSTIN-YOUNG
The war over Pebble involves sacrifice. Sacrifice, in its noblest
manifestations, involves man giving up something he values—a
possession or a pastime or a lifestyle or a resource—for something
he deems greater. The sacrificial exchange: something ephemeral
for something eternal; an object of desire for an object of neces-
sity; the finite for the infinite; less for more.
In the coming months and years, the men—from governors and
state senators and state representatives to business tycoons to av-
erage citizens—will make a sacrifice.
Governor Parnell, while remaining officially neutral, supports the
permit process and has recently ordered an independent review
of the project to aid its progress. John Shively, head of the Pebble
Partnership, anticipates that the mine project could proceed to the
permitting stage as early as next year. Shively is hopeful that the
man in the seat of power, the Commissioner of Natural Resources,
currently Thomas Irwin, approves the mine and that, some day,
he can glimpse the glimmer of gold and copper in the light of the
Alaskan day.
Other men fear the day that a gust of wind or a shift in the earth’s
tectonic plates or a careless mine worker or the force of gravity
starts a process of environmental decay and destruction that can-
not be stopped or reversed. They fear a wound that no taxpayer
surcharge or out-of-court settlement or municipal bond or syn-
thetic swap agreement can heal.
Shively framed the issue well: “Perhaps it was God who put these
two great resources right next to each other…just to see what
people would do with them.” Perhaps he is right—men are en-
dowed with this absolute gift, but it is a black-and-white pie that
is subject to rationing according to endless shades of grey, over
which men haggle like street vendors in suits and ties, apparently
unaware that life and death are absolutes—and that a drop of the
latter spoils a sea of the former.
For now, the water flows pure, and the gold and copper sits se-
cure, waiting to be mined and processed and carted off in diesel
trucks. Or left alone. The mining process, opponents say, would
likely destroy the infinite wealth renewed each year by the silently
churning cogs of the ecosystem’s eternal engine.
This engine churns far from the bustle of commerce and civiliza-
tion. Far from the busy nations and great enterprises of modern-
day man, who dwells among strip malls and galleries and crowded
avenues, in places where money changes hands with the clink and
clash of changing cultures, where blindness and confusion reign.
Upheaval and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter ruled by
chance and movement—endless, tireless movement.
Today, the moose and lynx and caribou roam still, splay hoofs
and palmated antlers passing quietly through the shadowy ravines
and hump-like hills. The cub hunts for his salmon—his voracious
appetite just one of a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being
pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all
according to a kind of cosmic justice by which the Wild lives on,
forever.