NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - NBC on Earth: Pebble Mine

Episode Date: February 4, 2018

Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent Anne Thompson travels to Dillingham, Alaska to report on a controversial copper mine proposal that some say could threaten the world’s largest salmon run.

When you're talking about Bristol Bay, you're talking about the greatest wild salmon system left on the planet. This would be cultural genocide to our people. We would not be able to live here. Salmon and clean water are the heartbeat of this region. Does the mine threaten the fisheries? Not at all. Not at all? No. Even winter's starkness can't diminish Alaska's vast natural wonders. Waters that teem with fish lap against land rich with minerals. Wonders on a slow

motion collision course with a proposed gold and copper mine at the headwaters of the world's largest salmon run. I'm Anne Thompson and this is NBC on Earth. If you eat wild salmon, it was likely caught here in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a marine ecosystem comprised of not just the ocean, but freshwater lakes and streams home to tens of millions of salmon. So what's the controversy? A mining company called the Pebble Limited Partnership wants to build a gold and copper mine many worry could poison the waters.

Tim Bristol, I'm the executive director of Salmon State, based here in Alaska. Salmon State is a conservation advocacy organization. What is the connection that Alaskans have with the land and the water? Alaskans' connection with the land and water is as intimate, as deep and profound as any place I've ever been, particularly Alaska Native people in communities like Dillingham where they can trace their history back 10,000 years to that land and that water. So when you're here, you just take it to a completely different level when it comes to how you feel about the landscape, how you use that landscape, the way you're here, you just take it to a completely different level when it comes to how you feel about the landscape,

how you use that landscape, the way you live here. How does salmon fit into that connection? So salmon, I think for people who don't live in Alaska, it's hard to understand just how important they are. They are food. They are culture. They're a source of recreation, food, income, and employment. And you find salmon throughout the state, from the North Slope down to the rainforests of southeast Alaska. So salmon really are the ultimate keystone species when you're looking at what indicates the environmental health, wealth, abundance of Alaska. Salmon really do sort of represent what we are

and what other places just aren't anymore. Are salmon as important to Alaska as oil? I think salmon are as important to Alaskans as oil. I think that from a dollars and cents standpoint, it's hard to argue with oil. It pays for up to 90% of our state government. But if you really want to ask alaskans what it is to to to be in alaskan i think salmon really represents that in a very powerful profound way what would happen if the salmon population was reduced here if you didn't have the salmon populations like we have right now these

healthy wild abundant runs that allow for tens of thousands of jobs and people to fill their freezers and do all the great things that it means to live here, we would be greatly diminished as a society. It's also big business. Alaskans catch millions of salmon every year. It brings hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, into the state economy. So financially, culturally, recreationally, it is a foundation of this state. And to have to contemplate losing that abundance is not something that we should take lightly. And it's one that Alaskans, for the most part, fiercely defend against.

What threat does the proposed Pebble Mine pose to that abundance? I would submit that the construction of the Pebble Mine is the single largest negative threat to wild salmon in Alaska. And when you're talking about Bristol Bay, you're talking about the greatest wild salmon system left on the planet. It's over half of the world's supply of sockeye salmon. Dillingham is a small town 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. To get there, it's a small plane with not a lot of cargo space. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Panera Alaska Airlines, we would like to welcome you to Dillingham.

With her grandmother's blade, Deedee Bennis prepares the fish that fed her ancestors for centuries and feeds her family today. This is the silver that I'm going to fillet and cut up to fry. And this is our king fillet. I'm going to fillet and cut up to fry. And this is our king fillet. I'm going to bake that. Salmon will be the family meal in Dee Dee Bennis' home all winter long. She lives in Dillingham, a town of about 2,300, the largest in Bristol Bay and about 120 miles from the mine site. When we visited, the snow was falling as fishing boats and time stood still. In the winter, how many times a week do you eat salmon?

Three. Three times? Three, maybe four. And is all this fish caught by your family? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't have it any other way. You don't go to a store to buy your salmon? No.

I think we sometimes become fish snobs because this is right off the beach. In the late 1980s, the pebble deposit was discovered. Samples showed a huge amount of gold and copper lay beneath the surface. And ever since, there's been talk about mining it. In 2014, after a multi-year scientific study, the Environmental Protection Agency preemptively blocked mining at the site. Last year, under a new president, the EPA cleared the way for Pebble to file for a permit to build. And in late December, the company submitted paperwork proposing a mine site that includes an open pit a mile across. Also bringing its own power plant, a gas line, and a ferry system to a largely undeveloped region of Alaska.

Tom Collier is leading the effort to build the Pebble Mine. I'm the CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership. What will the copper and gold that is mine, assuming you get permission, assuming you're allowed to build this mine, what will the copper and gold that you dig out of the earth go to? All kinds of things. Copper is the mineral that's all about alternative energy. And so there won't be electric cars and there won't be cell phones and there won't be electric cars, and there won't be cell phones, and there won't be things that are an important part of our technological lives without more copper.

And we've only got two ways to get copper. We mine it in the United States, or we mine it somewhere else. If it's mined somewhere else, there are many more environmental issues than if it's mined here in America. And yet there's only one world class sockeye salmon run in the world. There is no place else to get this kind of salmon.

There's only one world-class gold and copper deposit in North America that hasn't been developed. And I'm convinced that these two things can coexist. So the mine that you have proposed, in your proposal, you say it's about half the size of what was originally proposed, correct? Or what you originally thought about doing. What we originally considered, yes, that's correct. And why have you downsized the mine, if you will?

Because we listened to people in the state and other stakeholders who said they thought the project was too big. So we made it smaller, the footprint significantly smaller, and that reduces the environmental impact of this project on the region, which is what you ought to do with every project. That's what permitting is all about. I think probably this mine would have ended up about this size if it had gone into permitting at a larger size. But after hearing from the stakeholders in Alaska and the people that are out there in the region,

we made that decision ourselves. Made a lot of other decisions, too. Such as? Well, we're not going to have what's called secondary gold recovery. That means there won't be any cyanide brought into this mining project. We've decided to separate out the regular tailings from the potentially acid-generating tailings

so that those can be treated in an even more sensitive way. The pit for them will be, the facility for them will be lined. And we've moved the footprint to where it only sits in two of the over 5,000 separate drainages that are out there in that region instead of in three. And as you get smaller, you're able to do some things that just make the project more responsive to the concerns that have been raised by the community. Have you eliminated all their concerns, do you think? I don't think, you know, these issues become more about feelings than they do about science.

And I don't think we'll ever eliminate all of the concerns. But we've made significant inroads toward addressing the concerns that have been raised by the community. Opponent Alana Hurley represents the United Tribes of Bristol Bay. If we couldn't fish here, our people would cease to exist. Our entire culture revolves around this place. And if we could not fish, our people would be forced to leave. Is there a danger that even if you change the chemistry of the water a little bit that it could change the impact how the salmon come back?

Yes salmon are an amazing species that come back and spawn in the exact stream that they were born. They're and they are very very sensitive they're very very sensitive species if you change the type of metals in the water the temperature of the water that very very much impacts salmon and the reason that Bristol Bay is still the last great sockeye salmon fishery on earth is because our habitat is pristine and untouched and if we devastate that if we change that that's going to change the entirety of the watershed. Alana Hurley says the mine will destroy streams and wetlands the salmon depend on and an accident releasing toxic mine waste could kill the fishery. This would be cultural genocide to our people. We would not be able to live here.

Salmon and clean water are the heartbeat of this region. This project and this type of development is a risk that our people are not willing to take. Our culture and our history and our heritage does not have a price tag. Tell me, how do these waters all connect? Why is it that this mine a hundred miles away will impact Dillingham? Because we are downstream the

mine could not be located at a more horrible spot. It's at the headwaters of the Nooshigak and Quaidrak rivers, the two last great sockeye salmon producing rivers left on the face of the planet. The mine footprint alone would have impacts, let alone if there was ever a disaster. And if history teaches us anything, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. It will come downstream and impact the fishery. What kind of disaster? The failure of a dam holding back millions of tons of waste rock discarded after the copper and gold are pulled out.

But full of compounds scientists say could contaminate the freshwater salmon need to spawn and thrive. Can you guarantee that there won't be a spill or an accident? No. You can't? No. So if you can't guarantee that, how can you guarantee that the fishers will be protected? I can model the impact of what a spill would be. So if you can't guarantee that, how can you guarantee that the fisheries will be protected? Because I can model the impact of what a spill would be.

And what does your models tell you? It's an impact 20 or 30 miles downstream. And you say that could happen, not severely impact the fishery. Exactly. And it would still exist. Exactly. And it would not continue to flow through the entire watershed. It would not.

Dilution's an amazing thing. You know, it's not like we're dumping cyanide into the river, right? And it dilutes as it moves downstream. There's a lot of water in that watershed. But the most important thing is that we believe that we can reduce the potential of there being an accident out there to near negligible numbers. Nobody can guarantee. Then there are the economics. The fishery generates 14,000 jobs and $1.5 billion a year. The mine would employ less than 3,000 people

and operate for 20 years with $100,000 a year salaries. Let me ask you, what percentage of the 81 billion pounds of copper and the 107 million ounces of gold will be mined? Don't know. Well, don't you know, given the size of the mine that you're going to build? The size of the mine?

You mean in our first 20 years? What percentage of that would come out in this? I haven't thought about it in terms of percentages. Would you get half of it? Would you get a quarter of it? No, probably not a quarter. Probably not even a quarter. So is this then the first step to building a larger mine? Could be.

There are no current plans to have a phase two, but it's unlikely that that much copper and gold would be left in the ground and so someone will probably come along and want to do a second phase of the project at another time. And we've never attempted to hide that or pretend that that's not the case. But when they do, the question is then going to be whether this larger mine will meet all the restrictions and all the protections that are necessary under our environmental statutes. That's Tim Bristol's biggest fear. Do you think if this mine is allowed, it will lead to other mines?

Yes. I think that if you look at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, there's over 400 square miles of mining claims, and getting a footprint or getting a start with something like the pebble prospect that they're talking about right now makes all those other prospects potentially economic. So you're talking about roads, you're talking about power plants, you're talking about pipelines,

all kinds of stream crossings that are all gonna have negative impact on salmon. And I don't think once they get into that permitting process, once they start to spend money, it's going to be very easy or possible to stop them. The Pebble Mine Partnership says, look, we've heard the opposition, we've adjusted our proposal. The mine is half as large

as what they originally thought they were going to build. They have included all the on-site facilities to one drainage area and removed it from the most sensitive areas of the sockeye salmon runs, they claim. And they're not going to use cyanide to get the last bits of gold out of that. Is that enough? It's not even close to enough. No? Environmental Protection Agency under the last administration indicated that what they're proposing right now is about four times the size of what the EPA thought would be an acceptable level of risk for the wetlands waterways and

the fisheries and the people who live downstream from those from that mine so four times too big and then I don't believe at all that they're going to stop after 20 years if you're running a major mining company and your shareholders want reports on how much money you're making quarterly, are you gonna really walk away from two-thirds of your body? Are you gonna really walk away from the richer portion of the pebble prospect? That's not the way business works. In Dillingham, there's only about six hours of sunlight at the end of January. Home to 2,300 people, there's not much to do here except get ready for the next fishing season and talk about the proposed Pebble Mine.

This is a mine that could bring jobs that pay $100,000 a year. That's not worth it? No. There are some things on earth that do not have a price tag. And when we talk about economics, look at the economics of the commercial fishery, the sustainable commercial fishery, that will continue to provide thousands, 14,000 plus jobs and over a billion and a half dollars annually to the American economy if it's protected. This is a commercial fishery that's existed for over 100 years.

Why on earth would we trade a sustainable economy for one that is finite and has the potential to devastate everything that makes us who we are as Indigenous people and our existing sustainable economy? What if you didn't have the salmon? What if there weren't have the salmon? What if there weren't as many salmon? It would be a sad day in Bristol Bay because we grew up eating this fish and we process it as a family

and it's carried down from generation to generation. I mean, it's a family affair when we get fish and when fish hit the beach and when they come in, because we have the five species that come here. The Pebble Partnership says it will bring jobs, good-paying jobs, jobs that pay $100,000 a year. Is that a good tradeoff? We can't eat money.

For more on the Pebble Mine, you can visit NBCNews.com. From Dillingham, Alaska, I'm Anne Thompson, and you've been listening to NBC on Earth. you you you you you you you you you you