The Battle for Bristol Bay - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 271

“If I am not convinced that the Pebble mine is well designed and safe, I'll walk away,”
Shively said. “It is a very attractive prospect, and it concerns me that people are trying
to stop it before we even have a proposal. Obviously, it is in a sensitive area. But we are
confident we will address the fisheries issues. If we can't mine it safely, okay, then let's
turn it into a wildlife refuge or something.”
But as well-intentioned as he may be, it hardly matters if Shively walks away from the
project. The companies behind PLP—Anglo American and Northern Dynasty—have
invested years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in developing the mine; An-
glo executives are deeply experienced with controversy over their global mining opera-
tions and are not likely to give up on such a rich prospect unless forced to by the state
or the federal government.
At that airport outside Anchorage we boarded a single-engine plane and flew up to
the village of Iliamna, on the edge of Lake Iliamna, Alaska's largest lake and an import-
ant salmon breeding area. Iliamna, with a population of about one hundred, is PLP's
local headquarters. There we transferred to a sleek company helicopter for the eighteen-
mile trip to the mine site. I sat in the let front seat, next to the pilot. Shively sat in back
with Nicky, a cheerful Canadian engineer, who narrated through a headset. Below us,
the tundra swooshed by like a movie—rolling green-brown hills, glintingly wet depres-
sions, and patches of snow. There were no roads, or any sign of humanity.
We came upon an area of tall, undulating hills and broad meadows: Pebble. “There
are two contiguous deposits, Pebble East and Pebble West ,” Nicky explained. “The exact
nature of the mining activities has yet to be finalized.” While Pebble West is slated to be
mined as an open pit, the geology of Pebble East is less well understood, but it would
probably be mined by the block-caving method, in which interlocking chambers are ex-
cavated deep underground. The logic was clear: most of the minerals here are of such a
low grade that only a huge mine that could benefit from economies of scale made eco-
nomic sense.
The vast operation could include the construction of a new port at Iniskin Bay, on
Cook Inlet, about 104 miles to the east. A haul road running along the north side of
Lake Iliamna would connect the port to the mine. A pipeline next to the road would
carry a slurry of metal concentrate from Pebble. The slurry would be dewatered, loaded
onto ships, and sent to a smelter, while a second pipe would return the used water to the
mine, where it would be treated. Underground mining requires more electricity than
aboveground mining, and it is estimated that Pebble will require about 250 to 350 mega-
watts of electricity, which is more power than is used by the entire Kenai Peninsula and
would require transmission lines.
While Nicky explained the layout, I stared out the windshield, trying to imagine this
pristine landscape split open by a yawning pit, alongside two of the largest dams in the