The Battle for Bristol Bay - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 276

ODD BEDFELLOWS
The anti-Pebble coalition is broad and loose and does not always work in sync toward
a common goal: liberal-leaning groups, such as Trout Unlimited and the Nature Con-
servancy, certain Native groups, and most commercial and sport fishermen, oppose the
mine. But so do many of the cannery operators, and a few conservative businessmen.
On the outskirts of Dillingham, Bobby Andrew , a diminutive Yupik man in a plaid
shirt, was unloading a dozen freshly caught salmon from his skiff. He showed me
around his smokehouse, where long, greasy strips of deep orange salmon hung from the
rafters, curing. “I know an elder who found a place on a river in this area—and I'm not
gonna say where—where you could pull out finger-sized pieces of gold,” he said. “My
friend knew what they were worth, but he threw the gold back into the river. He didn't
want people to know about it. Gold only creates problems. The more you have, the more
you want, and then the less you have. Gold creates greed.”
Speaking slowly, in a sot voice, Andrew opined that Pebble mine will make things
worse, not better, for Natives. “The resources we subsist on, like salmon, are there. They
are renewable. We've been fishing them for more than a thousand years, and we haven't
run out of salmon yet. So why would we ever want to risk losing that?”
I was introduced to Andrew by Bob Waldrop, who served as the Special Assistant
for Natural Resources under Jay Hammond, Alaska's famous “Bush Rat Governor,” and
now helps to run the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, which as-
sists commercial fishermen. One day, Waldrop took me across Lake Clark, inside Lake
Clark National Park, which is adjacent to the Pebble site, to meet Bella Hammond at
the log cabin she built with her husband, the governor. When I asked about Pebble, her
gentle smile flipped into a scowl and her dark eyes flashed. “Jay always said, 'I couldn't
imagine a worse location for a mine, unless it was right here in my own kitchen!' ” the
first lady said. “I couldn't put it any better myself.”
One of the curious details of the battle over Pebble is that while the industrial mining
giant PLP is led by the rumpled Democrat John Shively, the save-the-salmon opposition
is (nominally) personified by Bob Gillam , an archconservative money manager who be-
lieves it is “stupid not to drill” for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but has be-
come a powerful behind-the-scenes force against the Pebble mine. An avid fisherman,
Gillam has built an enormous lodge on Keyes Point, on Lake Clark, just downstream
from Pebble, where he entertains clients. Gillam—who likes to say, “Only two things
matter in life: getting rich and catching fish!”—denies that his lodge has anything to do
with his opposition to Pebble, though the claim stretches credulity.