North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

I'm ready to give the Devil his due. The Star Trekkie commercials that the Renewable Resource Coalition, or whatever nom de guerre Bob Gillam currently hides behind, are very clever. They are not true, but then again, truth and freedom of speech have always been wholly disassociated when it comes to advertising.

The Gillamites attempt to raise the inference that the initiatives that have been offered for the ballot next August will stop the Pebble mine, but won't affect other mines such as Red Dog. People are free, under our system, to say what they please. And, with enough money, and Gillam has plenty, the malarkey can be broadcast far and wide.

For the record, I have no dog in the Pebble fight. Pebble is a good project, and I wish them well, but I'm not on their payroll in any way, shape or form.

Accordingly, I fancy myself as being slightly objective. In my objective opinion, the pending initiatives will not only shut down Red Dog (with whom I also have no working relationship), but also every other major operating and potential mine in the state.

The initiatives are simply bad concepts.

Mines do not operate on a single permit.

A mine may require 50 or more separate federal and state permits to open and operate.

Many of those permits have limited lives, so they must be renewed.

The investment associated with opening a major mine in Alaska can easily exceed $100 million.

A huge portion of that cost is dedicated to satisfying permit requirements, from baseline data collection to monitoring and hosting inspections by alphabet soup agencies such as DNR (Alaska Department of Natural Resources), DEC (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation), ADF&G (Alaska Department of Fish and Game), FWS (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), DOL (Alaska Department of Labor) and MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration).

The proposed initiatives will phase in whenever a permit has to be renewed. No new permit, no more mining.

It is argued that maybe the Red Dog Mine is not a good role model. After all, nationally, it is number 1 on the EPA's toxic release inventory.

Pause for a second and think about that. Red Dog is mining native rock that is so full of "toxic" material, that it was discovered by following the discoloration in the streams to the outcrop. If you were to go there then, or now, and pick up a random piece of rock off the ground, and then replace it into the exact position in which you found it, you would have committed a "toxic release."

Red Dog moves lots of rocks and liberates lots of ore for the world's zinc market, and, therefore, generates lots of waste that is very carefully looked after, as the mine's permits require.

Red Dog also pays lots of money to vendors, suppliers and employees, virtually all of whom are NANA Inc. shareholders. In addition, Red Dog has achieved profitability within the past couple of years and is now paying a huge royalty to NANA, which in turn shares most of what it gets with the other Alaska Native regional corporations, as required by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).

Red Dog is making a huge impact, and it is uniformly positive. Pebble could do as well. But whether you favor Pebble, or are afraid of it, you should not be sucked into voting for these anti-mining initiatives.

Sixty thousand Alaskans have been lead to believe the initiatives would foster clean water. That's not true. We have good clean-water laws on the books. Pebble would have to comply with them, just as everyone else does.

The initiatives, however, will kill mining in Alaska.

Do yourself and the rest of the state a favor and make a point of sharing this information with every friend, neighbor and commercial enterprise you encounter. The initiatives, unless blocked by the courts, will be on the primary ballot in August. Most Alaskans don't bother to vote in the primary, so it's a great time for the Folks-Against-Mining-In-General-And-Pebble-In-Particular to ring the bell. The rest of us will be working.

Primary Election Day has never been so important. Every single interested Alaskan has to vote on this one. Please, please, please, right now, apply for an absentee ballot. Vote absolutely NO on the anti-mining initiatives. This is Alaska. Your vote actually does count.