Angling Publications - Index

Angling Publications - Fly Fish America - September 2007 Issue - Index

Why would any politician advocate the construction
of a toxic waste dump at the headwaters of the world's most
prolific wild Pacific salmon and rainbow trout fishery? Money,
of course-some $300,000,000,000 worth in the case of former
Alaska Governor, Frank Murkowski, until recently the head
cheerleader in the effort to build the Pebble Mine, an open-pit
gold and copper mine at the headwaters of the famed Bristol Bay
salmon fishery. Murkowski got his clock cleaned at the polls last
November, but efforts continue unabated to build what promises
to be an environmental disaster of epic proportions.
Located in the pristine mountains between Lake Iliamna and
10
ROUND
Where water is more
written by Bill Battles
Lake Clark National Park, at the headwaters of Upper Talarik
Creek and the Koktuli River, sits the world's second largest gold
and copper deposit. The Pebble Mine deposit holds some 67 billion
pounds of copper, 82 million ounces of gold, and more than
four billion pounds of molybdenum.
The mine's Canadian developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals,
plans to dig an open-pit mine two miles wide and deep enough to
swallow the Empire State Building. Two tailings "lakes? covering
ten square miles and filling two entire valleys would be built at
the headwaters of the Koktuli River to hold more than 2.5 billion
tons of waste rock and toxic residue. The earthen dam holding