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Fishermen on the Situk River near Yakutat in 2002 in search of steelhead during the spring run.

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Bill Roth / ADN file photo

Fishermen on the Situk River near Yakutat in 2002 in search of steelhead during the spring run.

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Yakutat-area mining claims for gold trigger Native, fishery worries

Published: September 29th, 2009 09:24 AM
Last Modified: September 29th, 2009 09:47 AM

Link: Juneau Empire An Oklahoma City company's mining claims on almost 60,000 acres in the Yakutat area for what it believes is a huge gold deposit is raising lots of concerns among local residents, Native leaders and state fisheries biologists. "We envision no environmental problems in what we will be doing," said Herb Mee, president of The Beard Co., a stakeholder in Geohedral LLC, which filed the claims. But the claims include parts of the watersheds for the Situk and Alsek rivers, which have important fisheries. "It's hard for me to see how water systems and fish in particular, but other types of water fowl, can possibly co-exist with a huge open-pit mine right in the middle of some of the most prolific drainages for fisheries habitat, fisheries production, anywhere that I know of," said Larry Powell, chairman of the Yakutat Salmon Board. The company has also staked claims over Native subsistence and village sites, said Raymond Sensmeier of the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe Council. "This is like a tsunami coming," he said. "The magnitude of it is just staggering to us."

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