Pebble project banks on foreign interests

It's a bit ironic when we look at ourselves 50-plus years later. This week at the Alaska Energy Council luncheon, oil lobbyists and Republican lawmakers sat side by side at the head table. I guess I should be grateful they're fraternizing in public instead of in a room at the Baranof.

I long for the voice of a leader who is Alaska First, parties be damned, election coffers ignored. I'd like to see "Not For Sale" signs on every door of the Legislature; as it is, they may as well say, "Fire Sale."

Current federal election law forbids any foreign person or company from contributing to the campaign of any candidate for elected office. State law is tougher and makes citizenship a prerequisite for giving contributions.

Even a lawfully admitted permanent resident who pays property taxes isn't allowed to contribute to a candidate (Code 14:13:068 C1). I don't have a problem with that.

My problem is that the very same individual or company can empty its bank accounts to support or oppose a ballot initiative.

Ballot initiatives create law. Parental notifications, cruise ship taxes (yes, Gov. Parnell, that was a law), aerial wolf hunting bans, clean elections, clean water and many more have been thumbed up or down at the ballot box. But foreigners can contribute without limit. What is to stop China from influencing coal development, Japan or Korea fisheries law, or Britain or Canada mining laws? Oh, wait, they already are.

If it is forbidden to financially support the election of lawmakers, why is it legal to pay for (or against) initiatives?

Bob Gillam, a born and raised, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps Alaskan is being attacked by the foreign-owned Pebble Partnership and its compliant media shills. Gillam is a successful businessman. His company, McKinley Capital, injects $50 million dollars annually into Alaska's economy. He's politically conservative; very much pro-development and pro-mining -- just not that mine in that place.

And why are they attacking him? Because Gillam is bankrolling the fight to stop the Pebble project. In particular, Gillam is the sole contributor to Alaskans for Bristol Bay-Vote Yes on The Save Our Salmon initiative, which comes to a vote in the Lake and Peninsula Borough municipal election this Tuesday.

A Sunday columnist on these very pages works for the Pebble Partnership's local advertising agency.

That most of the Save Our Salmon opposition is coming from a foreign corporation gives the pro-Pebble Partnership compliant choir no heartburn at all. That the Pebble Partnership's foreign-owned partner, Anglo American, has a shoddy environmental record around the world appears to be no problem as well. Anglo, the London-based mining giant, pretends to be an environmentally and socially responsible company. However, its track record around the world betrays it web site banner, "Recognising The Value of Sustainable Development."

A 2001 study of 34 mines around the world found that Anglo-owned mines had the highest concentration of arsenic in their surface water. Acid runoff from an Anglo mine in Zimbabwe contaminated groundwater and polluted the neighboring Yellow Jacket River and harmed fish. In Nevada, an Anglo mine was the single largest source of mercury air pollution in the U.S. As a result, fish consumption limits were imposed for downwind fisheries.

An Anglo mine in Ghana spilled wastewater and toxic tailings repeatedly into surrounding towns. Scientists found the streams in the area were "significantly polluted" by metals. More than 220 mine workers have died at Anglo American mines over the last five years. Unsafe working conditions have prompted repeated protests from mine workers.

The list goes on and on and on.

What of Northern Dynasty's environmental track record? They don't have a record. This is their first project.

The only thing Pebble can promise is jobs, jobs that if Anglo's worldwide track record is any indication, will displace renewable fisheries-related jobs.

What about revenue to public treasury? Pebble will pay the state next to nothing for those vast reserves of non-renewable wealth.

They say we should let the permitting process begin. Frank Murkowski perverted and corrupted that process when he was governor. The permitting process should be called an approval process, as it is basically a back and forth between the mine and the state.

Sort of like if you did your homework wrong, your teacher corrected it, handed it back to you and told you to make the changes and earn an A.

The attacks on Bob Gillam have a purpose, and that is to steer the conversation away from the real issue: the threat to the largest and last wild salmon run on the planet.

That's why we should move to further limit the influence of Outside money on our initiative process, be it from foreign cruise corporations with their U.S. operations based in Miami or from transnational mining giants based in Canada or Great Britain.

Shannyn Moore is host of "The Shannyn Moore Show" on KOAN 1020 AM and 95.5 FM radio, and the television show "Moore Up North" on KYES Channel 5.