A Bristol Bay Native leader's trip this week to Juneau to speak about mining has prompted a fiery backlash from Southeast Native village corporations.
Bobby Andrew, president of Aleknagik Natives Ltd. of Dillingham, met in the state capital with legislators, state officials, business and Native leaders, and environmentalists. Andrew discussed ties he sees between Kensington, a gold mine being built north of Juneau, and a huge copper-gold prospect near Iliamna called Pebble.
Pebble, still in the exploration phase, straddles streams that feed salmon-rich Bristol Bay.
"I didn't go down there to change their minds or create any kind of friction," Andrew said Thursday.
But sparks flew nonetheless.
The heads of Goldbelt Corp., Klukwan Inc. and Kake Tribal Corp. called Andrew a "pawn" of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. SEACC, which is suing to block Kensington, paid for his airfare from Dillingham, while he covered his lodging, Andrew said.
The executives took issue with the stance Andrew and other Bristol Bay Natives have adopted toward Kensington.
Last March, Andrew's village corporation and six others passed a resolution opposing plans for Kensington to discharge chemically-treated mine waste into a freshwater lake. The plan, which is the subject of the lawsuit, violates clean-water laws, the resolution said.
The heads of Goldbelt, Klukwan and Kake Tribal bristled at someone from Bristol Bay coming into Southeast, "which is Tlingit country, bearing a message opposing a project that we have worked hard to promote and develop for years," they said in a written statement.
The message "openly supports the position of SEACC, an environmental organization that has been a thorn in the side of Southeast Tlingit villages for 30 years," the executives said.
The Southeast village corporations are trying to do business with Kensington's operator, Coeur Alaska, and get shareholders hired, said Gary Droubay, president of Juneau-based Goldbelt.
Andrew's message and the way it was portrayed in media reports could not come at a worse time, he said.
"It gives the public the belief that the Native community is opposed to the mine at a critical time with this lawsuit out there," Droubay said.
Reached at home in Dillingham on Thursday, Andrew seemed somewhat dumbfounded.
"It sounds like they were pretty unhappy with me," Andrew said.
Bryce Edgmon, chairman of Choggiung Ltd., the village corporation for Dillingham, had planned on traveling with Andrew. But he canceled because of work commitments, he said. Edgmon phoned Droubay on Thursday to smooth over any bad feelings Andrew's trip may have stirred up.
It's Pebble, not Kensington, that's the issue, he said.
"Our board passed a resolution opposing open-pit mining in Bristol Bay and that's our focus. Our focus is not on mines in other areas of the state or other village corporation projects," Edgmon said.
"We respect other Native corporations and their pursuit of business opportunities in their own region of the state and I wanted to convey that to the president of Goldbelt," he said.
Andrew met with more than a dozen groups in Juneau and overall the trip went well, SEACC's mining organizer Rob Cadmus said.
"My impression was, for the most part, people understood where he was coming from," Cadmus said.
Andrew tried to convey the message that if the federal judge deciding the lawsuit allows Kensington to deposit waste rock into the lake, it could set a bad precedent, Cadmus said.
To date, federal agencies have not allowed mining companies to use lakes as disposal sites. If Kensington gets to do it, Pebble or other future mines could, too, Cadmus said.
They could, but it depends on how the court rules, said Tom Crafford, Alaska's large mine permitting coordinator.
"If he narrowly interprets this as something that applies narrowly to Kensington, then it may not have broad implications for other mines," Crafford said. "We're talking about legal nuances."
Daily News reporter Paula Dobbyn can be reached at pdobbyn@adn.com or 257-4317.
