OPINION: If you care about salmon, help stop the Donlin mine

When it comes to salmon in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, our people must have a say in any decision that affects this essential resource.

Earlier this month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski traveled to Bethel to hold a field hearing to hear how the salmon crashes affected us. We shared how critical salmon are to our ways of life and why their disappearance is so distressing — not only for food security or economic reasons but also because salmon are at the core of our existence.

I was the final person to testify during the five-hour hearing. I spoke about the need to strengthen co-management to ensure protection of our natural resources, which are inextricably linked to our health and well-being. As stewards of these lands for millennia, we know best how to protect these resources for future generations.

One thing that would help would be for Murkowski to support our Tribes by calling on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement for the proposed Donlin mine in our region and ensure traditional ecological knowledge is incorporated and Tribes are adequately consulted.

In my testimony, I focused, in part, on Pebble Mine and Donlin Mine. The proposed Pebble Mine project in the Bristol Bay watershed has been widely recognized globally as too great of a threat to one of the most productive wild salmon ecosystems in the world to allow the mine to move forward.

If built, Donlin would be the largest gold mine in the world, located 10 miles north of the village of Crooked Creek. The mine would dewater 11 miles of Crooked Creek, destroying salmon eggs and raising the temperature of the stream, making it more difficult for salmon to survive. The mine would also create an 1,850-foot-deep, two-square-mile pit lake that would never meet water quality standards and would need to be treated in perpetuity to avoid contaminating surrounding wetlands. A massive tailings dam would be built to hold back nearly 600 million tons of toxic mining waste. If that tailings dam were to fail, it would cause catastrophic harm to Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.

There is opposition from many Tribes and Tribal organizations in the region including Orutsararmiut Traditional Native Council, the federally recognized governing body for the community of Bethel.

People don’t realize that if Donlin were to be built, there would be a tripling of barge traffic on the Kuskokwim River to haul in fuel and supplies and carry waste. The larger barges will carry diesel and toxic substances including cyanide and mercury, bringing significant impacts to our communities including risks of spills, erosion, interruptions to salmon migrations, disruptions to fishing, and impacts to smelt.

Two recent incidents — a recent diesel spill in Steamboat Slough and a fatal boating accident where a skiff collided with a barge being towed by a tugboat — have brought the risks involved with barging to the forefront for many of us in the region.

The existence of salmon and our subsistence resources in our region are already in jeopardy, facing serious problems. Why would we pursue a massive development like the Donlin Mine that poses additional grave risks to salmon and our natural resources? Our river and salmon are worth more than gold.

It’s time for federal agencies to put a halt to the Donlin project and for all of us to instead support economic development that is sustainable and compatible with our values and ways of life.

Alissa Nadine Rogers is Director of Natural Resources for the Orutsararmiut Native Council (ONC).

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