Is the difference between can and will a matter of profitability?

Thank you Drasselt!
Pebble mine is the one.
Found a good update on it.
Thanks for an intelligent response finally.

Pebble Mine is a classic example of how the actual costs of the mine to society will not be known for decades, and how those costs will be shouldered by the public, the nearby landowners, the natives, and hunters\trappers\ fisherman, instead of the miners themselves. The miners will privatize all of the benefits (gold, profits), and will socialize\ externalize all of the costs and damage from their activity. This is nuts. If the gold there is worth real money, then make sure they clean it all up as they go and bond it all ahead of time, so they can't just declare bankruptcy and walk away from the destroyed landscape. To trade away these increasingly rare, pristine areas so a small handful of people can get wealthy is nuts. Foolish. If someone wants to go mine gold, get a license from the state of AK, fly in your machines, and have at it. Those little mom and pop outfits can make some gold money, but they are very limited in their environmental impact, and the people making the money are the actual people digging in the muck with their own hands.

you can stop using the air and sunshine if ya want.nobody is saying you have to breath and tan.

That makes about as much sense as not being able to use the rainwater that falls on your property. Sounds a bit communistic to me. We'll be paying for sunshine and air before govt is done with us.

Without the Pogo and Fort Knox mines here in the Interior there would be a lot more unemployed. They both have injected
millions into the economy for many years now. After all GOLD and OIL is what Alaska lives on.

Great theory..., except for reality setting in.

How ironic that current statutes and regulations make it virtually impossible for any "mom and pop" gold miner to mine.

In our rush to protect the environment from both real and imagined impacts, we have make the regulatory climate so complex that ONLY the big corporations can afford to comply!

Pete

If Alaska govt runs anything like D.C. some state politicians will become suddenly wealthy and the mine will be allowed to proceed.

Without the Pogo and Fort Knox mines here in the Interior there would be a lot more unemployed. They both have injected
millions into the economy for many years now. After all GOLD and OIL is what Alaska lives on.

PA, you might find this interesting. Bonding for the full cost of reclamation is already an Alaska law. Pebble mine, being under federal regs, hasn’t even gotten to the issue of State bonding yet. Of course on a project so humongous, the size of the bond will be a point of contention itself.

http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/mining/aml/nlm...ctsinalaska.pdf

^^^^^^^
If I had my way we'd lock up Maine and give everyone the boot in an effort to keep it as pristine as possible, and make it an exclusive playground for all the yuppies in the rest of the northeast.

I hope you were being factitious.

Posco
Is that why you left Alaska. You wanted to lead the way in returning Alaska to pristine? LOL

How are they going to access Pebble Mine? A road, another road punched into the wilderness. You can only destroy it once and it's gone forever.

Probably just a gravel airstrip like the majority of the mines and oil fields in AK.

Guys, we appreciate the advice. Really, I don’t want to appear flippant or ungrateful. But I’d like to point out a couple things.

Alaska’s 4 largest industries are, (if you exclude government), Petroleum, seafood, tourism (including the sport fishing and hunting industries), and mining.

Alaska is the 4th largest oil producer of the United States, with oil generating about 38% of all wages and 85% of our state revenue.
Mining grosses $3 billion/year, making it 38% of our exports.

But despite all this Big Bad development, we also produce 60% of the domestic seafood in the USA, while having sustained and cleaned up the 2nd-largest marine oil spill in US history. We are a world-class hunting and fishing destination, partly due to our management and licensing systems.. Our wildlife populations are thriving, almost universally. Our state contains more wilderness area than the rest of the country combined, and 1/3 of the total national coastline.

All of these industries (oil, mining, fishing, trapping) have been going strong for over 100 years, and ALL continue to prosper.

I’ve built oil pipelines, tank farms and drill rigs. I’ve cleaned up crude. I’ve also commercial fished next to the legs of the oil platforms, and hunted from many an oilfield road. I’ve seen more wild bears and fox near oilfield camps than any other location. We use minimal impact methods, and when we make a mess, we clean it up. We have rigorous and enforced regulations, and because of our love of our land, we hold each other accountable. I’ve already talked to PA about our bonding requirements.

Some of the best trapping and hunting habitat around is within throwing distance of an oilfield pad or mine. If you think those two things are mutually exclusive, maybe you’ve never experienced either.

I guess all this is to say, thanks for sharing your concerns based on YOUR states’ failures, but we’re pretty good at what we do, and what we do is endeavor to manage ALL our natural resources responsibly and compatibly. And we’ve done it successfully for quite awhile. Yep we make mistakes, and then we correct them and learn from them. In fact, the only time we really get jammed up seems to be when some all-knowing eastern Feds or enviros show up .
Maybe part of the reason for our success is that we’re a young state and we were able to learn from others’ mistakes. Maybe it’s because of you guys’ states screwing up your water that we learned what not to do! . So in that case, thanks for all your help!

Couple of things to watch out for with the Pebble Mine, which we had happen here in PA when the shale gas boomed ten years ago. First, the companies will 'buy' certain elected officials. They will give them so much re-election money that it is almost impossible to beat them (when it becomes evident they are more interested in serving the companies than they are in serving The People). Second, those bought-and-paid-for officials will do everything possible to lighten the most basic regulatory requirements, and they will politically interfere with professional and scientific oversight of the mine\ drilling operation. Case in point: Our Susquehanna River was a world-class fishery. Unbelievable fishing here, drawing people from all over the USA, until the shale gas boom started. Then the river quality plummeted, hardly any fish remained, and even the bird life disappeared. We had a huge heron and egret rookery out on the islands. That is gone. Barely any ducks or Canada geese come through any more. We are talking about a river that is a mile wide or more, with a lot of water, a lot of potential habitat. Even turtles are way down. Used to be a pile of mink for guys to trap. Not as many now. Just weird stuff happened. Something was wrong. The water quality was awful. And then once the drilling dropped off, the river began to really rebound. Now after about four years of quiet, people are catching fish again. Not like ten years ago, but there is a sign of life now. People surmise that there was a lot of "midnight dumping" by brine trucks, carrying really toxic wastewater from the drilling pads and illegally dumping the sludge into waterways. Anyhow, there is a lot that goes into these resource extraction processes, whether gold or gas. Making sure the state has the right oversight process in place to protect the resource while allowing it to be productive here and now, and to resist political interference, is the most important thing. I only visited Alaska once, for a week back in 2005, and we used a plane to get around central AK every day, fish different country. It was phenomenally rich wildlife habitat everywhere we went, but even then the guide would point out a problem area here, an incursion with invasive plants over there. The people of AK have something really special, and when I read comments here that seem acid or deliberately off-the-cuff in favor of full-blown development, it makes me think maybe these people don't want to live in AK, but would rather live in New Jersey. Because that is what they are inviting in. Maybe just moving from AK to New Jersey would solve their material desires, which are stronger than their desire for phenomenal trapping habitat?

Any idea what happened to the Bass in the Juniata?

As for the mink, i trap both rivers, the Juniata for decades and the mink population is the highest i ever saw it. I didn't trap the Susquahanna back then, but have in the last ten years and have found a good population of mink, but can't compare to earlier.

I hope my last post didn't come across as TOO arrogant or divisive. I'm enjoying this conversation and everything offered by all of you, because resource management is an issue close to my soul. But yes, having worked both the development and conservation sides, I'm proud of Alaska's stewardship record.

Hippie, I've never understood the push for sewage treatment vs. septic. Sure, in a high-density application like urban developments it's the only option, but in small towns and suburbia, leeching seems like a far more responsible choice. Why the push?

I hope my last post didn't come across as TOO arrogant or divisive. I'm enjoying this conversation and everything offered by all of you, because resource management is an issue close to my soul. But yes, having worked both the development and conservation sides, I'm proud of Alaska's stewardship record.

Hippie, I've never understood the push for sewage treatment vs. septic. Sure, in a high-density application like urban developments it's the only option, but in small towns and suburbia, leeching seems like a far more responsible choice. Why the push?

Heaven-On-Earth? So heaven is frozen 6, 7, 8 months a year? There is a reason there are hardly any people here. Even less, in the armpit.

My only question about the demand for big development in wild places is why don't people just move to New Jersey, instead of demanding that New Jersey move to Heaven-On-Earth?

I didn’t know New Jersey had any gold mines

In all seriousness though PA, it’s because we love to live here, but we also like having groceries, vehicles, fuel, and modern buildings. And those require money, infrastructure and jobs. Really though, I’m not sure you understand the scale we enjoy here. We can put in a 5-acre oil pad in the middle of a million acres of wilderness, that makes several million dollars a year and employs dozens of people who are therefore able to afford to live here. Mines use a little bit more space, but have a shorter life and are reclaimed more easily. Some have roads, many are fly-in only, and use winter ice roads or barges for freight.

And the reason it will never turn into New Jersey is that there is very little private land in AK. The vast majority of resource extraction is on government-held land, under a permitting system that specifically prohibits residential use and permanent construction. I could show you old capped oil wellheads in overgrown swamps that you’d never know were there unless you tripped over them. You’d be surprised how fast it goes back to “pristine.”

when I was working pipeline in Pa in 2012 I was impressed by the smallmouth numbers in the Susquehanna . it blew my mind how many ten pound channel cats where in that river . and the locals threw them back calling them trash