"Today, the Pebble Limited Partnership will unveil its latest round of tactics in its quest for North America's largest copper and gold mine, planned for the headwaters of Bristol Bay's prolific salmon fishery. It appears that by hiring The Keystone Center, PLP is doing little more than attempting to purchase social acceptance under the guise of public outreach. As noted by Keystone representative Dr. Todd Bryan, Keystone will kick off its dialogue process on the proposed Pebble mine with an independent panel titled "Responsible Large-Scale Mining: Global Perspectives."

Yet, while they tout the idea of dialogue process, their approach is flawed from the start. First, they are beginning with the wrong question. Rather than asking if a mine of this sort should be built in a place like Bristol Bay, Keystone is asking "how to build a mine in Bristol Bay?" If PLP and Keystone were truly interested in public dialogue and community mediation, then they would begin with the first question, not the latter one.

Those risks are not worth taking in a location that annually returns more than 40 million salmon, provides thousands of jobs and supports the subsistence livelihoods of thousands of Alaska Natives. For my family, descendants of Alaska Native people who have lived in Bristol Bay for more than 8,000 years, it means an unacceptable risk to our culture and way of life. Like so many Alaska Native families, three generations of families work side by side to harvest renewable resources, salmon, that we count on year after year."

Get the Story:
Kimberly Williams: Pebble dialogue opens with wrong question (The Anchorage Daily News 12/3)

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