After Salmon - Stop Pebble Mine Square Sticker
After the Salmon are gone what will we eat? A depiction of a Sockeye Salmon in its red spawning phase and text reading "Red Fish" "Dead Fish" "Stop Pebble Mine." I will donate a hefty portion of any proceeds from the sale of this product to organizations fighting Pebble Mine. The more items sold the greater percentage I will donate. In an event, please help stop pebble mine. Miners want access to a very large deposit of gold, copper and molybdemum, located in the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak Rivers, two of the eight major rivers that feed Alaska's Bristol Bay. Bristol Bay is home to one of the world's few and most productive wild salmon strongholds that supports a $500 million commercial and sport fishery. Plans for the mine include the world's largest earthen dam to be built, some 700 feet high and several miles in length. Independent scientists have questioned whether the dam could withstand the force of a massive earthquake, such as the 9.2 quake that devastated Anchorage in 1964. The dam and 10-square-mile-wide containment pond are intended to hold between 2.5 billion and 10 billion tons of mine waste that Pebble would produce over its lifetime - nearly enough to bury Seattle, Washington. Mine tailings would include sulfides, which become sulfuric acid, as well as copper. The area around the mine is a spawning ground for salmon. Salmon are highly sensitive to pollution, especially copper. If salmon are exposed to even miniscule amounts of copper (parts per billion), their sense of smell is interfered and impairs their ability to locate spawning grounds and identify predators. By the consortium's own admission the earthen dam will need to be maintained in perpetuity (i.e. forever) in order to ensure acid-generating tailings do not damage the environment. Activity at the mine will last for approximately thirty years until the ores are exhausted. And, we are supposed to believe that the consortium will still be around ten thousand years from now protecting the environment; or maybe just one thousand years from now, or even fifty years from now. Forever is a long time. After the mine is played out the consortium will be gone leaving an inevitable catastrophe in its wake. In addition, the mine is to be sited in an active geological zone, but we are told the fault line miraculously goes around the site and poses no threat. The consortium, the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), includes the world's second largest multinational mining corporation, London-based Anglo American, along with Northern Dynasty, a junior mining company headquartered in Canada. Anglo American's environmental track record does not bode well for Bristol Bay and Northern Dynasty has little experience safeguarding the environment having never developed a mine to date. Anglo has a disastrous track record on the environment and worker safety at its worldwide mines, including: Zimbabwe – Acid runoff contaminated groundwater and polluted the Yellow Jacket River from a mine owned by Anglo American until 2003 Nevada – Anglo American is responsible for the largest source of mercury air pollution in United States history. Recommendations to limit fish consumption have been issued for downwind fisheries. Ireland – Lead and zinc contaminated river sediments and sections of the river were closed to anglers. Over 220 mine workers have died at Anglo American mining operations in the last five years. Please support efforts to prevent Pebble Mine from being approved by the EPA.
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