Where Threatened Waters Flow (2006)
Last modified: 13th February 2020
Anchorage, Alaska: As we tossed our hiking gear into the small, cargo-stuffed plane that would take us to Nondalton, I got a few last-minute pronunciation lessons from the pilot.
“It’s Tal -AIR-ik, not TAHL-a-rik,” he corrected me. “And Iggy-AH-gig, not I-GOOEY-gig”.
I thanked him, repeating the words in my head. I knew a few words couldn’t transform me into a local, but I didn’t want to sound like I was reading straight off the map.
Upper Talarik Creek and Igiugig village lie in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska. Here wide forested rivers snake through a landscape of rolling tundra, carrying millions of salmon from the Bering Sea. Hundreds of miles off the road system and home to only a few thousand people, most people eating Bristol Bay salmon have never heard of this far-flung and wild corner of the country.
It may not remain wild for long. Hidden deep beneath the tundra, a legacy of the land’s volcanic heritage, lie billions of dollars worth of copper and gold. Mining companies across the world are turning their sights on Southwest Alaska.
Sixteen miles from Nondalton village, low rounded mountains surround a glacier-carved valley. Hundreds of shallow lakes and ponds sparkle in the wet tundra that blankets the valley floor. Until a few years ago, few outsiders had ever visited the Pebble valley. But today, survey helicopters roar overhead and scattered drill rigs tunnel deep into the rock.
Northern Dynasty Minerals, a company based in Canada, has poured millions of dollars into the exploration of this remote valley. If the company has its way, it could soon be home to the Pebble Mine, the largest open pit mine in North America.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hard-rock mining is by far the most polluting industry in the country. Many supposedly “safe” operations have caused disastrous spills and leaks into their local waters. At the Pebble claim, drill rigs perch between two knee-deep creeks. Hundreds of miles later, these creeks empty into Bristol Bay as two great rivers, the Nushagak and the Kvichak. Situated on a low divide between two of the most productive salmon rivers in the world, the Pebble project is uniquely placed to threaten an economy, a way of life, and one of our last great wild ecosystems.
My mission on this journey was to follow the water. Along with my husband Hig, and my friend Tom, I had arrived in this wilderness with a camera, a backpack, and a month to explore the world that the Pebble Mine would threaten. As salmon swim, and as toxins might flow, we intended to travel almost 500 miles under our own power, hiking and packrafting the length of both watersheds.
It was early June when we walked out of Nondalton village. The tundra was painted with the pastel yellows and pinks of tiny wildflowers and tinged with the dull, muted tones of ground that has only recently emerged from the snow. My back twinged uncomfortably beneath a pack full of food and camera gear, not yet accustomed to the load.
Even from this closest village, the Pebble valley was still a day and a half’s walk away. As we approached the first of the exploration drill rigs, a trio of caribou trotted past gracefully, too fast for my camera. A helicopter roared across the dark grey sky, tilting and bouncing in the punishing wind. Trash littered the ground near the trampled and muddy pits of old drill rig sites. One gave off a distinctive smell of oil.
Nervous about what Northern Dynasty’s workers might think, I crouched in the grass with my telephoto lens, shooting drill rigs and hoses, and the sludge of rock slurry spilling out over the tundra.
But we had little time to investigate. The threat of this project stretches much farther than the Pebble valley, and we still had over 400 miles to travel. Turning our backs on the drill rigs, we followed the meanders of the Koktuli River as it turned away from the potential tailings lake and headed out between the hills.
Over the next several days, we let the wind and the current carry us down from the Koktuli, to the Mulchatna, to the Nushagak, along an ever-growing river. From open tundra, the river led us through scraggly willows into a forest of spruce and cottonwood. Eagles perched on the tops of the tallest trees, attempting to look regal as they fought the buffeting wind. Swallows zoomed in and out of their homes in the bluff, bringing home a new mosquito for their offspring every few seconds, but somehow never exhausting the buzzing supply. Arctic terns dive-bombed us in the cotton grass fields, protecting their nests. Skittish moose mothers bolted almost as soon as we caught sight of them, while the large bulls merely glared at us between mouthfuls of willow.
With its abundant moose and caribou - it is home to the 100,000-strong Mulchatna herd – and a sizeable population of brown bears, this region supports many of Alaska’s largest and most charismatic animals. But to the people that live here, the most important animals of all were those swimming beneath our boats.
June on the Nushagak is marked by the beginning of the king salmon run. First and largest of the millions of salmon that swim up the river each year, the kings were struggling up to the village of New Stuyahok just as we reached it floating down. Salmon strips dried on racks on the shore, as four-wheelers pulled wagons full of fish along the bumpy dirt streets. Skiffs zoomed up and down the river, tending subsistence nets, while the owners of sport fishing lodges scrubbed and hammered, preparing for the first clients of the year.
I’ve always been a little shy, and as we paddled the last yards into New Stuyahok, I psyched myself up to start talking.
“Hi…um, well, we just came from Nondalton. We hiked over to the potential Pebble Mine site, and then we’ve been floating in our little rafts, down to here…” I fumblingly explained to the first person we talked to, fishing a grubby map out of my pocket.
Recognition spread across his face. “You guys are the ones from the paper! I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I didn’t expect you for another couple days,” he exclaimed.
“The river was faster than we thought,” I explained, somewhat floored by the recognition.
Though I knew we were in the local paper, the Bristol Bay Times, and though I was even at that moment scheming to find an internet connection to send them an update on the trip, I wasn’t quite prepared for the fact that people would actually read it.
We began to talk to the locals - about the area, about our trip, about the mine. Each person we spoke to seemed keen to tell us that their entire village was against the mine. They were concerned about the fish, and skeptical of the mining company’s promises. But more than anything else, they told us about how much they loved their wild home.
It was easier to understand their reasons than it was to explain our own. After listening to hurried explanation of what we were doing, the New Stuyahok environmental coordinator broke in with a question. “Who are you with? I mean, who is funding you?”
“No one,” I answered. “I mean, we’re just sort of doing this on our own. Self-funded. But it’s not really very expensive to walk…”
It was a question I’d tripped over a few times already, with reporters from the Anchorage Daily News and the Bristol Bay Times. By trip’s end, I realized what I should have told them: Yes, we lived thousands of miles away, but we were sent by no organization. Though we are anything but rich, we were funded by no one, traveling simply and cheaply under our own power. This place may be home to Alaskans, but I care about it too. And although the locals stand to suffer the most immediate impacts if the mine is built, this issue is much bigger than just Southwest Alaska.
drill rig and hose at the Pebble site
The gold and copper under the Pebble Mine prospect isn’t a new discovery. Like many claims in the region, the Pebble deposit has been known about for decades. The reason this battle has erupted now has nothing to do with the people of Southwest Alaska, and everything to do with the rest of us, the consumers and investors.
In the national consciousness, hard-rock mining is oil drilling’s forgotten cousin. Most mines are built in remote areas, far away from the view of most consumers. And the metals they produce pass through a dizzying array of middlemen before ending up in our stores, long severed from the name of the mining company that produced them. Demand for gold comes largely from our appetite for jewelry. Demand for copper comes from all sorts of industries. But more than any demand, what drives new mining is the fickle whims of the stock market. Global commodities prices have increased dramatically in the past several years. As prices go up, it becomes economical to mine ever lower-grade ore, in ever more remote places. The fate of the tundra, of the rivers, and of the salmon is decided by worried investors thousands of miles away, reading about how gold is a “safe investment.”
But as we were pulled away from the villages by the fast current of the Nushagak, trying to match up bends on our map with bends in the river, concerns about gold prices faded away behind the immediate realities of current and flow. The forests and fish camps zipped by in a blur of rain and mosquitoes as the water picked up speed, hurrying us toward the sea.
Commercial salmon fishing was in full swing when we hit Bristol Bay in mid-June. The docks at the Dillingham boat harbor were stacked seven deep with fishing boats, dashing out and back for every opener. Launching our tiny packrafts there a few days later, we had a number of onlookers, cheerily forecasting our deaths as we left with the outgoing tide. I think they were only half joking.
packrafting Bristol Bay near Dillingham
The tide carried us as far as Clark’s Point, a dilapidated-looking cannery village with a large number of ocean-battered buildings. Four-wheeler tracks crisscrossed the beach, which was littered with the discarded heads and eggs of salmon. We rolled up our packrafts on the gravel shore, and walked out towards the open coast.
The beach was gorgeous – hard clean sand and gravel framed by bluffs of peat. A warm sun shone down between drifting clouds, the ocean was calm and glassy, and there was just enough breeze to clear the bugs away.