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Along the Kuskokwin River, Gold Mining Likely Comes at a High Price [1]
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Date: 2025-01-07
Huddling before my computer on a September afternoon, I was transported virtually to a community center in the town of Bethel, Alaska, population 6,300. The presentation was scientific and technical, as experts shared about the potential impacts of a tailings dam failure at the proposed Donlin gold mine, and heartfelt and emotional, as community members spoke to the importance of a healthy ecosystem to their Native Alaskan rural and subsistence way of life. For those gathered on the screen, this meeting was an important next step in the decades-long opposition to a major industrial development in the heart of their ancestral home.
“It makes us really deep, deep sad,” said Esther Green, Yup’ik, about the proposed mine in a video produced by local opponents. “That’s where the ducks lay their eggs. Moose, caribou, they eat from the land. Once they destroy our land, there won’t be any more.”
The lifeblood of the region is the Kuskokwim River, extending 724 miles from deep in the Alaskan interior to the rugged Bering Sea. Measured by annual average water volume, it is the ninth largest river in the United States. The Kuskokwim and neighboring Yukon Rivers form one of the largest deltas in the world, covering more than 50,000 square miles of wetlands, tundra, and mountains in Southwest Alaska, equal to about twice the size of Lake Huron.
The region’s 56 small communities are primarily Alaskan Native; Yup’ik is the first language for many citizens. The Kuskokwim River provides local Yup’ik, Cup’ik, and Athabascan residents with one of the largest traditional fisheries in the world, with 50% of the annual diet in these communities made up of salmon alone. Heading to fish camps along the shores of the river and its tributaries is a summer rite for village families of all generations. Practically and culturally, the river is critical to their identity and way of life.
“Salmon is always on the table,” said Evon Waska, Yup’ik, in the video. “We grew up respecting all life, fish, animals and the land itself. The Kuskokwim River is the giver of life, period.”
The Proposal
Over a decade ago, residents learned of plans to build one of the world’s largest gold mines in the Kuskokwim watershed. To support mining in the proposed two-mile by one-mile open pit, the Donlin Gold Project would require significant infrastructure: a 315-mile-long natural gas pipeline, a 471-foot-tall tailings dam, and a 25-square-mile base of operations with processing plants for treating wastewater, breaking down waste rock, and generating power. Transport to the remote site, which is not connected to the Alaska highway system, would rely on a new 30-mile access road and a tripling of barge traffic on the river.
The construction and operation of such a large industrial development could interfere with residents’ subsistence activities. Construction will eliminate critical fish habitat. Increased barge traffic will impact rainbow smelt spawning, an important local food source. Processing the rock will release mercury in excess of human health standards.
The region has already experienced the negative impacts of mining. Gold dredging dating back to the 1930’s operated near the village of Tuluksak. Residents believe the mine venture, now closed, contributed to persistent health issues in the community, including high rates of cancer, unsafe drinking water, and fish with discolored flesh.
The community meeting I attended was in reference to one of the most pressing concerns of the Donlin project: the proposed tailings enclosure. The planned dam would reach more than 45 stories tall and hold 600 million tons of mining waste full of toxic chemicals, equal to 175,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, for perpetuity. In the last decade, other catastrophic mine tailings dam failures have permanently harmed communities and environments. In Mount Polley, British Columbia, in 2014, 24.4 million cubic meters of toxic waste tore through forests and lakes. The destructive Brumadinho, Brazil, dam collapse in 2019 killed 270 people.
Gloria Simeon, Yup’ik, explained in the video produced by opponents of the mine, “The tundra is like a sponge. Any leak of anything: barge, mine, breach of dam, tailings ponds, will be like a sponge to the whole delta. There’s just too much at risk.”
The Opposition
The Donlin Mine is a contentious project. On the one hand, it would provide economic opportunity to residents and communities for the proposed life of the mine, 27 years. On the other, it is environmentally extractive with the potential to permanently damage cultural and traditional ways of life. The mantra of those opposed is, “Fish first, we can’t eat gold.”
In 2018, the final Environmental Impact Statement was issued on the Donlin Mine. This document is the basis for six years of opposition in communities, corporations, and the courts. The Orutsararmiut Native Council in Bethel held the first public Tribal demonstration against the project in 2018. Then a group of 136 indigenous women of the region signed a letter of concern. By the end of 2019, 14 tribal governments, the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, the Association of Village Council Presidents (a regional tribal consortium representing 56 Tribes), and even the National Congress of American Indians had passed resolutions of opposition to the mine development.
But even as upwelling of opposition to the Donlin Mine has surged in communities along the Kuskokwim, it has been like a voice calling in the wilderness. Native Alaskan lands and governance were not enclosed in a reservation system like those in the Lower 48. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, passed in 1971, established for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations that own and develop millions of acres of land and Tribal governments that are responsible for social and cultural services. Alaska Natives can be members of both, and benefit financially from development as regional corporation shareholders.
The mine site land is owned by two Alaskan Native entities, the Kuskokwim Corporation (surface rights) and Calista Corporation (subsurface rights). Many of the residents opposed to the project are shareholders in Calista. They are frustrated that corporate decision makers are forging ahead to build Donlin Mine against widespread opposition.
In 2022, the grassroots organizing group Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition organized to uplift community opposition to the Donlin project. “A lot of what we’ve been working on is grassroots organizing and spreading the word because it’s such a complex situation,” said Anaan’arar Sophie Swope, Director of the coalition in a phone interview with the Daily Yonder. “Some of our focus, too, is on trying to steer Calista Corporation to divest from the project.”
It has been an uphill climb. Calista leaders have not allowed a member vote on the issue and Mother Kuskokwim members have experienced other roadblocks. Requests to meet with Alaska state decision makers have been denied. State member of the U.S. House of Representatives Mary Peltola, Kuskokwim region Tribal member and advocate for the protection of salmon, signed on to an amicus brief in support of the Donlin Mine.
The Future
“In this kind of major extractive project, the barriers to entry to the legal process is high even for engaged, smart advocates,” said lawyer Hannah Foster in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “Our clients care so much about their communities, but with thousands of pages to review it is really hard to track what is happening, access resources, and be heard.”
Foster is an Associate Attorney with Earthjustice, the pro bono environmental law firm representing Tribal interests. Tribes have four ongoing federal and state cases against the Donlin Mine project, some of which have been in litigation for more than five years. The first substantial court victory was announced on September 30, when the judge ruled that the 2018 Environmental Impact Statement, and thus the Donlin Mine permit, violated federal laws. Citing the Mother Kuskokwim-commissioned study presented at the community meeting I viewed, the decision stated that Donlin’s scenarios failed to consider a large enough breach in the tailings dam.
Rather than propose a remedy, involved parties have several weeks to propose options. The Tribes are hoping the judge will throw out Donlin’s permit and force its owners to begin the process again, with increased input from the people who have stewarded this land for generations. Even if the mine goes forward, Foster said that alterations could make a meaningful difference. For example, requiring a dry instead of wet tailing storage process significantly decreases toxic spread in the event of a catastrophic spill.
Swope hopes that Mother Kuskokwim’s work against the Donlin Mine will help shift extractive development in the delta to projects that acknowledge traditional wealth embedded in health, culture, and natural abundance. It’s that wealth that has fueled her perseverance against the project.
“There’s just this beautiful balance,” she said. “With all the things wrong in the world, trying to make those wrongs right actually connects you to all of these beautiful authentic people. Working to preserve the thing that makes our culture, we’re doing it for future generations. It’s selfless work. It’s so powerful that we’re able to power through all of this ugliness and pursue what’s right for everybody.”
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