Ripples from Pebble felt far from Alaska [View all]

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/23/pebble-mine-alaska-environment-salmon-indigenous-people?intcmp=122


Drilling for core samples at the proposed site of Pebble mine by Lake Iliamna in Alaska. Iliamna is the largest undeveloped lake in the US and a crucial nursery for young salmon. Photograph: Bridget Besaw/ Bridget Besaw/Aurora Photos/Corbis


Rick Halford is a "manifest destiny" kind of Alaskan. He cleared his land with dynamite. He calls himself the "ideal redneck Republican". As a longtime leader in the state legislature, he never met a hard-rock mine he didn't like.

That is, until he took a long look at the proposed Pebble Mine in south-west Alaska. It is a phenomenal prospect, the biggest and richest in North America. But to dig a mine there is to make a Faustian bargain that involves an agonizing Alaskan twist.

In return for copper and gold worth an estimated $500bn (£320bn), state and federal regulators risk poisoning what scientists describe as the last best place on earth for millions of wild salmon.