The Pebble Blog : Bristol Bay Native Corp. weighs in on clean water legislation, initiatives

Bristol Bay Native Corp. weighs in on clean water legislation, initiatives

Posted by pebble_blog

Posted: March 20, 2008 - 9:39 am

In its March newsletter to shareholders, Bristol Bay's regional Native corporation raises some concerns about the proposed ballot initiatives and the legislative bill to limit the discharge of certain pollutants from metallic mines.

I'll go ahead and reprint most of the BBNC item here. I'm not aware of all of the organizations in the Bristol Bay region that have come out in favor of or against the intiatives this year, so it would be great if someone in-the-know could list them out for all the blog readers. One statewide Native organization that has come out in favor is the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council.

Here are versions one and two of the initiatives proposed for the August ballot.

A little more background: Last year when a Doyon leader proposed a resolution to oppose the first Clean Water initiative at the Alaska Federation of Natives meeting, the Bristol Bay delegation was the only one that didn't vote in favor of the resolution. Also, a month before this blog started, the Bristol Bay Native Corp. published results of a survey of its shareholders about Pebble. Here's the results.

Here's a slightly truncated version of this month's newsletter item:

"It is hard to argue against the protection of salmon or the environment, but voters should be cautious when considering public policy changes. There are currently two efforts intended to protect the Bristol Bay fisheries and clean water ... While BBNC supports the protection of Alaska's fisheries and waters, this type of public policy may have unintended consequences when it comes to our ability to responsibly manage BBNC lands.
The first effort is House Bill 134 ... while the bill is intended to protect salmon spawning waters, the current language used in the bill would likely impact BBNC's ability to manage resource development on our lands. We are tracking this bill and have asked sponsors to reconsider some of the language used ...
The second is the Alaska Clean Water Ballot Initiative ... The intiative's intent is to protect water by disallowing large new hard-rock mines. While the language is specific to large metal mines, there are several, current resource exploration projects on BBNC lands that may be negatively impacted. These are projects that allow BBNC to better understand our land resources ...
It is difficult for BBNC to support either effort as their language is broad based and potentially prohibitive to regional community and economic development. While both are targeting the large scale Pebble Mine project, the fallout has many other potential projects in its path ...
BBNC recommends that shareholders gather facts and understand the details of both the pros and cons before deciding to support or oppose any legislation or ballot initiative. It is a good idea to ask questions of your community leaders and state officials regrarding any proposed legislation."

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