2     April 12, 2008 - 10:04pm | Hig

Pebble seismic risk

The main scientific point of my letter is quite simple. The initial publications (yes, not their final plan) that NDM/PLP have released ignored recent work on the fault that likely runs closest to their site. In those documents they optimistically assume the fault is further away than current science suggests. However, the real position of the fault is not known, nor is its activity. So more work (including on-the-ground geology) is needed before the hazard can be determined. If no other work is done, they would be forced to assume the worst-case, that the fault runs through their facilities.

Whether or not they have a final plan is irrelevent, this is a basic question about the geology of the region. It should be a part of their baseline studies, and of the constraints they put on their engineering plan.

As far as questions about my impartiality and the relevence of my experience... I hardly think it matters, but I did grow up in Alaska (in Seldovia, from 8 months old until I headed to college... I've returned for some part of every year since and moved here permanently again when my wife and I paddled into the state in September.) I'm not impartial... good luck finding someone who is.

However, I worked hard to explain just the science in my letter to the Dam Safety Office, and these issues have nothing to do with my opinion on whether the project should go through. My dissertation focused on geologic hazards. I've read the meager research that exists on faulting in the Pebble area, and talked with most of the government geologists who work on hazards in Alaska to see if there are gaps in my understanding. For example, Rod Combellick (AK DNR) said:

"I don’t see anything out of line in your letter. It’s all reasonable and of course the seismic hazard must be evaluated and properly designed for."

-Hig (Bretwood Higman, PhD in Earth and Space Sciences from the University of Washington, Seattle.)

login or register to post comments | flag this »

  1     March 31, 2008 - 1:31pm | ThorZone

Not So Fast

I met Dr. Bretwood "Hig" Higman once. He was up here a few years ago with his girl friend and my cousin to hike from Nebesna to Chitna and then run the Copper River to Cordova in these little one man backpack rafts. My wife and I drove the whole bunch from Anchorage to Nebesna. We spent the whole trip talking about Alaska and the many issues we were facing as a state at the time as well as learning about their respective fields of study.

I remember him as a pretty nice guy, but naive about how things worked here. Anyway, while I think he is a pretty smart guy, I do no think he has put much time into researching the specifics of seismic problems in the Pebble area, and based on my conversations with him during our 6 plus hour car ride to Nebesna, I am not sure he has an open mind about development projects in general.

What most people fail to grasp is at this point, there is no plan on how Pebble will be developed. There is all kinds of talk about all kinds of nightmare scenarios including a huge dam filled with an endless list of dangerous chemicals that will kill everything from Bethel to Dutch Harbor to Cordova when the dam breaks. The facts are very different from the talk coming from the environmental community.

If there is a dam built, it will not be full of water. It will be mostly full of tailings from the mine and these tailings will be covered with a layer of water. Let’s say for the purpose of illustration, if the dam is 100 feet high, probably 80 feet of that will be just dirt and rocks with a layer of water only 20 feet deep. It won’t be a lake 100 feet deep full of toxic waste just waiting to be released on the people of Bristol Bay. Even if there was a huge problem, according to Dept. of Fish & Game studies done to date, the drainage around Pebble only supports around 1% of the Bristol Bay fishery. I am not saying it would be OK for Pebble to pollute the water in the area, there are laws against that sort of thing, but it clearly won’t have a meaningful role in any fish declines in the Bristol Bay fisheries.

It seems to me that all the uproar about Pebble is way too early since there is not a mining plan to shoot at yet. The environmental community needs to take a deep breath and wait until the specific plans are released by who ever it is that will eventually apply for permits to develop the mine and make comments dealing specifically with the mine plan. Jumping up and down about how a mining operation might disturb the area without first knowing what the mine will be doing doesn't do anyone any good.

login or register to post comments | flag this »