Certain words always seem to pop up in the vernacular of environmental activists and sympathetic journalists. When it comes to oil exploration and mining, no paragraph can be penned or sound bite uttered without using the adjective “pristine.”

Pick your patch of Alaska land or water: ANWR is “pristine,” Pebble is” pristine” and now Lower Slate Lake is “pristine.”

There must be an environmental playbook that spells out how to use words to evoke the exact emotional response required to kill a project: “Pristine portrays a place of pure poetry and perfection deserving of protection. Use it often”.

On Monday the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the permits for Juneau’s Kensington Mine are legal. Predictably, many are spreading hysteria about the decision that will result in the “destruction of a pristine alpine lake.” Oh, where to begin.

The gold mine’s proposed tailings facility, Lower Slate Lake, is little more than an isolated muskeg pond. It is unlikely that anyone other than miners ever even knew it existed until it became the poster child for opposition to this project.

Hardly pristine or unique, the lake is situated in a valley that was clear-cut to provide fuel and lumber for the Comet, Jualin, Kensington and Indiana gold mines that operated there at the turn of the last century. Yes, it contains a few Dolly Varden and threespine stickleback. Neither rare nor special, these fish are abundant in Alaska.

The mine tailings to be deposited into Lower Slate Lake are a mixture of crushed rock and water, not altogether unlike the sediment dumped hourly into Alaska waters every day of the year for millennia by glacier-fed rivers.

The Court agreed with the Corps of Engineers that the tailings plan would create additional habitat. The litigation was never about clean water or fish or wildlife – it was about shutting down another Alaska development project.

The litigants had their day in court but their arguments were, according to the highest Court in the land, “unconvincing,” and they lost. It wasn’t a particularly close decision and even Justice Breyer joined the Majority.

The plaintiffs’ response is to ask the Nancy Pelosi-led Congress for a new law (H.R. 1310) and urge their supporters to tell the EPA and the Obama administration to issue new rules. There’s always someone in Washington, D.C., especially now, willing to impede industry in Alaska.

So much for the “rule of law.” When it works for you, it’s irrefutable but when it goes the other way, you just change the rules. And use colorful language like “pristine” to help make the case.

Here’s a term I’d like to inject into the conversation: Empathy. Not for the fish but for the 400 people who lost their jobs when mine construction was halted two years ago. Empathy for the 200 Alaska Natives, spouses of Natives and employees of local Native subcontractors from Juneau and surrounding villages who were part of that diverse Kensington workforce. Empathy for the workers who couldn’t wait for the litigation to end and had to move on.

For the good of our state and the economic security of the people of Southeast, it’s really time for the other side to move on and to acknowledge that this mine was properly permitted. To continue the fight is futile, but also hurtful and mean-spirited.