Beyond Coal Alaska
Only 45 miles west of Anchorage, the Chuitna River flows into Cook Inlet at a rate of 300 million gallons per day. Serving as a spawning ground for all five wild pacific salmon species as well as three species of trout, and draining a cool wet landscape full of beavers, bears, wolves, moose, and innumerable waterbirds, the Chuitna is a source of recreation, sustenance, and livelihoods for many people throughout the Kenai Peninsula and beyond. But the Chuitna faces a grave threat, one that could set a precedent for how salmon rivers are protected throughout state: an open-pit coal mine, to be located directly on top of one of the river’s tributaries.
Many people have heard of the controversy surrounding the proposed Pebble Mine, but the plan being proposed by PacRim Coal is even more egregious. The location of the PacRim mine would necessitate draining and destroying 11 miles of Middle Creek, a salmon-hosting tributary of the Chuitna. Historically, Alaska usually holds strict protections over its vital salmon rivers, and has never before allowed a mine to literally dig out the riverbed of a salmon spawning ground.
In this formerly remote and undeveloped region, the open strip mine would reach over 300 feet into the earth and cover 30 square miles, plus roads, an airstrip, support structures, coal transport conveyors, a beach loading facility, and a manmade island off the river mouth. And though Middle Creek is only one tributary of the Chuitna, the mine would also discharge millions of gallons per day of mine waste and runoff into other parts of the river. Such effluent would disrupt the seasonal flow patterns that salmon require, and bathe sensitive fish and freshwater creatures in water laden with heavy metals. To add insult to injury, Alaska gets less than 10 percent of its power from coal, and all the coal dug out from Middle Creek would be shipped overseas.
PacRim’s plan states that they would “restore” the river to its original state, but a more in depth investigation reveals that though they would re-contour the land and dig a ditch in the shape of a river, there was no consideration given to the intricate hydrology of salmon streams, with their complex layered sediments, rich topsoils, upwellings of cold pure groundwater, and diverse communities of the small insects and invertebrates that young salmon use for food. Never in the history of mining has a salmon spawning creek been “restored” to its previous productivity after a mine has ripped it apart.
Turning a salmon river into a coal mine is anathema to creating a sustainable future, and allowing it to happen once sets a dangerous precedent. Coal seams underlie almost the entire Cook Inlet region, and if the infrastructure is put in place for one mine, it is very likely that more would follow.
So the Sierra Club, working with student sustainability organizations from the University of Alaska at Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University, worked to build support from the Alaskan public, and to put pressure on the Department of Natural Resources to deny PacRim its permit to drain Middle Creek. Instead, the rights to the river's flowing water – and thus the existence of the river itself – would be given to local communities, who would leave the river in its healthy state. Local control of the “in stream flow” rights to the river would leave PacRim’s mine plans high and dry.
One of the biggest obstacles was simply making the problem visible. “People were blown away,” says Hope Meyn, volunteer organizer and student at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “No one knew.” However, as Meyn recalls, nearly all the people who heard about the plan were shocked and appalled.
But thanks to the Sierra Club’s grassroots help – through petitioning, training students as political organizers, holding letter-writing dinners (pictured left), and even screening a documentary about the Chuitna – the Sierra Club and student volunteers managed to gather 650 public comments and 11 public letters to the editor in the 45-day public comment period in April and early May. This dwarfed the 15 or 20 comments usually given in Alaska’s water rights cases. Clearly, preserving salmon rivers is an issue close to the hearts of Alaskans.
Now that the public comment period has ended, the next step in the campaign to save the Chuitna rests in the hands of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. But the fight is not over, and even if the DNR denies the local people’s rights to the Chuitna’s water, there are more permits and more opportunities to fight for the river. Meyn states that the most important action we can take is to make sure people are still active and aware of the threat, and to not lose the momentum that built up in April and May. “Stay outspoken. Stay informed,” Meyn says. “Without an outspoken populace, the officials will lean in favor of the corporations,”
Salmon are a key not only to people’s livelihoods and recreation, but a vital link in the food web of the Pacific Northwest. And at a time when 40 percent of the streams in the lower 48 are impacted and degraded by mine waste, it’s time to choose salmon for once, and not coal.