BHP to ramp up Spence copper mine expansion

This is and has been much to do about nothing for many years now. Just a bit north & west is the cap of the Kaskanak batholith which largely hosts the Pebble mine is the valley or Ten Thousand Smokes, fine tuffaceous volcanics that were erupted from the very recent Katmi volcano and caldera just as similar rocks were erupted from the Kaskanak volcano that hosts the Pebble mineral deposit at a much earlier time. The massive amount of very hot smoking detritus containing heavy metals including copper, mercury, iron, Uranium?, gold? rare earths? and many others, some of which are soluble including mercury, have been bisected by a river and attendant streams which have cut many feet (30 or more) and carried this detritus into Bristol Bay. Of all the time I have spent studying what we call the Big Chunk Batholith that is part of the pebble volcanic edifice, that hosts the Pebble mine. Never during the years we have been working on the Big Chunk did I ever hear any one mention this National Park that is tourist attraction,is very large and probably eroding heavy metal detritus (powdered rock – like tailings) into Bristol Bay!!! Why – because volcanoes and mineralized rock is part of the genetic fabric of the circumpacific Ring of Fire that circles the Pacific ocean and causes enumerable volcanoes, earthquakes, and mineral deposits on which we depend. It is part of nature that many hysterical people wring their hands over. They want us to go” back to nature. So here we are enjoying nature at its fullest – with volcanoes and glacier and glacial lakes (which almost no one recognizes their origin is the backing up of moraines, that dam up the melting glacier from which they originate. There literly thousands of these lakes in Alaska. But in-spite of the recent volcanism resulting in the Valley of ten thousand smokes that are spilling millions of tons of heavy metal containing sediment into Bristol bay every century – the salmon never lose their way and always come back to their spawning grounds and reproduce a& start the cycle over again yearly.. Northern Dynasty has has already taken so many precautions (which were probably needed that I believe the development of the Pebble Mine . will not harm the environment in any way. In time all the trees and tundra plants will re grow, the pit will fill up with water and fish will live there.
What will happen is that the mine will throw off so much income and jobs that the desperately poor people in this region will have well paying jobs, go to good schools and universities, become contributing members of their society and lead their people on to better more healthy and happy lives.

Now lets go down the Alaskan Peninsula to the Copper River. This is the location of the Kennecott massive sulfide copper deposit developed by the Guggenheim Brothers in the early part of the 20th century. Engineers said the terrain would not allow construction of the needed railway, and Town, but they did all that, but when the copper price later fell so all that was abandoned. High grade copper is still exposed and as it has for millennia, and feeds into the Copper River where it feeds into the pacific ocean.

And by the concensis I hear the best Salmon coming out of Alaska is those from the Copper River. May be this will be true of the salmon coming out of the water of the Pebble Mine.

This is for the use of the environmental worry warts – that don’t think well.

Enjoy. Comments are welcome.