Open Letter: LAND USE; WATER RIGHTS By Rick Gustin January 20, 2014
But there are some assumptions being made by you politicians that are supporting this HB77 bill which I have concerns with. One of them is that we can trust big corporations ( mining conglomerates, oil companies, timber industry) to do the right, the responsible ,the long term environmentally sound resource development thing. The mining industry, in particular has a long dark record in the U.S.. Large open pit , strip and mountain top removal types of mineral extraction have a long and somewhat jaded history in the United States as well as other countries. Unfortunately when you are talking about large low grade ore bodies, this is the type of mining you will have. There are numerous superfund sites that “we the people” have been left to pay for out of our taxes. This is what concerns me about the removal of public comment, notification, and open public process that seems to be happening with HB77. The stream lining of the permitting process is being put into mainly one mans’ hands. (ADNR Commissioner) He is an unelected public servant appointed by the governor, and he more than anyone else will be deciding who gets these water and resource development rights and for how long. And this HB77 streamlining process will make it easy for this commissioner of Dept. of Natural Resources to give these water and resource development rights to the faceless large corporate mining interests. There will be no guarantee of alaskan jobs from these decisions. And after studying the reclamation laws that were written (some by the federal government themselves) regarding mountain top removal in the coal mining areas of Appalachia, there is no good basis to think that meeting a federal label of restoration of the land really means anything. After blasting the top of a mountain away to get at the coal under it for example, and dumping all the fine soil horizon layers in the bottom of a valley, and putting all the large rock and boulder material on top of it (basically turning a natural productive soil horizon up side down) the mining companies could hydro seed the barren top layers, grow grass and meet the reclamation standard. In Alaska we are talking pristine salmon spawning habitat that could potentially be strip mined, say for coal. And after releasing the heavy metals often associated with coal seams, (mercury for instance) into the stream waters, you have some serious pollution problems regarding the growing of any salmon there later on. That is not even addressing the fact that trying to restore clean salmon spawning and rearing habitat in a strip mined stream may be economically unfeasible. If the restoration regulations are not made stiff enough, and not enforced properly, (and you can bet large corporate interests will lobby to keep those costs down as much as possible) then the restoration goal that is met, may not be adequate to replace what has been lost. And once you have opened this door to mining salmon streams, you will not be able to deny other mining claims on other salmon streams. Do you see my fears? I understand that our permitting system (for resource development) is complex, sometimes messy, and has to take in a lot of different peoples concerns for many different points of view. Unfortunately this is the pitfall of an open democracy where the citizens have a right to know what is being done with the citizen owned state resources not just a few large resource extracting corporations that want to make a large profit using our resources. These resources do not belong to the current governor of this state, nor the Commissioner of Dept. of Natural Resources, nor you the “elected state senators and representatives” of the people of the state of Alaska. You are our “public servants” we are not yours. You have been elected by the citizens of the state to represent them, not the faceless corporations that put pressure on you to pass legislation which might be favorable for them. Please think about this in the coming weeks and into the new year. You will soon be voting on this important, some say critical HB77 and I hope that some of you will reconsider your previous support and vote for future Alaskans, some not born yet, who hopefully will continue to be able to experience the wonder of a powerful clean environment that can produce incredible renewable resources that are fast becoming unheard of on the rest of the planet. Sincerely, Rick Gustin Received January 17, 2014 - Published January 20, 2014 Related Information:
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