Palin pro mining anti environment article NYTImes

[mucifer]

EKWOK, Alaska — Two years ago, Sarah Palin landed near this tiny native village and spoke of her love for the vast and starkly beautiful delta that drains into Bristol Bay.
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Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Jonathan Hobson, left, and Eric Vanlandingham work on an exploratory drill at the proposed Pebble Mine.

“I am a commercial fisherman; my daughter’s name is Bristol,” said Ms. Palin, then a candidate for governor. “I could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world’s richestspawning grounds, over another resource.”

Many here took her words to heart. But as governor, Ms. Palin has helped ease the way for a proposed copper and gold mine of near-mythic proportions at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, the world’s greatest spawning ground for wild salmon.

If state regulators give their approval, mining companies plan to carve an open pit that would rival the world’s largest mines, descending half a mile and taking as much energy to operate daily as the city of Anchorage. That prospect has ignited a war between Alaska’s two historic industries, mining and fishing.

Scientists and former state and federal biologists warn that toxic residue from the project, known as Pebble Mine, would irreparably harm a centuries-old salmon fishing industry that employs 17,000 and hauls in $100 million annually.

Opposition is fierce and broad. Three former governors, two Republicans and a Democrat, have spoken out against the mine, as have Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican; commercial fishing firms; and many Alaska Natives in Bristol Bay...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/us/politics/22mining.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


No big surprises. But, more ammo.