Alaska

A local ponders the implications of the EPA’s approval of a large gold mine in Alaska

On Wednesday, the EPA granted Coeur Alaska the final wastewater discharge pollution permit it needed to begin building its Kensington gold mine near Alaska's capital city, Juneau.

For background, see:

Planet Ark

Juneau Empire (more complete, but free registration required)

An unfortunate rule change in 2002 that redefined Kensington's particular type of mine-tailings as "fill" allowed the permit to move forward. Coeur Alaska plans to dump its tailings into a nearby freshwater lake.

Everything coal is new again

Congress seeks tax money to make defunct “clean coal” plant dirty again For aficionados of government pork, the energy bill that recently passed the House is the gift that keeps on giving. The latest gem uncovered is a provision that would offer $125 million in loan guarantees to a “clean coal” power plant in Alaska. […]

Shock and Thaw

New Yorker launches three-part exploration of climate change Writer Elizabeth Kolbert must have single-handedly accelerated global warming with the jet fuel she burned visiting the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Antarctic to research a big three-part series on climate change for The New Yorker. What did she find? Well, it’s all melting. The Alaskan […]

Arctic Refuge drilling debate misses the big picture

Sun-drenched Pelican Island in Florida is about as far from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as you can get in the United States. At first blush, the 5,000-acre warm marsh would seem to have little connection to the 19 million-acre stretch of mountains and tundra. But they are inextricably linked. A buff-breasted sandpiper. © Subhankar […]

An open letter to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska

Dear Sen. Stevens, This week you got your wish: a 51 to 49 vote against the Cantwell amendment and in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Caribou in the Arctic Refuge. Photo: Ken Whitten, Wilderness Society. The crude minds have spoken. Finally. You told your colleagues and anyone else who would listen […]

Author and oil-spill expert Riki Ott answers questions

Riki Ott. What work do you do? What’s your job title? For the past seven years — 1998 to 2004 — I researched and wrote a book, Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Now I’m an author/activist/scientist on book tour. Titles: Well, I have been bestowed numerous titles […]

Elizabeth Grossman reviews The Whale and the Supercomputer by Charles Wohlforth

Out on the ice that forms the shores of the Arctic Ocean, the Iñupiaq whalers of Barrow, Alaska, hauled in their catch, a bowhead whale that weighed more than 100,000 pounds. The entire village turned out to pull the enormous mammal ashore and butcher it. Sleds and snowmobiles were piled with maktak (energy-laden slabs of whale blubber and skin) and fresh bloody meat.

Environmental enforcers get out while the getting’s good (and everything else is bad)

When John Suarez, the U.S. EPA’s top enforcement official, resigned on Monday to take a job at a Wal-Mart division, he assured his colleagues and President Bush that the EPA has “been able to provide more compliance assistance to industry than ever before.” The operative wording here, of course, is “assistance to industry,” seeing as […]

I’m on the Hunt, I’m After You

Bush Angers Hunters and Anglers by Promoting Resource Extraction The Bush administration is ticking off many traditionally Republican hunters and anglers with its plans to encourage logging and oil and gas drilling in natural areas throughout the Western U.S. Last week, 450 U.S. gun clubs sent a petition to the U.S. Forest Service objecting to […]