Foreign mining companies including two of the world’s most powerful, Britain’s Anglo American and Rio Tinto, are planning to dig Peggy Mine, one of the largest open-pit mines at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Colossal earthen dams up to 50 stories high built in a known earthquake zone are supposed to hold back some ten billion tons of mining waste mixed with cyanide, sulfuric acid, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. Anglo American’s history is littered with one toxic disaster after another and Rio Tinto has left a trail of pollution and destruction that spans the globe.
The world’s largest salmon streams run through this paradise, with tens of millions of salmon supporting not just an abundance of bears, whales, seals and eagles. Bristol Bay is home to orcas, the last 280 beluga whales that cling to life there, wild moose and caribou, one of only two populations of freshwater harbor seals in the world, and river otters, wolverines, porcupines, red fox and mink.
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