Bristol Bay’s Wild Salmon Ecosystems and the Pebble Mine

• Based on preliminary plans, the proposed Pebble Mine project would beone of the largest mines in the world with a footprint that would cover 28 square miles of land.
• The mine would produce up to 10.8 billion tons of waste rock. To put this number into perspective, if Pebble Limited Partnership used rail cars capable of carrying 100 tons each to transport the 10.8 billion tons of ore, the effort would require 108 million rail cars. Using standard 65-foot-long rail cars, the train would measure 1.33 million miles, long enough to  circle the Earth at its equator over 50 times.
• Extraction of the ore could create an open pit up to 4,000 feet deep and 3.2 miles wide. Underground mining may limit the pit to about half this size but could reach a depth of 5,000 feet.
• Up to nine miles of dams reaching up to 740 feet high would be required to impound just 2.5 billion tons of the toxic waste produced (called tailings). These impoundments, known as tailings storage facilities, would be some of the largest in the world and must impound the tailingsforever to protect the highly productive Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers.
• The type of ore at Pebble is likely to produce acid mine drainage,which may lead to chronic contamination of surface and ground waters, having a severe detrimental impact on aquatic life.
• The region's seismic activity and extreme weather conditions could trigger dam failures, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to the Bristol Bay fishery.
• The Pebble Mine's infrastructure would include a network of roads, pipelines, a port, and an energy-generating station, which would pave the way for additional mining proposals in Bristol Bay.
• http://www.wildsalmoncenter.org/programs/north_america/pebblemine.php