Submitted by paula_dobbyn on Mon, 2014-10-06 14:51 Conservation Alaska-At-Large - 778 Alaska - 9AK Trout Magazine Southeast Alaska Southcentral Alaska - 211 Vote Up Down +5 + PhotobyChrisMiller.png (Photo by Chris Miller) by Ted Williams Fly, Rod & Reel, Autumn 2014 If you thought the proposed Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay area was the most rash and reckless development scheme ever to threaten Alaska’s fish and wildlife, you’d have been wrong. Five enormous hard-rock mines are proposed for the Stikine, Taku and Unuk river systems, southeast Alaska’s main producers of Pacific salmon (all species) and trout (resident and sea-run rainbows, coastal cutthroats, dollies and bulls). Gold, silver, copper and molybdenum would be extracted by acid- and heavy-metal-generating mining. Most of these mines would need monitoring and water treatment basically forever. There’s the Galore Creek, Red Chris and Schaft Creek open-pit mines, planned for tributaries of the Stikine River; the Tulsequah Chief underground mine, on a tributary of the Taku River (in most years southeast Alaska’s biggest salmon producer); and the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) combined open-pit and underground mine, on the headwaters of the Unuk River. This last one would be roughly the size of Pebble. It would leach out gold with cyanide, destroy three mountains, fill a valley with 1.62 billion tons of toxic tailings held between two Hoover-size dams and generate 118,000 gallons of wastewater a minute. The mine site and the tailings area would be connected by twin 14-mile tunnels, with at least six of the miles beneath glaciers. Read the full article. Learn more about TU's work to protect the Alaska/B.C. transboundary region.