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| Chikuminak Lake, a photo by Michael Melford in the book Hidden Alaska |
Let me tell you that you can not begin to imagine how spectacular the Wood-Tikchik Lake Park in SW Alaska happens to be. Words cannot begin to describe my feelings about this place. I grew up hunting and fishing here, fell in love here, and nearly lost my life in a storm here.
Now this spectacular and unspoiled landscape is threatened by, of all things, a dam. Now as someone who recycles, drives a hybrid, and encourages my students to save the world, I am a proponent of renewable sources of energy; however, I can not support our governor's recent approval of $17.6 million to start work to dam the beautiful lake you see in the photo above. Perhaps if the energy was really meant to support the impoverished villages of the YK Delta, I would try to listen to arguments about why we should build something so ridiculous on such a pristine lake in an area with no roads and no infrastructure in place to support such a dam, but lets face it, this dam isn't about helping the people of southwestern Alaska, this dam is about supplying the Donlin Creek Mine with cheap electricity on the government's dime. This dam is about one thing and one thing only: GOLD.
NOVAGOLD, one of the Canadian companies operating Donlin Creek LLC (that's Limited Liability Corporation on a water system with a culture completely dependent upon safe fish habitat for its very survival) says on their website:
Donlin Creek is one of the largest known undeveloped gold deposits in the world, with proven and probable reserves estimated at 33.6 million ounces of contained gold with additional measured and indicated resources of 4.3 million ounces of gold and inferred resources of 4.4 million ounces of gold.
You can do the math. At $1800 an ounce, the Donlin Mine is worth plenty of loot for out of state and out of country companies. They say themselves the mine has a life of twenty-five years. Are a handful of local jobs for twenty-five years and destroying the habitat surrounding one of Alaska's last great pristine lakes worth it? Is risking a culture, dependent on the salmon that run in the Kuskokwim River, the very river Donlin Creek drains into, worth the risk this mine poses?
Finally. Who actually supports damming Chikuminak Lake in the first place? When did Alaskans say they wanted $17.63 million dollars spent to begin work on a dam for Donlin Creek Mine? I know I don't.
The real gold is this lake as you can tell from Michael Melford's stunning photo above. We can't allow this lake to be dammed for a gold mine. We just can't.
[Special thanks to Michael Melford for permission to share the photo of the lake that we can't allow to be dammed!]
