Pebble Mine opponent Lindsey Bloom thought she had the goods.
When she saw this video showing an executive from Pebble’s parent company make a pitch to potential investors, she considered it proof of what fishermen and environmental groups have been warning – that Pebble is minimizing the scope of the project, but that ultimately it expects to build a more damaging operation.
“One of the ways you ensure you can get a permit is you de-risk it by taking something modest and conservative into the permitting process in the first place. And we did that,” Northern Dynasty Vice President Doug Allen says on the video, filmed at a conference in Toronto in late February.
“Because for whatever reason, cyanide has a bad reputation in the environmental community. And so we have forgone about 12% of our gold recovery, because we don’t have a secondary gold-recovery circuit,” he said. “That’s not necessarily gold lost. We hope it’s gold deferred, because we at a subsequent date will get a permit to add a secondary gold-recovery circuit.”
Bloom, who works for Commercial Fisherman for Bristol Bay, believes that to be evidence of Pebble’s duplicity.
Bloom thought the video would make headlines. She sent a transcript to multiple new outlets more than a week ago. And then … crickets.
LINK (via: Alaska Public Media)
