WEBVTT - Ep. 241: A Half Life of Never 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.599 bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.680 predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.479 most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.640 app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:38.239 you stand with on X everybody. I don't want to 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.720 discourage you from listening to this episode. It's about Pebble 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.040 Mind in Alaska, and everything you're gonna hear is pertinent 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:49.560 and relevant. But here's here's the weird thing. While we 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.520 were recording this episode with Tim Bristol about Pebble Mind 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:59.640 in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a big news story broke. In 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.320 this eisode you're gonna hear mention of a guy named 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:07.759 Tim Collier who works on behalf of Pebble Mind. While 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:10.920 we were recording the show, it came out that Tim Collier, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.760 who served as CEO role on the Pebble Mind project, 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:22.880 was secretly recorded saying some things that are speculated about 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.160 in this coming episode. This will make more sense after 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.280 you listen. For instance, he acknowledges to some people who 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.120 are posing as potential investors to the Mind we're going 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.119 to be discussing today. He acknowledges not that this would 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:39.880 be a twenty year project, but this that phase one 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:45.360 of this project would be a one year project. And 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:51.320 he discusses certain politicians by name who he says, sure 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.640 they'll pay lip service, two opponents of the mind, and 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.400 they'll act like they care about having this mind on right. 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.120 But at the end of the day, I'm friends with him, 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:06.440 I know him, and they'll just rubber stamp the thing. 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.400 That's an essence I'm I'm paraphrasing them, that's an essence 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.560 of what this guy says on these secretly recorded tapes. 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.440 And Tim Collier, who were going to discuss quite a 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:23.399 bit in this show, had to promptly resign. So understand 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:30.880 that this episode happened in the minutes before this major 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.679 twist in the story occurred. So dig in and you 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:42.520 will walk away borderline expert on pebble Mind, and hopefully, 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.160 like me, you'll come to the decision that this is 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.120 the wrong mind in the wrong place and we need 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:59.400 to fix this problem once and for all. All Right, 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.880 we're joined by uh super special guests out of Homer Laste, 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.840 Tim Bristol, how predictable? Is it that I bring up that? 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:10.000 You know? You know what I'm gonna bring up? Look 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:15.120 about your name? How that work out? Either chance or faith? 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.960 You know, take your pick. So what I'm getting at here? 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.280 His name is Tim Bristol. Yeah, you've dedicated how many 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:26.040 years to fighting pebble mine on Bristol Bay? Did you 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.160 change your name to Bristol? Did not know it's born 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:32.440 with that name? At what point where you like, wow, huh, 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:34.680 you know my name is the name of that place. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:37.480 I think the best thing about it was when I 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.680 started going out to these communities, these native villages. You 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.280 know a lot of us white people all the same, 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:44.960 you know, kind of got out there in baseball hats 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:46.840 and right and garret and you know I have some 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:52.160 kind of you know, scruffy scruffy beard, and they remembered 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.640 me because they're like Tim Bristol, we remember your last name. 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.280 It's so good. It's great. So I worked out, you know, 0:03:57.400 --> 0:03:59.800 it worked out really well. It was that vantageous. Yes, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:09.000 can you uh man like, explain to people as though 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:17.680 they're five years old, Yeah, as twenty years old. Explain 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:22.880 to people like they're twenty years old. What when someone 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:30.919 says pebble mind. Okay, what is pebble mind? Considering that 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.479 it's at this point it's nothing, But what are we 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.560 talking about when we talk about Pebble mine. Pebble Mine 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.480 is a proposal to build either the second largest or 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.159 the largest open pit golden copper mine in the world 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.240 at the headwaters of the most productive wild salmon fishery 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.600 left on the planet. And it's a choice for Alaska. 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:55.520 You know, we're we're at a crossroads. We got to 0:04:55.520 --> 0:05:00.240 decide whether we're going to allow everything everywhere where? Are 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.240 we just going to say some places are just too 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:07.880 important for renewable resources, for thousands of American jobs, for 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.479 America's you know, natural heritage, and we're not going to 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:16.839 allow this to go forward. The superlative largest or second largest. 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:21.400 What does that hinge on? Well, it's all about the 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.279 habitat when you're talking about Sakai salmon production, right, So 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:26.359 I'm talking about the mind size like it would be 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:30.560 the largest, Like I mean, there's there's varying proposals or 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:35.120 like it's unclear how to measure them. Well that there's 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.560 there's This is where it gets really confusing for the 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.560 public and incredibly irritating for us that are trying to 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:43.680 you know, punch through and tell the truth on this thing. 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:51.160 It is the largest known gold resource and the second 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.520 largest known copper resource in North America. And when the 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.240 head of the company Pebble Limited Partnership, this guy named 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.760 Ron Theson, goes and talks to investors at you know 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.120 World Gold Form and things like that, he talks in 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.279 those terms, those superlatives, that this is a you know, 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.599 world class resource that we may be able to mind 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:13.400 it for a hundred years or more. But then when 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.039 Pebble comes back to the public, when Pebble gives a 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.479 proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers, they say, oh, 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:19.840 we're gonna be there for twenty years and then we're 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.000 gonna go away. And you know, there's really no way 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.040 to sugarcoat it. It's a flat outline, and the government 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.960 right now is swallowing it, hook line and sinker. It 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.600 makes it incredibly frustrating because I just you know, if 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:35.960 you talk to people that don't have a that don't 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.240 have skin in the game, that are experts in the 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.200 mining world, they'll tell you that they're not going to 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:43.039 make any money in the first twenty years, and there's 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:44.960 no way they're going to stop after twenty years. The 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:47.920 shareholders wouldn't let them. Everybody was part of the company 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.040 would get sued, and they would just put a whole 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.680 new set of leadership in there and then apply for 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.479 a little additional permit and just keep going. Would it 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.880 somehow make it better if they did stop after twenty years? Yeah? 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.119 Would that? Would that ease your mind? Not really now? 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.000 And the other damage will be done as far as 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:10.400 like the all the infrastructure and the what it takes 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.400 to open the mind, right, Yeah, yeah, I I would. 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.280 I would point I would try to find you know 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:17.760 a place in the world where that's happened. Right, we 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:23.360 spend billions on infrastructure, roads, a port, uh, getting a 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.800 natural gas pipeline out there, and and then just quitting 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.080 after twenty years, right when you you may have not 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.680 turned to profit by that point, So I just you 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:34.840 know that's not going to happen. And then you have 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.280 a whole bunch of other mineral claims staked around the 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.240 Pebble Prospect. The thing that people don't realize is you're 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.080 looking at a thousand square miles and mining claims at 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.600 the headwaters of Bristol Bay, and that would make it 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.680 one of the largest mining districts, if not the largest 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.360 mining district in the world. And you start thinking about 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.800 the implications for wild salmon production, and you look at 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.320 wild salmon runs all the all throughout the Pacific rim 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.360 and you pretty much know all the story is gonna end. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.200 You know, have you ever heard this? That all of 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:11.760 the gold that's ever that's in existence above ground, So 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:13.880 all of the gold that's ever been hauled out of 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:18.120 the earth since the Egyptians, there's only enough to fill 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:27.160 three Olympic sized swimming pools all of that gold, Forbes estimate. 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.640 Forbes estimates that that it's would take that all the 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:35.160 gold since two thousand BC, including the Egyptians, that all 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.959 of that gold would fill three point to seven Olympic 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.880 swimming pools. That's what's ever been dragged out of the earth. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.040 Isn't that one die hard movie they had? Do you 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:51.800 think pools? Swimming pools? Note joke though either Yeah, it's 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:58.400 a lot of volume. The Okay, put your mining engineer 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:00.600 head on for a minute about have one of those. 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.600 But I'll try, Okay, I mean, shooting engineers are smart people. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:07.160 We should have brought one like explained because it's the process, right, 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:12.040 part of what pisses people off about Pebble minds Like 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.200 it's not like you're it's not like a bunch of 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.520 old dudes dressed up like hatch Jack out there with 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:25.240 gold pans pulland nuggets. Yeah, like explain leech you know, 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.640 cyanide leech mining. Yeah, so you know with Pebble, to 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.240 get back to the speaking to the twenty year old, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.280 it's size type location, right, it's the it's the size 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.079 of the mind. We we've already talked about that. It 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:39.080 would be one of the biggest excavations in the history 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:43.400 of mankind really when you include the pit and the infrastructure. 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.800 So Pebble Pebble, if if to go to full build out, 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:51.000 would use more energy on a daily basis in the 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:52.760 city of Anchorage. And you've been through there a bunch 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:54.760 of times. It's not a small town. It's two sixty 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.560 people that would suck up that amount of electricity, Yeah, 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.800 and use fuel and water, use more than twice as 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:02.520 much water that is used by a city a two 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:07.040 d sixty people on a daily basis. And you know, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.080 I don't know if you've ever flown over the mindset area. 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.280 There's nothing there. I mean, it's just it's just wilderness. Yeah, 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.679 it's it's an amazing spot. And it drains two ways 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.880 towards two river systems, up towards the New Segak Malchatna 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:22.599 and then down down towards Lake Ilyamna and the the 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.240 Quejack River. And those are the two major drivers of 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.720 the of the salmon fishery that I think we'll probably 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.720 talk about a little bit. But so from an engineering standpoint, 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.760 you're talking something, you know, the biggest development project in 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:36.959 Alaska since they discovered oil in the North Slope and 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.200 built the Trans Alaska pipeline, and you know dead Horse 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.640 and Prude Obey and all that kind of stuff. And 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.480 then uh so, yes, size, and then you have the 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.480 type of mind So there's a lot of gold and 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:51.280 copper in the ground, but it's not a very rich 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:55.000 or body. Um. It sits in a in a big 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:59.920 sulfide deposit. And you're basically so a friend, a friend 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:01.760 of virus who has worked for a long time with us, 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:03.800 who has some background in mining, and he used to 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:08.959 be the state Senate president. Guy named Rick Alford, lifelong Republican, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.000 UM Big Game Guide retired Big Game Guide. He uh, 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.640 he calls it a sulfur mine with a golden copper component. 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:19.680 You have to get through a whole bunch of waste 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:21.760 rock to get to the gold and the copper. And 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.320 then the big problem, the engineering problem, the one that's 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:28.880 chased away Anglo American and Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi and 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:31.240 Quantum Mineral, some of the heavy hitters has been what 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:32.800 the hell are they going to do with all that waste? 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:38.080 Because you have those are other mining companies, and those 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.800 are like the contractors. There's like the developer and then 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:47.040 the contractor. There's the analogy. Now there's a developer, the 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.400 sort of the hype machine, which is Pebble Limited Partnership, 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:55.079 the Snake Oil salesman, if I may, and then there's 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:59.839 the the majors who actually design and operate minds. And 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.640 we should get to the fact that that Pebble part 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:08.160 like the sort of brain, the sort of brains behind this. 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:10.600 I'd like to get to this because I don't understand 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.280 as well. They're having a hard time sort of finding 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:16.640 the contractor right like they're like, Hey, here's this crazy 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:19.240 house we're gonna build, and contractors keep coming in and 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.880 being like, yeah, that's not for us. So I like 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.520 that analogy. Yeah, so you get Anglo American, Rio, Tinto, Mitsubishi, 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.400 Quantum all walked away, Anglo walked away from a five 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:34.240 seventy million dollar investment. And I think it's you know, 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:36.000 it really comes down to and what we've heard through 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.920 the grapevine and lots of experts that have just kind 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:40.920 of been around the proposal throughout the years and said, 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:42.760 we just don't know how you're going to manage that 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.959 kind of waste over time. It would be like like 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.000 a Berkeley pit, beyond comprehension. I think that's another piece 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.360 from the twenty year old standpoint that needs to explained. 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.360 When you're talking about that waste, about that sulfur, what 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.920 what are we talking about specifically in terms of contained 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.679 and the potential for if it gets out? Are we 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:09.040 being condescending to two year olds? But I mean actually 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.280 actually we are because my coworkers she's twenty two, and 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:16.320 she's way smarter than me, so way smarter as though 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.679 talking to a forty six year old. Um, yeah, I 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.360 want to get it, Like why okay, let me just 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:26.960 show us out real quick. We have the thing nearby 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.040 to where we're sitting right now. I don't have to 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.160 drive from here called Berkeley Pit, And at a time 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.600 was the like golden copper mine. It's in Butte, Montana. 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:38.600 You always I don't know what this means. You always 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.880 here thrown out that like once upon time Beau had 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:45.240 per capita more millionaires than anywhere in the country. But 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:46.959 I was thinking too, if you had a community of 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:50.080 a hundred people and there happened to be a millionaire there, 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.240 you would have more millionaires per capita. So I don't 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:56.800 really that people like to throw that out there. Um, 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.160 there's a great history of Butte in the Berkeley Pit. 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.199 It's just an article. There's all these books, but there's 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:04.480 an article called Pennies from Hell, and it gets into 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.120 like what exactly happened there, and they tunnel mind it right, 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.320 just like pulling out chunks. But over time technology is improved, 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.280 the quality of the ore decrease in different areas, and 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:16.000 they eventually got to this thing where they pull the 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.800 ship out of the ground and the ore contains what 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:24.560 you're after, copper and gold, silver, and you leach it 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:30.080 out by you pour acid on it, cyanide, you pull 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.120 it up, crush it up, dump a bunch of cyanide 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.080 on it, and then it it dissolves, correct, and there's 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.240 some way that you then harvest it, but then you 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.760 wind up with all of this contaminated liquid that then 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.800 has the gold live in a lake. And Berkeley Pit 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.080 is a problem that will never go away. It's an 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.560 enorm Once a hundred snow geese once landed there and 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.640 died on the water in that pit, and it'll be 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.440 a problem into you know, I don't want to over 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.320 conflate work pit with this, but I do want to 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.720 talk like, like what what they mean when they say 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:05.400 because I think people think of mining and think you're 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.160 gonna dig a hole and also all these goals starts 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.120 flying out of the hole and then you load it 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.520 on airplanes and fly it somewhere. Yeah, they're talking ten 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:15.520 billion tons of waste associated with full build out of 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:20.720 pebble um. A percentage of that would be highly reactive 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:26.600 sulfide bearing rock. And when that sulfide bearing rock is 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.920 exposed to air and water, it creates the loot sulfuric acid, 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.000 which has a half life of never. It just has 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.880 to sit and a pit and be treated in perpetuity. 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.320 That's the part I didn't get. So that so it's 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.200 like it's something that when you pull it up and 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.080 allow it to oxidize or expose the water, then it 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:45.760 creates the problem. And you put that ship into a 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:47.800 lake that's right, and build a damn to keep it 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.000 from going anywhere on Earth and dam in an area 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.640 that's one of the more seismically active places in the world. 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.800 You know, it's on the Pacific rim of Fire. They 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.640 had an earthquake out there last year that really shook 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:03.720 our house. Um, it was high sevens. So you know 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:05.960 when they talk about, oh we got damns designing, nothing 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:07.680 can ever go wrong. But you're seeing more and more 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.800 of that of these these modern minds. You know that 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:13.720 they have such huge amounts of waste that they have 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:19.000 to contain that it becomes a real problem. And Pebble makes, 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.600 you know, Berkeley Pitt look like you know, just a 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.360 just a dot. It's way bigger. You know, you just 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:32.680 mentioned a seven uh earthquake in the sevens. I was 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:34.760 just reading this book about the what year did the 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.880 big earthquake hit the Anchorage? I read a book about 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.640 the John Muellen who's been on the show, just wrote 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.280 a book called This is Chance and it's about the 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:48.840 sixty four earthquake and Anchorage. And Richter at the time 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:53.520 was just developing his scale, and it's an exponential scale, 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.080 so a seven is ten times worse than the six. 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:03.960 He he was a nudist. Richter, he was down in California, 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.560 um listening to any he'd built the rick, he'd built 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:10.719 the seismic graph that he installed in his living room 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.280 and drove his wife crazy, this giant seismograph. And he 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:15.639 was working on his scale, and he was sitting in 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.600 his living room listening to a concert with his wife. 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.520 Won the sixty four earthquake hit in Alaska, and he 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.840 looked over at his seismograph and said that was a 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:31.639 big one and low and behole, the biggest earthquake to 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:38.720 ever strike the continent. Yeah, it could happen again. You 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.280 know that's not that long ago. No, no, no, A 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:47.000 lot of these people are still around swallowed streets, right, 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:52.240 sixty ft tsunami hit Kodiak. Yeah. Yeah. When people point 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.720 out the seismic part of the area, I think people 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:56.280 are like, oh, you're just being alarms. But I mean 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:01.440 it's like it's an actual thing, man, Right, I think 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.239 you know, we have a tough time grasping these time frames, right. 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.680 I mean, the the asset mind waste doesn't go away, 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:12.640 someone's gonna have to store it, and you know, companies 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:15.920 rise and fall, and someone's gonna have to pay for 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:17.920 all that monitoring. If you were to, you know, take 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.320 all these steps and actually build the thing and over time, 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.120 you never know who's going to get stuck with the bill, 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.200 Probably the people of Alaska, the people of the United States. 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:30.359 Explain a little bit about what's to be what's to 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:34.159 be lost, Like besides this the actual destruction or you 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:40.399 can take it both ways, the actual destruction of the footprint, okay, 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.720 which is not insignificant, but I think that that is 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:50.639 something that people probably would become comfortable with maybe Like Okay, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:52.800 there's this there's this like part of the earth that 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:56.200 will cease to function as it now. It will like 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.840 not be wild byfe habitat anymore, it'll be the opposite. 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:01.760 But then there's this sort of like ticking time bomb element, 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:07.680 right that all this ship would just downstream, Like what's 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.200 that look like? Like, like what is the resource that 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:15.800 would be the resource resources that could be compromised if 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.840 the worst in the worst case scenario, and when I 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:21.240 want to know too, if in the best case scenario, 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:26.600 are there still compromises to the wildlife habitat. Yes. So 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.280 the third part size, type and then location. So the 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.480 Pebble prospect sits in the saddle between the two largest 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:37.479 salmon producing watersheds in Bristol Bay, which makes them two 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.800 of the biggest salmon producing watersheds in the world. Because 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:44.560 the Bristol Bay being the biggest salmon run, it's it's 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.560 the biggest SOCCI salmon run in the world. It's probably 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.760 gonna be closest in the world's global SOCCAI salmon supply 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.560 this year because you shippn't me really. Yeah, So the 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.600 total run this year was fifty seven million fish and 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.399 the commercial fleet harvested about forty million ski go on 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:03.920 hit me with that again. Fifty seven million was a 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:08.600 total run and the harvest was forty million, And you 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:13.240 know that's amazing that you can harvest that level and 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:15.600 still get the return. Salmon are incredible if you take 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.800 care of habitat and you're really on it management wise, 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:21.159 you know, fishing game can turn the run on and 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:23.080 off like a like a faucet. You know, they can 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:29.000 they can take you know, hardcore gill netters and say 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.919 you're done for the day and they all stop. Can 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:33.680 imagine you did that kind of trim off on a 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:39.000 deer population, Dude, did you take decades to recover? Yeah? 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:42.840 They're incredible. Um. So it's that location sitting in the 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:47.080 saddle between the two rivers and you know up to 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:50.960 the that's them coming in. Yeah, that's the fish coming in. Yeah, 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:55.640 that's the return and that's seventeen million then cranks out 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:58.720 enough returners to pull another forty million fish out in 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:03.400 the future for human consumption. Yeah, we're probably at peak 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.080 abundance right now. Bristol Bay probably has more salmon coming 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.200 back now than it ever has because they can go 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.600 down in the bottom of these lakes and do these samples, 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:16.480 you know, these of just where the layers of decayed 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.320 matter have settled in the bottom of the settim of 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.040 these lakes over time and kind of reconstruct runs from 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.920 a hundred two hundred years ago, and they think, I 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.840 think the researchers think that we're probably having productivity that 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:35.320 is as strong or exceeds what you had before. Four 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:40.040 white people showed up so successful just because the habitats 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:46.080 in great shape. It's the theory overwhelmingly about super high 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.440 quality habitat that hasn't been disturbed. And then you know, 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:54.960 pretty pretty solid management by Alaska fishing game. So so yeah, 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:58.880 so that's that's so even if even if the mind 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:03.159 never had something go wrong, Um, you're still gonna have 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.280 a destruction of wetlands. You're gonna have the elimination of 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.359 you know, several dozen miles of salmon stream. And then 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:12.360 Pebble will point out, well, that's the only like one 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:18.800 small percentage of the overall you know, the area of 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:22.040 productive salmon habitat in the region. What's the problem. Then 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.120 you have to start looking at what happens if something 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:26.440 does go wrong, if there's a catastrophic tailing dam failure. 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:29.120 Let's visit that. Let's visit Yah's question for a minute. 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:34.320 So best case scenario, as you lose several dozen miles 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:40.080 of salmon stream. Yeah, it's it's more than that. That 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.680 gets into weather. They're gonna operate for twenty years, they're 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:45.040 gonna operate for a hundred. Right. That gets back to 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:46.960 the thing that drives us crazy. Where it's there's a 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:48.919 bait and switch going on right now. That's all there 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:51.320 is to it. So if you read full build out, 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:53.760 you you destroy hundreds of miles of salmon stream and 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:55.600 you'd have this huge excavation. And then you got to 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:59.280 remember the pit serves as a sump, so all the 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:02.520 water in around there that's charging all these these systems 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:06.600 that have these very complex um interchanges of surface and 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.200 subsurface water, it all just sucks towards the pit that 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:13.720 will be holding the the tailings. So how big is 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:17.000 the pit we don't know as of yet because we 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:19.720 don't know what the you know, the proposal that's going 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.440 to possibly get approved by them federal government is. But 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:32.560 it would be one thousand seventy ft deep and one 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:36.920 thousand seventy ft deep, and it's gonna be a good 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:38.920 episode of Deep Drop Boys. And then i'd have to 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:42.840 you know, I can't remember exactly how many miles by 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:48.359 how many miles, but we're talking miles. I've kind of 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:52.200 lost some of this stuff. You couldn't drink no no 0:23:53.480 --> 0:24:00.760 like no amount a like stry pen. No huh, let's 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:05.879 let's let's cover off our worst case. Yeah, So we 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:08.919 hired an expert to look at what would happen if 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:12.280 you had a tailing stam failure, because the Army Corps 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:14.720