There are too many issues with Pebble to address them all quickly and easily, but it is the wrong mine at the wrong time in the wrong place. There is a reason EVERY reasonable company that has signed on has left.
They want to dewater a major piece of the Iliamna watershed to 2,500' and build the largest dam in the world on the dewatered peat sponge. And that lake is going to hold back a pile of heavy metals which have been safely secured in the ground for millennia. Having disturbed by the mining means it will have to sit for decades until it is capped by silt. When the dam washes out because no dam that size has ever been built and virtually all bigger ones DO wash out it will cause tremendous damage and likely kill quite a few people.
There will be no jobs for Alaskans aside from a very few locals. The skill set required to run the huge machines is rare and will be imported from other projects. The money will be funneled out of AK to Canada mostly. There is a back-door plan in place to allow a Native Corp to run the operation which would eliminate the need for ANY bonding. But the people they kill will not the money anyway.
Oh, and the heap leach gold extraction they claimed would not be done is already on the planning table.
That said I am strongly pro-resource extraction but this is a horrible plan.
