Congresswoman Mary Peltola has joined Alaska’s U.S senators on a legal brief in support of the proposed Donlin Creek Mine in Peltola’s home region of the Kuskokwim Delta.
Tribal and subsistence advocates in the region are shocked that Peltola, whose campaign slogan was “Fish, Family and Freedom,” would take this position. Sophie Swope, executive director of a Bethel-based tribal coalition called Mother Kuskokwim, described herself as heartbroken.
“I do feel slightly betrayed right now,” she said. “My heart — it’s like, I don’t think I’ve felt this heavy in a little while,” Swope said.
Peltola was against the mine when she ran for Congress in 2022.
She’d been a community manager for Donlin Gold for six years. But in 2014, after a dam at the Mt. Polley mine in British Columbia burst and sent millions of gallons of contaminated material into lakes and rivers, Peltola quit Donlin Gold and became a fish advocate. She was executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission until just before she ran for Congress. Her campaign staff told reporters in 2022 that the Mt. Polley disaster was her turning point.
In the amicus —or “friend of the court” — brief filed late Tuesday, Peltola and the U.S. senators said the mine “will be an economic engine for the region and provide significant employment opportunities in one of the most impoverished regions of Alaska.”
Peltola’s office hasn’t released a statement yet to explain her change of position and her staffers were not available for an interview.
Donlin would be an open-pit gold mine 10 miles north of Crooked Creek, on lands owned by Alaska Native Corporations. Calista, the regional corporation for the delta, owns the subsurface rights. The mine is projected to produce a million ounces of gold a year and be productive for 27 years. Among its components is a 470-foot high dam to hold back tailings, chemical-laced mining byproducts that would look like silt or wet clay.
Six tribes in the region filed a lawsuit last year against federal agencies, claiming the environmental studies underpinning permission for the mine were inadequate. Among other things, they claim that the agencies only considered the impact of a small leak of contaminated materials from the dam. The tribes say a mining disaster like the Mt. Polley dam breach would contaminate the Kuskokwim, where salmon runs are already diminished.
The congressional delegation’s brief says the tribes are trying to stop development on land Congress intended to be developed for the economic wellbeing of people in the region. Congress, they said, set other lands aside for conservation.
“Respect for this balance is necessary for Alaska to exist,” the brief says, “and to allow the Alaska Natives living in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region to continue their traditional way of life and pursue both beneficial development and self-determination, as promised to them” in the 1971 Native land claims settlement law.
Donlin maintains that its dam would be safe and withstand all environmental conditions of the area. When the mining is done, the company also says it would cover the tailings with soil and vegetation to blend in with the surrounding terrain.
Alaska’s Republican U.S. senators often weigh in with amicus briefs, to support Alaska’s resource development projects in environmental lawsuits. But word that Peltola was considering adding her name to the brief has alarmed mine opponents in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta for days.
Swope and a contingent from Mother Kuskokwim flew to Washington, D.C. last week to try to persuade Peltola not to side with the mine.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
