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5 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

-- Region 10

6 Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment

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8 Public Hearing

June 5, 2012

9 11:30 a.m.

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11 Held at:

Middle School Gym

12 Dillingham, Alaska

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1 MR. TILDON: For the record, my name is Thomas

2 Tildon; I'm the Tribal Chief for the Curyung Tribe, and I

3 want to thank you for taking the

-- doing this assessment,

4 first of all. I think that the assessment is very good.

5 And is on target, it's timely, and it's

-- and I'm glad

6 that you're out here to listen to the folks and our

7 comments. I think that it's weak in some a reas, and I'd

8 like to discuss some of the weak points of the assessment.

9 I believe that it's weak in regards to when

10 discusses the seismic activity in that particular area. I

11 hope that you and

-- and the scientific review panel are

12 able to go back and take a look at strength a lot more. I

13 think it's also weak in regards to the Native people that

14 leave in the region that de pend on fishery. I cannot say

15 that our society is not like any other society, that we've

16 lived here for anywhere from fifteen to 150 generations,

17 depending on what anthropologist you talk to. And I

18 believe that we're going to live here continued for a lot

19 longer.

20 And I hope that you put a lot of emphasis on our

21 independence of salmon. And not only to our economy but

22 to our culture. I'd also like to talk about another issue

23 that I believe that we need to put a little more emphasis

24 on, and that is climate change. Climate change is

25 happening; we that li ve here in Bristol Bay see it

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1 happening. We see the weather change and we hope that you

2 would take a little more look at that. And we hope that

3 you invoke 404(c) after all of this assessment and peer

4 review is done. And we firm ly believe that President

5 Obama was right when he said that "Bristol Bay is a

6 natural treasure," and we want to keep it that way. Thank

7 you.

8 MR. HEYANO: Thank you. My name is Robert

9 Heyano, and as their president I'm representing Native

10 Tribe of Yukon. We want to first thank you for taking on

11 the task of Briston Bay Watershed Assessment. Our members

12 of fishing and salmon resources in the waters, assists

13 food as our wildlife resources present the watershed. Our

14 members are also very dependant on commercial salmon

15 fishery. For many of our members, it is the soul source

16 of cash income for any given year. We find the draft

17 assessment to be an acceptable document, therefore have no

18 recommended changes at this time.

19 We appre ciate you taking into consideration our

20 comments on those establishing the existing time line and

21 you maintain them. We want to convey to you that it is

22 our belief that you people and your agency are t he only

23 agency that say large scale mining, such as Pebble, from

24 happening within the region. We want to thank you for

25 your time and opportunity for allowing us to provide

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1 comments to the draft assessment. Thank you.

2 MR. MAINES: Good morning. Hello, welcome to

3 Dillingham. My name is Billy Maines, M

- a

- i

- n

- e

- s for the

4 record. I am a council chief for Curyng Tribal Council.

5 First of all, thank you f or coming. Thank you for being

6 here to hear my comments. Thank you for hearing my cry

7 for help, my plea for help. And thank you for taking the

8 initial steps to understand my life, my home. Most

9 importantly, thank you for Briston Bay Watershed

10 Assessment.

11 Your assessment, along with the Pebble

12 Partnership baseline data puts into writing what I've been

13 to ld and what I pass on. But the Bristol Bay watershed is

14 alive, vibrant, sensitive, clean pristine ecosystem. It's

15 water rich. It provides for everything on everyone who

16 depends on that system. It's a gift from God, it's Mother

17 Nature's presence. It's father times endowment to people

18 of Bristol Bay. It always has been, always will be; if

19 left alone.

20 The true definition of the people who live here

21 and who come to visit here lives within the Bristol Bay

22 watershed. As fas as the assessment goes, it is kind of

23 weak as far as what the eco

- system really is involved

24 with. It's not only the head waters from the

-- and swan

25 and rear, but it's also at the estuary of Bristol Bay into

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1 the Bering Sea. It's all the nutrients that come from our

2 watershed that feed and breath the crap.

3 MR. STEVENS: Thank you. First, I should say I'm

4 not here representing either the Senate or my district,

5 actually just to speak for myself. I know there's people

6 in the Senate and my district t hat disagree with me. This

7 is such an enormously important issue. I don't have the

8 answers; I'm here to listen and to learn from you, but I'm

9 concerned about the opposing issues here.

10 First, as a state, we have a responsibility to

11 all of our natural resources, to all of the people. Our

12 Constitution says we will use our natural resources for a

13 maximum benefit of all of the people of Alaska. Mining

14 has a long history, certainly a lot of jobs and a lot of

15 money. But my concern, frankly, is commercial fisheries,

16 sports fisheries, and it's sufficient lifestyle.

17 Concerned that any mining in Bristol Bay has to be very,

18 very carefully securitized, we have to have high

19 environmental standards, we have to protect the water

20 quality and the fish. These are su ch big issues.

21 This is a big mine, this is bigger than anything

22 we've seen in Alaska. There maybe a risk; there maybe a

23 risk to water, to fish. My concern is the dam; the

24 ea rthquakes; the possibility of the waste rocks; the fact

25 that we contain this material forever, that's a long, long

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1 time. I appreciate EPA's concern and work. I appreciate

2 your meeting here in Bristol Bay, appearing for the folks

3 who are most concerned. We need science and we need

4 science based information, how best to protect our

5 watershed, how best to protect this world class fishery.

6 So here we are in one of the mo st exciting times

7 of the year with fishing season starting, with thousands

8 and thousands of fishing jobs on the line with hundreds of

9 millions of dollars on the line. I don't know the answer,

10 but it was the right thing to do for EPA to do this

11 independent assessment. I'd like to see the

-- I should

12

-- a similar assessment. The more science that we have,

13 the better this is, the rig ht thing to do at the right

14 time and the right place. Thank you.

15 MR. EDGMON: Thank you very much. My name is

16 Byrce Edgmon. I represent the greater part of Bristol Bay

17 wate rshed Alaska legislator. I want to come before you

18 today to make a couple general statements of the strong

19 support of the draft assessment. First, I'd like to

20 comment to how the report looks at the wa tershed, at least

21 the larger part of the watershed. As a holistic matter it

22 looks at its entirely sort of a manner that takes in both

23 the risks as well as the values of the fisheries, and it

24 does so from the

-- a distance in a way that a very frank

25 permitting process couldn't under take.

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1 A couple years ago we tried in the Alaska

2 Legislator to fund such a study of the natural academy of

3 sciences, unfor tunately we came up short in getting the

4 funding; we came up short in getting political support to

5 do something like that. So I strongly support the study.

6 And I think it sets out, again, in a macro

-- a micro

7 matter. When looking at the fishery I

-- I would also say

8 that in response to the comments that

-- that talked

--

9 that you've heard about this rushed, this is a preemptive

10 st rike against the development of Alaska. But this study

11 processes the Stat's right issue.

12 I just strongly

-- I think whenever there's a

13 resource development project that needed this kind of

14 extra scrutiny, that needed this to

-- again, a broader

15 look at all the resources and all the significant

16 interests, that it could be out there with large scale

17 development. We are not j ust talking one project, we're

18 talking potentially many projects. I would say that this

19 is the project that would offset.

20 Lastly, in terms of any shortcomings for the

21 study, and I know it's outside the scope of the agency,

22 but study legislature we were also going to look at the

23 social economic aspects of bringing in several hundred, if

24 not thousands, of large work force int o the region, what

25 those affects could be. So I'll close by saying, I thank

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1 you for all the work you're doing; and I strongly support

2 your project.

3 MS. FERGUSON: Thank you. I'm a direct

4 descendant of the fish people, the salmon people in the

5 Bristol Bay area. And my name is Anna May Ferguson. My

6 parents are late David Gesup, and mom is Sue Gesup. I was

7 born and raised at Togiak. When I think of time in the

--

8 I think of Alaska people that lived for every season. My

9 people do know how to live all the land and passed it down

10 through generations.

11 When I'm here people

- - and people are down from

12 the Bristol Bay Region are here, they are for or against.

13 For me, I am against Pebble Mine. I cannot fathom

14 thinking about open pit mine. Money is good for jobs, but

15 the livelihood of your commercial fishermen is in

16 jeopardy. Our food are in jeopardy, our future is in

17 jeopardy. What my mind and heart can fathom is the of

18 future my people.

1 9 And the way I introduce myself, I learned that

20 being a direct descendant of Bristol Bay Region. We are

21 of the fish people. We are the salmon people. We go to

22 other places and people intr oduce themselves as they are

23 from here

-- in clan is their descendants of this and we

24 have in the Bristol Bay Region, lived

-- there are

25 thousands of years. And when I say jobs are good, jobs

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1 are good, yes; but we have lived in t his land either you

2 know from my ancestors without jobs and the main job that

3 we have existence. Thank you.

4 MR. KRITZ: Thank you for the opportunity to

5 listen to us. Since it's very important my

-- my first

6 thought was talking about the water assessment is that our

7

-- our people, our grandparents have told us how important

8 water has always been for us. And then western c ulture

9 came around and the doctor started telling us how

10 important water is to our lives. And I would like to

--

11 my name is Moses Kritz, and thank you for being here.

12 I was b orn and raised in Togiak, and I'm 62 years

13 old. I wish I could express myself enough to convince you

14 of the lifestyle we have had since I can remember. When I

15 came to

-- I remember and thought we were the only people

16 on the planet and know that we were not isolated and

17 didn't know that we were poor because we had all the

18 resources that we had

-- had from the land, the sea, and

19 the waters around us that we need to sustain our way of

20 life.

21 And with our culture we did not know that we were

22 heathens, because we have always been. We are still who

23 we are and will be

-- and will be who we are for centuries

24 to come, because our children and grandchildren are still

25 carrying on what we eat, how we hunt, gather, all the

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1 resources that are there that will sustain us for more

2 centuries to c ome.

3 MR. NELSON: Thank you. Thank you Rick, and

4 thank you for bringing EPA to Bristol Bay. My name is

5 Russell Nelson, and I'm the director Bristol Bay Native

6 Corporation. I have six years on the Alaska State Board.

7 I come from a very large family that really depends on

8 fishing here in Bristol Bay. We put up a lot of king

9 salmon that we use, it's our that

-- we make salm on strips

10 out of and Toctuee [phonetic] is one of the rivers that is

11 a major spawner of the king salmon, and people wait for

12 the kings and get them as they come in; and sometimes we

13 mi ss them, sometimes we don't fill our smokehouse as well

14 as we

-- for the winter because of lack of king salmon at

15 certain times. So if any

-- that stock of king salmon is

16 to us.

17 The time line that you have comments is

18 absolutely sufficient. People out to just

-- want to

19 comments now shouldn't be waiting, delaying the project.

20 The people that I see are asking you to delay t hat are

21 people that are paid hands to try to derail the whole

22 process to begin with. So please, your assessment

-- your

23 comment period is absolutely sufficient. Let's continue

24 down t his road. We need to get this assessment completed

25 and then we need to go on to make sure that the 404(c) can

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1 be taken as the next step to take a look at really

2 important things that have to happen with this

-- to

3 protect

-- firs t you can't fill up tailings if fill

4 tailings the fish won't be there.

5 Second, you can't have the fixing zones like the

6 State of Alaska has been allowing. And, you know, Rick

7 came he said it's okay to have mixing. We don't need

8 mixing zones. And the final thing is, we can't take care

9 of this stuff. The mining companies will be gone, and we

10 need to make that the toxics ne ver come down these rivers.

11 Thank you.

12 MR. WASSILY, SR.: (Undiscernible speaker.)

13 MR. NICHOLAI: (Speaking Native tongue.) I want

14 to try to summarize that very quic kly. Robert Nicholai,

15 Togiak. And his opening comments was that

-- that's what

16 his elders and those who lived before him has always

17 mentioned that

-- that food

-- that the food comes from

18 the land and sea. And he compares to a food stamp

19 program. And that he's been hearing about the Pebble and

20 the adverse impact may have on the fish and game in the

21 region if that is

-- if that is allowed to many people

22 within his village said that they would not have what

23 they've had in the past from the land and sea.

24 And he urges that we need to protect what we have

25 lived on. Many of them don't have any jobs; but hunting

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1 and fishing is

-- is just like a job to many folks who

2 live in the village because from continued doing that with

3 the salmon, they can be assured that they will have

4 somethi ng to eat. Thank you.

5 MR. NUNALOOK, SR.: (Speaking Native Tongue.)

6 That was Dan Nunalook Sr., an elder in Togiak, Alaska.

7 And what he knows many people may not know is, he's an

8 elder. He realized there's been many problems our people

9 have faced through the years, and he started realizing

10 what was happening from 1930 on. There was not a fish

11 back then. And he started com mercial fishing in 1936; he

12 fished until 2008.

13 The concern that he's concern has been fish in

14 Bristol Bay and then the major area that he is concerned

15 about is the habitant an d the very gone

-- for the smote

16 and fish that have already. He says that

-- that that has

17 been

-- already been affected. And I guess he

-- his

18 concern is that with not

-- they'll been more effect on

19 the habitant; and he said he had much more to say, he

20 realizes that time is short. And if given time sometime,

21 he has lots of stories to tell you. He has a notebook; he

22 writes some i n English and some in Native. So if you need

23 some reference you can go see him and he'll show his

24 notes. Thank you.

25 MR. FORSLING: Good afternoon, my name is

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1 Johnthan Forsling. I'm the chairman for the Council of

2 Togiak and Sudan, as well as the chair committee on Fish &

3 Game advisor committee. In the six years that I've lived

4 in

-- the past six

- years that I lived in Togiak, I've

5 taken part in a lo t of

-- a lot of Fish & Game

-- I've

6 seen the impacts of the current tributaries when it's

7 managed. And tradition started four years ago. It's

8 partnership between tribe and up the river seafood for

9 corporation.

10 Feature of this bay depends on local ownership.

11 The processing of salmon, and it doesn't

-- the if our

12 mine was to go through, it will decimate our culture and

13 decimate our people. There's 229

-- there's 23 Bristol

14 Bay, and if a mine was to go through, it will effect

--

15 decimate our culture and our peeps. And the future

-- the

16 future for Bristo l Bay is dependant on our salmon and our

17 local ownership in the processing. And I'd like to thank

18 you guys acting here, listen to what we have to say, and

19 taking the time to look at this project.

20 MR. BROWN: Thank you for the opportunity. I'm

21 Mel Brown. I represent Bristol Bay Native Corporation as

22 a director. Been a commercial fishermen for the last

23 50 years, and I plan to go as long as I possibly could.

24 And the Lord has been good to me in terms of health,

25 because of fresh fish that we are dependant on for years.

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1 My family is a five generations at one time. We've taught

2 our children and our gra ndchildren to be fishermen. And

3 we've depended on the food for all of those years. And we

4 plan, as our grandchildren are taught, to honor and

5 respect the fish that we depend on so much here in Bristol

6 Bay. It's the richest and the largest fishery in the

7 whole world, and we want to keep it that way.

8 One of the things that I'm appreciative of today

9 is the EPA coming in. Yo u are standing up for us, and we

10 are with you; we'll back you up in any way that we could.

11 And we want you to be here, and we thank you that you've

12 planned a risk assessment on this mine that is going t o be

13 right in the center of the salmon habitat where the salmon

14 are reared. The healthiest food is where the salmon knows

15 to go, to lay their eggs, and spawn so future generations

16 can continue to have this food, not only commercially, but

17 culturally, but for ongoing future generations. It's gone

18 this way for year after year.

19 And I thank you that you're already planning the

20 risk assessment. It has to be an independent study that

21 needs to be made. You need to give it more time. By what

22 you've already done

-- thank you so much for listening to

23 us.

24 MR. ANDERSON: Thank you very much. My name is

25 Norman Anderson, I'm the youngest son of Ed and Jay

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1 Anderson. My testimony is an objection to the proposed

2 public project. The Alaska people have belief in several

3 generations scenario as a reaction to all generations

4 taking care of the land and share today what they enjoyed

5 then. We must take care

-- will have some generations

6 from now.

7 Over the years I have seen mineral corporation

8 abuse their right to explore and destroy our land, they

9 elate to activities, serial killers who move from one

10 location to another who kill and maim our precious planet.

11 Bristol Bay we have protected for years. And it's been

--

12 exploration to exist to make Bristol Bay a crime scene.

13 If we do not take a stand as caretakers of the resources.

14 There's a former spokeperson back several years ago on the

15 proposed public project, you did not only focus on the

16 Pebble project, as Pebble will become the hole in the

17 bagel should and become the reality. All the way

18 surrounding it is now being stated for potential

-- for

19 potential development of other companies will be approved

20 as well.

21 And since the first day o f Alaska came to claim

22 Bristol Bay as their home, there were

-- there was

23 earthquakes, volcanos, epidemics. However, since the

24 mineral corporation will be allowed to create a future for

25 themselves in Bristol Bay, we people are from a way of

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1 life. We thank the EPA for coming here, and do everything

2 we can to take care of this big village we call earth.

3 Thank you very much.

4 MS. ANDERSON: I'm not a tri bal elder, but circle

5 an elder; so I'm a young elder. My name is Flossie

6 Anderson; I'm representing myself. Because the mine would

7 have the potential of impact on the fishery and all

8 animals and consequently destroy a 4,000

- year

- old culture

9 and people, I ask the department of interior advisor,

10 protect the lives of our Native people and our resources

11 and help us stop the possibility of destruction of our

12 people and resources. The federal government has a duty

13 to do so since the government has a Native trust

14 responsibility to us. Thank you.

15 MR. OLSEN: My name is Hjalmar Olsen. I was born

16 and raised here in Dillingham. I'm a BBNC board member,

17 chairman of the board for 28 years until Joe took my place

18 a couple years ago. Welcome to Dillingham, and thank you

19 for very much for doing too, EPA assessment. I think it's

20 timely, and I think you're probably one of the few

21 agencies, if not, the only agency that listened to the

22 tribes an d the people here in Bristol Bay.

23 My biggest concern is the future of the fishery.

24 We need clear water here. You could start any place in

25 Bristol Bay from Togiak to Dillingham, up here we have all

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1 the lakes. I think sta te parks, which one of our greater

2 spawning areas for salmon, what about the land animals,

3 the seals, the beluga and the birds, they need clean water

4 too. So I think my biggest concern is the future of the

5 fishery. If that mine is developed up there, I think it's

6 going to be

-- it's going to be terrible on the water.

7 And I want to publicly say, I don't think there's a safe

8 mine in the world, the field will be leaking and we'll

9 have a disaster here. And what

-- what is

-- why do we

--

10 Bristol Bay is because we got salmon here.

11 We assist a lot, but the salmon and the

12 commercial fishery provides us with the cash, cash that we

13 need for other products, ammunition, flour, and all the

14 other things we need for

-- to

-- to exist out here. So I

15 want to thank you again for doing this assessment. I

16 think I looked it over and it's

-- you've done a pretty

17 good summary of it. So thank you very much.

18 MS. KRITZ: Hi, my name Anecia Kritz; and I'm

19 from the beautiful village of Togiak. Thank you very much

20 for coming here today to listen to us. I have practiced

21 our subsistence way my entire life, and I'm proud to say I

22 teach my grandc hildren and my children our traditional

23 subsistence way of life. Passing on our traditional ways

24 can help if we let pollution destroy our lands and water.

25 I don't want any big mines like Pebble to cont aminate my

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1 subsistence food. Our culture cannot survive if we don't

2 take care of our lands. Our ancestors passed on this

3 beautiful place to us. And we must do everything we can

4 to protect it for our grandchildren and children.

5 Thank you for doing the Bristol Bay Watershed

6 Assessment. We know our Bristol Bay is priceless and now

7 you have the scientific proof. Please do what is right

8 and take action now to protect our homeland. And a lot of

9 us that live our subsistence foods, we don't go to the

10 store every time we going to eat. We live off our land.

11 And just an information, that my family been c alled Pebble

12 people. So for those informations to let the people that

13 think that way, I'm probably more hundred percent against

14 Pebble than you are. Thank you.

15 MR. NELSON: Good morning. As an independent

16 qualified in the animal system, I find the assessment

17 sufficient for public knowledge, but a work

- in

- progress

18 within a scientific ability allow me therefore to set way

19 into my testimony I title "food security." As a cannery

20 worker of eight seasons, an active worker in environmental

21 science forces will change as a master student environment

22 and natura l resource management.

23 I speak in defense of great vast and man

24 coexistence of means to survive. To hunt of great is

--

25 dual citizen of the United States of America and the

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1 islands. I have the opportunity to live and wo rk

2 Southwest Alaska at the. Seeing how the hunter gatherers

3 of the cold far north, the disbelief of this hunter

4 gathers who live around the equator. Being one of

5 thousands of cannery workers following the life of salmon,

6 I come back season after season to earn a living so others

7 can bounty from the great industry of Bristol Bay has

8 brought the life of hunter gatherers to commercial lives

9

-- really want

-- catch salmon to homes, schools, and

10 tables around the globes, this substance of life.

11 In a global level, the fight for Bristol Bay to

12 fight great

-- a nd verses air, water, and food for

13 generations to come, of the other as the last remaining

14 salmon cans are frozen the subsistence life of hunting and

15 tracking come under weight to prepare for the long c old

16 days of winter. This is survival in Southwest Alaska do

17 not have the alternative of farming every live stock as a

18 means to survive and here lies the difference.

19 For my la st remaining seconds, allow me to make a

20 common private around the globe as point from a tribal

21 lass. Fathers taught us to love the land, land for our

22 bodies, land provides homes, land provides crops f or women

23 and children, land provides rivers for our fish and

24 mountains for our hunting skills. We love this land, we

25 respect this land, we protect this land. People

--

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1 culture land

-- these are our treasures.

2 JEFF SKRADE: Good morning, folks. My name is

3 Jeff Skrade; I'm representing myself here today. And I'm

4 really delighted you came out to hear our testimony. I'm

5 currently employed by Peter Pan Seafoods here in

6 Dillingham. My title is fleet manager; I've been with

7 them for 14 years, prior to that I worked for the State of

8 Alaska Department of Fish & Game and for the two

9 com mercial fisheries for 21 years. This is my 41st year

10 working for Bristol Bay and the State of Alaska mostly in

11 Bristol Bay.

12 And we have truly a natural treasure here, folks.

13 Please keep in mind this is the last wild stocks wild

14 salmon fishery here on the planet, the very last one.

15 When Alaska became a state years ago, the fisheries in

16 this area were depleted. Evidence sugg ests that this was

17 due to a number of factors, including high seas,

18 overfishing, and a very unresponsive system of manager.

19 That is has all been changed. You've heard about

20 fisheries the world over that have failed for various

21 reasons, that's not the case here in Bristol Bay. We're

22 very blessed, and we have experienced record level of

23 production.

24 Since 20 04 this catch database goes back to 1883

25 in a handout that I passed out to earlier for you to look

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1 at. Under Alaska Constitution, Alaska Procedures Act,

2 some serious of guidelines that

-- that involve the public

3 in the process of management and developing the management

4 plan and the regulations of government fishery. The

5 participants with the most best interest are involved in

6 this process and our supportive positive managemen t of

7 this common property resource.

8 I've given you written comments and

-- and I

9 didn't even finish the first page let alone the second.

10 Best wishes for coming out, and thank you for our chance

11 to testify.

12 MR. EGDORF: Good afternoon. Thank you for being

13 here, thank you for this assessment. It's an epic piece

14 of work. My name is David Egdorf. I live at Linden Lake,

15 which is the first lake above the wood. I've been here

16 35 years. And I'm a sport fishing camp monitor. My vote

17 is no mine. I've flown thousands of hours in the area;

18 and I learned a lot about the area, it cannot take the

19 impact of a huge mine operation. If Pebble Mine is

20 approved, the whole area becomes available, hundreds of

21 square miles. And this area ca n't support that.

22 Subsistence lifestyle here is the important

23 thing, culture needs to be considered immensely. I don't

24 know what else to say, but we just don't need a mine here.

2 5 These people can't be subjected to the possibilities of

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1 the loss of their culture, their home, their heritage. I

2 think that about covers it for me. But thank you for

3 being here. And give this country your best shot. It's

4 a bout the fish.

5 MR. OLSEN, SR.: Good afternoon. I'd like to

6 thank you for coming to Dillingham today, I appreciate it.

7 My name is Tom Olsen, Sr.; this is my boy, Junior. I grew

8 up on fish, eating fish, and I'm a commercial fishermen my

9 whole life. My boy is right behind me, he did the same.

10 He'd ask at dinner, "What's for dinner, dad?" I'd say,

11 "Fish," and he'd say, "Oh, yum, I can't wait to eat fish,

12 dad." Fish is good. Fish cut the fat.

13 Everyone talks about how to live a long life, my

14 dad always told me, the fat from the oil in the fish make

1 5 you live longer. And I'm here today as a commercial

16 fishermen about the Pebble Mine, it'll hurt our land,

17 it'll hurt our people, and it'll hurt many generations to

18 come. And thank you for coming, and have a good summer.

19 MS. GESTRING: Thank you for coming today to do

20 this assessment. It clearly highlights the severe and

21 lasting consequences to wild salmon habitat if mining

22 Pebble deposit. The mine footprint alone would respect

23 the direct loss of an

-- to 87 streams, 87 miles of

24 streams. But I'm particularly struck by the livelihood

25 that the mine will become severe and lasting source of

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1 drain age. And the rivers and streams below the mine.

2 The assessment estimates the waste drive piles

3 alone could generate up to 2.8 million gallons of

4 contaminated sewage in a year, if it isn't alre ady

5 contaminated. And as for the copper concentration in the

6 sea beds, it could be so high the entire flow of the

7 Eppers creek [phonetic] couldn't provide enough of a

8 solution to wate r flow. So failure to contain these, the

9 entire creek, the potentially a large area of the lake to

10 become toxic to fish.

11 According to the assessment, there are no

12 examples of successful long term collection and treatment

13 systems for the mine. There is talk about storing a waste

14 truck underwater and tailing for the pit after the mine is

15 closed, but it should be clear that s toring mine

16 underwater slow

-- not stop acid generation and evidence

17 of hundreds of operating mines around the world. Lots of

18 industry document indicate that all impoundment leak to

19 s ome extent over time.

20 So the bottom line seems very clear, managing for

21 the wild sustainable productive fishery or the visual

22 likelihood of managing for water pollution and perpetuity

23 and assessment makes a very compelling scientific case for

24 404(c). Thank you.

25 MR. BRAUD: Good afternoon, my name is Dylan

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1 Braud. I'm a father of two young boys, a lifetime Alaska

2 commercial fishermen. I have a law degree of science and

3 environmental studies. As we say in the fishing industry,

4 if it can go wrong, it will. Thank you for taking a look

5 at this recent watershed assessment; thank you for taking

6 a hard look at this issue.

7 There's one rule that I think is relevant to this

8 whole issue and it's overlooked, it is the temperable

9 important to this issue. Namely, how this decision

10 impacts future generations. This should be a standard by

11 which all decisions should be based in this watershed.

12 The comment pointed at the commercial fishing season based

13 on the assessment and the fewer marks inquiry. First 10

14 consider that the margin of error in the testing of the

15 sulfite, and if you apply that margin of error couple

16 percent to 10 billion tons of waste, t hat's a significant

17 margin of contamination of the watershed compliance.

18 Next, how will the cause aside mine long term?

19 How will this withstand seismic activity? Is seismic in

20 the watershed assessment. What's the next 25

- year and

21 70

- year mine under state the probably size of skill

22 development in Bristol Bay mining district. There are

23 several continuous mines next to Pebbl e Mine, that's a

24 seven

- year mine severely understates the probability

25 development and probable not to be produced over the long

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1 term, that's the significance.

2 The impact will be significant and provide what

3 we

-- currently is your watershed assessment. The

4 partnership of the literature indicates Pebble side is

5 highly likely more over levels of acid mine drainage will

6 likely increase over the long term . Based on review of

7 scientific, the number of salmon streams will greatly be

8 impacted by the road. And I understated if you didn't

9 associate blasting the open pit and completion of the work

10 entail will probably have contaminated enter the

11 watershed. They will be mobilized an cycled through the

12 ecosystem. I wrote a paper to summarize, 14 inches, I'll

13 leave it on your desk.

14 MR. WILSON: For the record, my name is Kenneth

15 Wilson. I'm here to represent the commercial fishermen of

16 Dillingham. The salmon forecast for the 2012 season is

17 32.3 million, plus or minus. Why would anybody want to

18 threaten there food

-- our food source? We live in a

19 known ring of fire of earthquakes. This past winter we

20 had an earthquake in Anchorage, north of Anchorage and

21 Kenai. Just this past winter that's only one fire, and

22 that's just the last

-- last eight months.

23 The fire in the mine could travel for miles, with

24 strong winds, the underwa ter we have at Pebble Mine will

25 be the first to cause pollution. The salmon wouldn't have

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1 a chance. I'm asking you to use common sense, this mine

2 might produce in 50 years. The renewable resource with

3 the forecast rain from 23. 18 million to 41.42 million for

4 the past 10 years, and that's only for the past 10 years.

5 I would like to say thank you for coming to Bristol Bay.

6 And we were just only a few weeks away from a run here in

7 Bristol Bay. The run is at the south end and will be here

8 in about two weeks.

9 MR. FRISS

- MIKKELSEN: Thank you for this

10 opportunity, and I appreciate your taking a look at this

11 issue. It is

-- I've been a commercial fishermen all my

12 life. I've fished in every ocean in this world. And I

13 have never

-- when I came to Bristol Bay, I was just

14 completely aw ed by the amount of wildlife. The strength

15 of this place is just amazing. And the sensitivity of

16 this place is just so unique. How these fish find their

17 way back will start altering the composition o f the water

18 and the elements in this water they use to navigate,

19 they'll be lost. And all these people will be lost. The

20 culture will be lost.

21 The

-- the decision that we ha ve to make now is

22 not just for subsistence and Native culture and the

23 commercial fishermen and hunters and the sport fishermen,

24 everyone else is involved up here, it is an issue

-- it

25 speaks to the values that we want to leave to our

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1 children. And

-- and the country and the world. What are

2 we going to leave to this people, what will they inherit?

3 This place is so special that, to me, mining Bristol Bay

4 is pur e and simple, a risk we cannot take. And that's

--

5 that's all I know. Thank you very much.

6 MS. WYSOCKI: Hi, I'm Anie Wysocki. I'm

7 representing my family and my Koliganek Triable Council.

8 First, on the area of subsistence to my family and village

9 and this area on this plants. The

-- rights, nutures we

10 need for generations; we care for our water, and it

11 provides for us. My family has been commercial fishermen

12 fourth generation and grandparents fifth generation. And

13 I'd like to continue this as part of who we are.

14 Third area, for my village corporation and tri bal

15 council, I mean, I've always encouraged people to sell

16 their lands near our village mines drilling. This mines

17 15 miles north west

-- west of near Keel Mountain. We

18 oppose this m ine, but it's happening; these mines feel

19 like giants, makes me feel so small. And I really

20 appreciate you coming here and doing our assessment. I'd

21 like to say that my people have been

-- are natural

22 scientists. We always watch the animals, we watch the

23 land, we watch how the fish do stuff; and every time when

24 we came back and we notice anything, talk amongst

25 ourselves and say, " This is happening," or we'll say,

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1 "Looks at the beaver," and say, "Oh, they're doing this,"

2 and that's a sign that

-- that

-- that will help us

3 determine what kind of winter we're going to have, what is

4 coming in; and all that stu ff we look at these things like

5 water and water travels. It doesn't stay just in one

6 place because it's traveling down from river and ocean and

7 right back, and it's just like a cycle that continues.

8 Thank you for listening to us.

9 MR. ANDREW: Thank you. Welcome to salmon

10 country. I'm Peter Andrew, BBNC board member. These

11 federal waters that we are looking at, that rear so many

12 salmon need protection. EPA's charter reason for being

13 are for places like this. We need

-- we need you and

14 thank you for your assessment. We thank you for your

15 assessment a cross the country

-- across America, we have

16 seen once salmon habitat destroyed for mining and other

17 development. This is the last habitat in the world.

18 52 percent of the world's sockeye salmon come fr om

-- come

19 from these waters and come from Bristol Bay.

20 Along with BBNC and 31 villages passed the

21 resolution, and that is asking the EPA to act on the

22 assessment and also act on the 404(c) process. On behalf

23 of my cultural background and generations of subsistence,

24 ask for the support of your assessment. We've been asking

25 our state government and agencies within this stat e with

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1 no avail to protect t hese waters. We've invited the EPA

2 to recognize and protect this place. I urge you to keep

3 to your timeline that you've laid out in the process and

4 act on 404(c) on behalf of the people that cannot be here,

5 I

-- I ask please, to protect our future for our

6 generations that are yet to come. Thank you.

7 MR. WANG: Thank you. My name is Christopher

8 Wang, and I'm a commercial fishermen here in Bristol Bay.

9 During the off season I live in San Francisco and work as

10 a chef. As a chef I have realized salmon is truly one of

11 the last sustainable wild food sources in the world. I

12 challenge you to name another that is wild, sustainable,

13 and harvested on this scale, tuna, cod, kelp. Up to this

14 point there's been no other culture to farm salmon,

15 farming salmon t aste like it didn't have a different

16 animal, it's died to protect the acid as lower level of

17 three's and higher levels of PCP. It's a shame that

18 people call it salmon.

19 We are living in a world with increasing

20 population who need food and water supply. We carry

21 certain level less than arrogant, we think that technology

22 will save us. And we can install tangible containments

23 for entailments and genetically generate new food. Why

24 would a watershed, or

-- even best case scenario, the

25 worst case scenario is a damaged and doubted ecosystem

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1 lost. I want the EPA to realize that the system is not

2 limited to the Bristol Bay watershed, it is impacted

3 through the world.

4 If you took the time to walk the streets of

5 Dillingham, it tells it's own story. This is the working

6 town, the broad card activity as upcoming salmon looms on

7 the horizon, take a closer look at the Hurlalong Fire

8 Station [phonetic]

-- this is how this works, the welcome

9 to Dillingham banner po les, the multi

- colored sand, and

10 the exterior walls of the library, the mural on the side

11 of the gas station on the way out of town. And every one

12 of these examples, salmon formed the art work backbone of

13 this community by nourishment, financial stability,

14 culture, multi

- generation interactions, families working

15 together to harvest and store enough food to keep them

16 through the wint er. Take this away not only as a cultural

17 backbone but a main source of food is lost. Thank you.

18 MR. RAYMOND: Hello members of the EPA; my name

19 is Tyrone Raymond. I'm a commercial fishermen , I'm third

20 generation; and I've lived here my entire life. As

21 officials charges, the well being of our environment,

22 given the job of attempting to keep our environment as

23 good as con dition as possible. Given the circumstances in

24 the demands of our civilization, Galveston's spent much of

25 their time going to the

-- picking up the pieces have not

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1 gone according to plan, this is taken lightly.

2 Yet here you face a chance to do something so

3 proactively for the good of the entire region, it's people

4 and countless multitude, on healthy vast and verse

5 ecosystem. How often does a chance like this come abou t?

6 A decision about whether to develop a beautiful pristine

7 place like western Alaska goes way beyond all arguments,

8 it goes way beyond speculating whether or not the notable

9 changes w ill be good or bad for the people who live here.

10 It goes to a much broader issue, which is as human beings

11 will be able to change our short term view of economic

12 gain for a view that recognizes the mean ing of true wealth

13 to ourselves and to all the other creatures that inhabit

14 this region and need this planet.

15 I support the draft assessment and am hopeful

16 that due process th e EPA will vote the 404(c) based on

17 some science, common sense, and a vision of future that

18 understands the meaningful difference between the abstract

19 of wealth and true wealth the Bristol Bay Region is wealth

20 in body. Thank you.

21 MR. BECK: I want to say thank you for all the

22 hard work. My name is Matt Beck, and I'm a commercial

23 fishermen here in Bristol Bay. Salmon and w ater, these

24 are just a few small part of resources that is here to

25 helps us to survive. These resources of life are exactly

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1 put at risk when we even think about putting a mine

2 anywhere. Gold, copper, these things only give us a false

3 sense of life in a world we continue to get more and more

4 detached from nature. When is it enough? When does it

5 end? The Pebble Mine, if we can stop it now, the same for

6 the w hole world, that we have the ability to protect

7 nature, we have the ability to stop things like this from

8 happening, we need to make that statement. We need to

9 show the world that it is possible to pro tect.

10 What does it take to stop wrecking the earth?

11 Instead, teach people what we really need to live. All

12 the money in the world can't bring back extinct species or

13 truly de contaminate a natural resource. When does society

14 start thinking about our future? I consider myself

15 extremely fortunate to be a first generation fishermen and

16 surrounded by these great people who hav e built

17 generations of life around these resources.

18 The last nine years of life have been built

19 around this world. I can only hope that I

-- all that I

20 can, children my grand children can stand here surrounding

21 by these family and generations. All these generations

22 are amazing people who I am sure know the true essence of

23 life and survival. I wonder how many miners can say the

24 same thing? I really support your assessment. Close to

25 250 seats are in here, it's not just the salmon, the

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1 water, it's our air, it's our land quality. Best case

2 scenario failure is likely, and I think that can be

--

3 understatement even from the scientific side point of

4 view. Failure is immanent, it's human nature. And it

5 will happen and it will hurt this environment. Thank you.

6 MS. HOSETH: Hi, my name is Debbie Hoseth; I'm

7 from Twin Hills. I lived in Dillingham for 18 years

8 before I moved back. When I moved back I realized that we

9

-- living off the land and living traditionally with

10 advice from my Elders, we have to take care of our land in

11 order for our land to take care of us. So the more I

12 learn about the pebble, it's very, very personal to me to

13 be against it, to take care of our land and our land will

14 take care of us in return. Thank you.

15 MR. HOFFERLE: Good afternoon. And people are

16 trying to drown the government in a bathtub, your actions

17 in preparing this assessment are completely warranted and

18 stand up to the

-- what we expect from the Environmental

19 Protection Agency. So your actions are both welcome and

20 your bureaucratica lly heroic. Thank you. We've given up

21 on the State of Alaska I think in terms of getting a fair

22 shake, a fair assessment of this project. I've been

23 trying to think which six items I ought to address today.

24 And I think probably the most important has to do with

25 risk.

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1 And the

-- the international commission on large

2 dams bulletin 121 addresses tailing dam failures. And the

3 three most prominent reason s for fail tailing dam failures

4 arises from over chopping unusual rain fall, seismic

5 liquefaction, and important of institutional of failures.

6 And I'd like to address each one of the those if I could.

7 First of all, I would like to say that the values

8 you use when you're addressing seismic failures I think is

9 inadequate, the data base is mines from 2000

- mile from all

10 over the world. I think your data base ought to be

11 addressing specifically mines from seismically active

12 areas, and I think that would change the probabilities of

13 what's going on.

14 In terms of overtopping, a couple of years ago,

15 this was springtime, I saw the whole Douchebag Basin

16 [phonetic] from black coin all the way up that was

17 underwater. And in terms of management of tailings

18 facilities or institutional stuff, we don't have any human

19 institutions that go back even a thousand years. I think

20 that you need to assess

-- reassess roots. I'll address

21 the other issues in written comments. Thank you very much

22 for being here.

23 MR. LISAC: Thank you for this opportunity, I

24 appreciate you being

-- watershed assessment efforts. The

25 indep endent peer review process that's been planned and

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1 encourage finding of unacceptable adverse effects and to

2 prohibit the court for issues 404 permits for large scale

3 developments. I don't believe the State of Alaska permits

4 proce ss or enforcement protect this valuable resource. I

5 finely approach the fact that I'm very revealing,

6 especially the non

- failures. Even without failure, a

7 large open pit mine will have unacceptable im pacts,

8 fugitive dust alone are

-- is great harm to people in the

9 environment.

10 Open pit mining is not rocket science, the

11 technologies safeguards have been around a long time.

12 Around the world all take leave and have caused water

13 quality on issues, mostly open pit mines are a desert of

14 mines, which Bristol Bay is pretty much a swamp. So even

15 under the blown failure scenarios is not a question of if

16 or when the impacts of the ecosystem will occur. There is

17 really only one reason that Bristol Bay is the largest

18 salmon region in the world, and that's becaus e we've

19 destroyed all the others.

20 From the

-- to the Columbia River, primarily

21 habitant destruction. So it's time to make a stand to

22 clean water and fish and protect this via ble ecosystem.

23 Really what's the hurry? The minerals will be there in

24 the future maybe technology will advance to allow a safe

25 extraction of mineral and the handling of waste materials.

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1 Maybe salmon will go away like the dinosaur s and our

2 planet will warm as predicted and then we can harvest

3 these minerals. Thank you.

4 MS. WILSON: Hi, my name is Jacquelyn Wilson.

5 Thank you for coming together to hear our testimonies. In

6 Alaska the people that I teach, people have been coming to

7 Alaska for their benefits. Take, for example, the Russian

8 period. On west wiping an entire fur bearing exchange.

9 And now the giant is knocking at the door to rape our

10 resources and our pristine environment. Please do not let

11 this happen. We value our commercial fisheries, the only

12 one of its kind wor ldwide. We value our subsistence way

13 of life and our culture. Please support the Clean Water

14 Act and protect last frontier of our great nation. Thank

15 you.

16 MS. WASSILLIE: H i, my name is Emm Wassillie. I

17 lived in Togiak for the last 30 years. And I'm the proud

18 mother of five children, and my husband is a commercial

19 fishermen; and two of my sons also fish. Our subsistenc e

20 way of life is really important to my father and mother.

21 We all work together after to make sure we have

22 subsistence. Without clean water and healthy environment,

23 we wouldn't be abl e to live off the land like our people

24 always have. I always oppose the Pebble Mine, because I

25 want our lands and water protected so my grandchildren can

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1 live a subsistence land life as well.

2 I've always have way of life to my children and

3 grandchildren to know how important for them to do the

4 same and not only ensure culture, but so we can survive.

5 Even with a job the cost of living in our villages is high

6 and our traditionally are what keep food on our tables and

7 our culture

-- cultures thriving. And I want to thank you

8 for doing the Briston Bay Watershed Assessment. And now

9 you have your scient ific proof and large scale mining are

10 hurting our watershed. Please act now and protect Bristol

11 Bay. Thank you.

12 MR. WASSILY, JR.: Good afternoon, and welcome to

13 Dillingham. I'm Steve Wassily Jr., originally from Starts

14 Point. I've fished most of my life. I started when I was

15 9, and I'm 56; so what's that, like 46

-- 47 years? And

16 I'm still young, and I'm still fishing . And I have three

17 sons I'm very proud of.

18 But anyway, I'm here to say that we're talking

19 about quality. Help us keep our quality, quality of fish,

20 quality of the animals, t he water we drink. It's very

21 important; because if the mine goes through, throw all

22 that quality out the window. Even farm fish can't compare

23 to the quality of fish that we catch commercially and

24 subsistence. And we need the birds, everything all the

--

25 you know, depends on water. And right now how many

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1 bottles of these would it take to make a gallon? Imagine

2 how much it would cost us to drink water? Because this is

3 what's going to happen if the Pebble Mine goes through,

4 price of water is more than gas per gallon. I mean, it's

5 not easy to

-- to make that kind of money. Please help us

6 keep our water cl ean. Thank you.

7 MS. TREYDETTE: Patricia Treydette; I lived in

8 Dillingham. I'm A subsistence and a commercial fishermen.

9 This surprised me

-- notice from the meetings in Anchorage

10 a lot of Alaskans are not huge fans of the Feds and EPA in

11 general. And so, you know, that took a lot for us to come

12 to you guys and ask for help. And we appreciate that you

13 came. It's kind of a conflict of interest for resource

14 developments involved, particularly when the government is

15

-- is somewhere else and we're a rural community without

16 much population to vote. So we're going to get b asically

17 what goes down little here

-- they aren't in Anchorage,

18 and so

-- it's kind of important to us to

-- you're the

19 ones that can come riding to the rescue, I hope.

20 We re ally appreciate you're doing the plan. I

21 think it's extremely conservative. I

-- I think there's

22 probably more threat than what you're seeing, but I

23 appreciate you're recognizing the fact that Pebble doesn't

24 have to put a mine plan for us to know what they have to

25 do to make it economically and physically develop. So you

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1 guys definitely did the right thing there. What I didn't

2 see in the plan was anything addressing the ongo ing damage

3 from the exploration. I don't know if I missed that or

4 it's simply not within the scope of your program. But

5 it's ongoing, it's happening now, it is doing damage. I

6 haven 't been

-- the ground there, but I have friends and

7 relatives who have, and there is damage. So the sooner

8 this happens, the fewer the ways they are, the more we can

9 save. Damage is already been done and continues to be

10 done. So. Thank you.

11 MS. SAMUELSEN: Hi, I'm Robin Samuelsen. I'm

12 president and CEO of the Bristol Bay corporation; and I

13 represent 17 communities in th e Bristol Bay Region. Thank

14 you for coming out today and doing this assessment done on

15 Bristol Bay. I want to roll back a few years when the

16 State of Alaska and the federal government was managing

17 subsistence. The State of Alaska was managing

18 subsistence, because they got compliance with

-- now we

19 have U.S. and Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska managing

20 subsistence, and since th e State changed its mind.

21 Today my board strongly opposes the Pebble Mine.

22 We feel that we've spent millions of dollars in trying to

23 improve the quality. A few years ago these people behind

24 me could get $0.40 a pound, nobody was making money, this

25 last year the salmon prices were $1.45 a pound, that's why

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1 our economy improved our quality of product tremendously.

2 We can't keep the farm salmon, both Chili and

-- and

3 Norway. But we need to have clean water. We also have

4 one of the biggest canneries in Alaska. We are a salmon

5 producing company. BBNC we own 50 percent of the ocean

6 duty sea foods. It 's been our largest investment. If

7 that mine goes through and there's damage to the water

8 quality, we will lose our customers. You guys hold the

9 key.

10 We don't get a fair dea l from the State of

11 Alaska. We feel that there was 67 permits that needs to

12 be issued to be Pebble Mine votes, 66 of them are going to

13 come from the State of Alaska and one from you guys, it is

14 EPA. We're putting our faith into the EPA system, because

15 we

-- fair shake from the State of Alaska on this issue.

16 And I think you seen that last night in the testimony in

17 Anchorage. We've

-- I've gone through the assessment and

18 I think you guys done a real good job on

-- on the first

19 cut you

-- you've entered into a reason. The last five,

20 six years, and there's still a lot of questions to be

21 answered.

22 The bottom line for us is, we have a economy out

23 here; our economy is improving. We are getting more and

24 more permits than watershed residents have, and we ne ed to

25 continue on with our due diligence and stop the Pebble

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1 Mine. We don't want that damn mine in Bristol Bay.

2 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Hi, good afternoon. I am here

3 today to speak against the Pebble Mine. The land and the

4 water sustain lives for many of thousands for years. And

5 hold this toxics of it, it will not stand. Please help us

6 to save the water. Thank you.

7 MS. HENRY: My name is Juliu s Henry; I'm from

8 Twin Hills Council. I'm here to speak on behalf of the

9 council. As you know, the waters that came and everything

10 when it really changed the way of life. It will not only

11 change the fish, but it allows effect the way south and

12 the mammals of areas I

-- I want EPA to help us on this.

13 Thank you.

14 MR. BOUKER: Thank you very much for inviting me

15 here. My name is David Bouker, and I've lived here for a

16 number of years. Our family's fishing history here goes

17 back

-- my personal history goes back some 30 years. My

18 daughter

- in

- law's history goes back a number of

19 generations uncountable. And my wife's parents, they go

20 back to the 1930s and '40s.

21 However, to go back a little bit, about 45 years

22 ago I used to work for a mining company in Bristol Bay.

23 And this was a mining company that used to dredge. The

--

24 the dredge pond, which is behind the dredge, was upstream

25 of the dredge, and the out roll from that, whic h I think

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1 was called the sal mon river, flowed about a mile and a

2 half into the crest near Bristol Bay. And the river

3 itself was muddy and the bay for a half a mile out was

4 just pure yellow, and obviously we had no fish. And

5 whether they got fish now or not, I don't know. But the

6

-- the situation at that time looked pretty sad. That's

7 all I have. Thank you.

8 MS. FRITZE: Thank you for conducting thi s

9 assessment. My name is Annie Fritze. I am a small

10 business owner relying on the beaver, river otter, and on

11 fur bearing animals to help sustain my small business. I

12 am also a life long subsistence user and a mother of three

13 children and four grandchildren who enjoy our salmon,

14 moose, caribou, edible plants, and berries. Since time,

15 this magnificent and mostly untouched region ha s been home

16 to my ancestors, peoples residing on the rivers for

17 centuries; they followed a traditional way of life in

18 pursuit of subsisting off the land. And most importantly,

19 its val uable natural resource is salmon.

20 Each year more than one million salmon return to

21 the rivers and streams where the salmon hatch and spawn

22 for the next cycle of life. This is such an ancient

23 behavior that has supported hundreds of generations of

24 humans. So long as a salmon return to the river to

25 nourish its land and waters and its people, all other

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1 animals find the haven and subsistence here too. The

2 spawning and dying of salmon help create the soils for the

3 berries, plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees to take root

4 and complete the cycle of life. Water is very important

5 to us. Without clean water there is no life. Of concern

6 is the development of one of the worlds largest open pit

7 mines located near Lake Clark. This mine will rest on the

8 head waters of the Kobuk River. The Kobuk River flows

9 into the Mauneluk River which then joins New Mash River

10 [phonetic] and flows out to the Bristol Bay.

11 This is my granddaughter.

12 MS. FRITZE: My name is Cabella Fritze. I love

13 fish. I do not want Pebble Mine. I help my grandmother

14 in the smokehouse. Once the fish is done, it is very

15 yummy. I also like moose and caribou. Please protect the

16

-- ou r waters.

17 MS. AYOJLAK: Phyllis Ayojlak, and I'm a proud

18 mother of six and a grandmother as well. I'm from Togiak

19 and work for the Togiak traditional council'S

20 environmental program as the coordinator. I want to say

21 I'm in favor of EPA Briston Bay Watershed Assessment. I'm

22 happy it was done in a timely manner and the public review

23 period is adequate. I appreciate the EPA doing the

24 watershed assessment towards the environmental impacts

25 that the proposed pebble project may cause. I want to say

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1 that the subsistence is my livelihood and I'm also a

2 commercial fisherwoman in Togiak. My grandmother wa s also

3 a commercial fisherwoman, and I now fish the permits she

4 passed down to me.

5 I'm so thankful I'm able to live a subsistence

6 way of life like my ancestors, and I feel ver y threatened

7 by the Pebble

-- Pebble project. Our traditional way of

8 life isn't possible without our land and water being

9 clean. So I don't support the projects that risk our way

10 of life continuing into the future. We are

-- coming here

11 and listening to us, and I'm in full support of you taking

12 action to protect our people here in Bristol Bay.

13 MR. DUNAWAY: Thank you. I' m Dan Dunaway; I was

14 born and raised and educated in Alaska. I've lived in

15 Dillingham 23 years. I first started working Bristol Bay

16 in 1973. I've lived in southwest Alaska since about 1978

17 here in Dutch Harbor. For a retired fishing guy of

18 22 years of experience in the department of Fish & Game.

19 The last 15 years of my career spent here in the Bristol

20 Bay fisheries all over. I s it on the Fish & Game for

--

21 and Bristol Bay Subsistence Federal Council.

22 I applaud the EPA for getting up to speed this

23 mining thing early in the process. Too often government

24 is short. This time I think you're doing it right.

25 Overall my greatest concern is

-- is the fear of pollution

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1 of this eruption of water and drainages of the area.

2 Specifically from what I've been able to look at in your

3 report , you generally use the open pit mines in the area.

4 But I know there's a lot of talking about blocking caving

5 touching on that full report; I think that needs to be

6 explored further. Frankly, I'm more concerned about block

7 caving where you don't know what's going on underground.

8 And you don't know what's going to happen when things

9 subside. So I hope that

-- that could be expanded more.

10 I'm sure that this mine coming up the mining

11 companies are going to try to find a way to prepare for

12 all the different scenarios. In addition, the state of

13 Alaska has limited staff and n o experience open

-- and

14 entirely never before mined an area on the scale you're

15 looking at. They don't have the capacity; we need the

16 national attention. This is a world resource; and I don't

17 know how many fishermen that has come from all over the

18 world to this spectacular, spectacular

-- there's no other

19 place like it. Thank you.

20 MR. LATSHA: Hello, my name is Don Latsh a; and my

21 father is from Seattle, Washington. By the way, my father

22 started this fishery in 1957; my brother and I got into it

23 in 1971. We've been coming up here ever since. My

24 brot her and I are still around; my father's passed away.

25 Fishing here is

-- has had a traumatic input of life,

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1 obviously, since before I was born. I watched the men

2 staff in the early '70s take place and fishing stocks

3 rebound, the f ishery was faulted. We enjoyed through the

4 late '70s on the fresh frozen market come in, raised our

5 prices and they farm fishery attack and our prices

6 dropped. All kind of excuses we in the bay of sal mon have

7 got our best to produce a quality fish through our

-- our

8 icing processes and the quality of the boats, we're just

9 stocking everything we can.

10 Now, we

-- looking at a public perception that we

11 have a mine that can't be contained above our pristine

12 water. So I'm worried that, again, whether there is a

13 fault or not a fault, the farm fishery community has a

14 very apicale reason to say, "Hey, guys, community

-- world

15 community, you guys might be eating tainted fish here."

16 So that's all I have to say I'm worried about is what

17 might take place if the m ine is installed. Thanks.

18 MR. CHYTHLOOK: Good afternoon, my name is Joe

19 Chythlook. I'm a BBNC shareholder, BBNC board member.

20 I've been chairman for a couple years. And I'll speak on

21 behalf of shareholders of who anyone

-- percent of opposed

22 to the development of the mine. And for those of you who

23 are able to be here, thank you for coming, and also for

24 the Briston Bay W atershed Assessment that you did.

25 Ever since BBNC board took action in 2009,

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1 there's been many discussions about this issue. And what

2 we find in your report

-- published report advisory and

3 rating issues that we've been talking about. BBNC has

4 always had a salmon first policy. And one finding salmon

5 culture support that 100 percent. Another EPA finding

6 that even if board if it mines. Another suggestion that

7 98 percent of likely pipeline failure for 25 years of

8 operation. And finally, failure of a tailing dam would

9 cause a loss of up to 30,000 of king salmon and 10 to

10 20 percent of king salmon p otential impacts like these are

11 unacceptable to me and the people I represent.

12 Subsistence impacts culture, our culture, our

13 primary food source and our long standing sustainable

1 4 economy the make top effect us now and in our future.

15 You're

-- finally support Pebble Mine are simply too great

16 for us to accept ourself and for those who come after.

17 Therefore, I would simply urge that EPA take action under

18 the 404(c) to protect the Bristol Bay salmon and BBNC will

19 be there, to continue to be

-- will for as long as we can.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. SCHINDLER: I' m Daniel Schindler; I'm a

22 scientist with the fisheries institute to the University

23 of Washington. We study salmon for the watersheds and

24 ecosystems here

-- Bristol Bay for over 16 years. And one

25 of the things that remains our viewpoint is basically how

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1 little we know about these systems. They are incredibly

2 complex ecosystems. And that complexly hurdle toward

3 environment of assessment development. Whether you can do

4 proper assessment in one of 10 years is almost irrelevant.

5 What we need to be able to do is draw information and

6 experience from other places where mining has been

7 developed, and we also need to be able to use common

8 sense.

9 It appears that the EPA review of potential

10 impacts over this mine is

-- is objective. And draws

11 fairly from other places as well as the exis ting

12 information that's been produced from Bristol Bay salmon.

13 So in general, we support your report and objective and

14 fair assessment of potential risks. Thank you.

15 MR. FRIS

- MIKKELSEN: Hi, thanks for letting me

16 speak with you today. I'm John Fris

- Mikkelsen. I've been

17 fishing here in the bay since I was 12. I'm here every

18 summer since I was just a baby, ever since my fa mily has

19 been coming up. And it's really important that you hear

20 all this testimony; I don't want you to believe everything

21 I tell you today. A couple of points that I think maybe

22 is one thing that I saw missing possibly from the

23 assessment in my reading of it was the sort of decisional

24 intra

- structure that maybe included in the development of

25 the area and mineral development, but it has not

-- is not

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1 directl y related necessarily to the mining housing of all

2 of employees needed, help and utilities, power generation

3 that seem it was explicitly was left out of this stage of

4 the assessment. I think it's impor tant that that be

5 looked at along with many of the other elements that have

6 not yet been included in the assessment.

7 Finally, I just wanted to bring your attention to

8 the type s of jobs that we have here. You know we can talk

9 about dollars and cents and cost benefit analysis, fishery

10 versus the mining; but we have very unique jobs here. We

11 have owner/operator businesses and immense opportunities,

12 very low cost. So if people want to get any businesses

13 and build their businesses, and I think that's incredible,

14 and not only that, but it's a value that you know the

15 politicians look to small businesses in the country and

16 how much that means to our economy, and this is really an

17 example of where we have those small businesses. This is

18 a small business mecc a here in Bristol Bay. That's really

19 incredible. I really think that bears repeating

-- maybe

20 last best hope here in the bay, so thanks so

-- and keep

21 up the good work. Thank you.

22 MR. STRUB: Thank you. My name is Henry Strub;

23 I'm a 35

- year fishermen here in Bristol Bay. And I think

24 I built everything up here, including my family up in

--

25 what appears to me is that it s eems to be far easier to

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1 res erve renewal resources than to regenerate one that's

2 become ruined. An example is the Toms Rover in the

3 northwest, it has been very good for a lot of people

4 compared to a project like this where a litt le bit of mine

5 materials will be mined the property will be built. I

6 suspect that the enhancement efforts and recovery efforts

7 on the river every year are more valuable, more expensive,

8 and

-- what that mine could produce here. And when we

9 look at our country, all of the herd of bison killed, the

10 big three haves been cut down.

11 But here's a resource that's good as it ever w as

12 come and experience this and pick up sewer it

-- with

13 modern equipment and the salmon is such a wonderful

14 renewable creature that it decides it's going to die. So

15 when it comes hom e, all we have to do is embrace them, get

16 enough of them to get the run in the future and all the

17 rest are for our use. And I want to say that to my family

18 later on too. Thank you.

19 MS. ROBINETTE: Hi, my name is Jennifer

20 Robinette. Half my family is from Bristol Bay. And my

21 ancestors have lived here for generations. Five years ago

22 my husband and I bought a house in Flor ida at the height

23 of the housing war, and overnight that house was worth

24 half of what we paid for it, and today it's worth a third

25 of that. We had more than that reason to move back to

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1 Alaska. We missed Alaska. And I had an opp ortunity to

2 come back and learn my culture from my relatives.

3 Two years ago I had never cut salmon. Now, I

4 live off the subsistence food. There was times after

5 winter year t hat we ran out of food because we ran out of

6 fuel and a cold

-- the house went cold in the winter

7 because we didn't have enough money to buy fuel. But that

8 didn't worry us because we had salmon we put up the summer

9 before. Now, baby boy, Charles Darwin, is old enough to

10 ask for the food that he likes the most; and he asks for

11 salmon.

12 Environmentally aware people realize th at the

13 land plays a huge role

-- is environmental services such

14 as clean water. I hope that you can add to your

15 assessment something that addresses clean drinking water;

16 I didn't see that. There is another thing that I did not

17 find I

-- after looking through the three volumes. The

18 biological threats to an environment that development

19 brings such evasive plans there are evasive pla ns here in

20 Alaska that add to the degradation of the salmon habitat,

21 there are also evasive plans documented by

-- that have

22 killed the moose in Anchorage. So that would be great if

23 y ou could address that.

24 So thank you so much for your Briston Bay

25 Watershed Assessment, and I have to thank the salmon.

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1 MS. CLARK: Good afternoon. I'd like to thank

2 Rick and Dennis for coming to Bristol Bay to l isten to

3 many of the stories told by our residents of the area. I

4 was born and raised in Clarks Point. And for many years

5 and centuries my family occupation as commercial fishermen

6 a nd gathers and subsistence user. We catch over 3,000

7 fish annually and pick over four hundred gallons of

8 berries per year. We're people of the tundra and of the

9 river.

10 My te stimony today is

-- is to thank you for

11 producing the Briston Bay Watershed Assessment. And I

12 would like to thank the six tribes that were involved in

13 inviting EPA to pursue this effort on behalf of th e

14 Bristol Bay people. The Alaska river watershed are two of

15 the last of this cultures in the world. Water's a

16 territory to the ocean and therefore to the sea. And many

17 of our salmon beds are up in the upper territories where

18 Pebble is identified. And we now withstand the risk of

19 any development in the mining area that could poison, not

20 only our fish, our water, our air, our land, and our

21 animals.

22 We are noematic people, and we gather from one

23 location to another. We travel for 20,000 something miles

24 in our area to gather our subsistence needs; we're social

25 culture people. And the risk is too heavy, that risk is

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1 not one century come or time. You cannot replace a

2 culture or people or places when we were gone. Thank you.

3 MS. RAMIREZ: Hi, my name is Kristina Ramirez;

4 and I was born and raised here. And I fear what the world

5 will do to the fish in the area. I want to thank you guys

6 for coming out here and doing this assessment, it's very

7 importan t to us. I also want to call attention to the

8 fact that even if you build the mine and they have the

9 capability to make it safe, it still will destroy the

10 89

- mile road that's going to go over salmon st reams.

11 I know for a fact that whenever you build

12 something around a place where mammals are present, the

13 animals disappear because of what you built is taking on

14 their habitat . These salmons are a very important local

15 resources to us, they can't be replaced by anything else.

16 I would like you to please act on a timely manner on the

17 404(c), and please keep to your time line o n the comment

18 period. Thank you.

19 MS. WILLIAMS: We were just dealing with a minor

20 crisis, that crisis is king salmon. I apologize for being

21 out there. Thank you for the wat ershed assessment, and

22 thank you for coming into the Bristol Bay Region. As I

23 reviewed your assessment, I specially liked the section on

24 Alaska Native cultures. As a leader here in my community,

25 my tribe conducts culture camp every year so that we

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1 maintain a sustainable salmon based culture for our

2 children and future generations. Page 2

- 19 touches on

3 this, and I need a course on the section. However, on

4 pa ge E4

- 9 we don't believe that the section that

5 identifies us, maintaining our ties is 4,000 years. We

6 believe it more to be 10,000 years.

7 It is not only that the salmon from my food on

8 the table for generations in the past and today, but we

9 recognize through the assessment salmon that we want to

10 maintain our future. After all, we were only borrowing

11 this land, water and ai r from the future that is yet to

12 come. My children, like my generation, are subsistence,

13 sport, and commercial fishermen. My children check the

14 subsistence net on the beach with their grandparents, ju st

15 like I did 40 plus years ago with my parents. My children

16 love going up to the lake or up in the river with their

17 grandparents to sports fish or fresh water fish and

18 salmon, just l ike I did.

19 As we move into the commercial salmon season, my

20 oldest and my youngest boys will fish commercially with

21 their grandfather. The assessment doesn't pull this

22 relati onship into one section, nor does it recognize the

23 risk under the fish immediate fish risks section page 23

24 of the executive summary, that relationship occurs here

25 out in the bay and I think needs to do that.

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1 Finally, the last thing, we ask you do not extend

2 the comment period as requested by the State of Alaska.

3 They never accommodate us, so why the heck should we

4 accommodate them? And their

-- my opinion they only ma de

5 the request for political purposes. And so

-- and I

6 believe they want to see a change in presidency. So as

7 long as they extend you out maybe a new president will

8 come in and they' ll get their way. Thank you.

9 MR. NANALOOK: (Undiscernible speaker.) I'm

10 sorry for being ill informed, but I addressed to this

--

11 colleague. From brief history of who I am. My real name

12

-- my real testimony is

-- I'm adopted, my adopted name is

13 Kenneth Nanalook. I was born and raised with the exact

14 same people who are here. I understudied my degree of

--

15 of California, Los Angeles, or I don't like

-- history in

16 1963 and the reprint in 1980

-- and other Michigan. That

17 disclosed our existing I dated back to 30 thousand years

18 BC. But rest assured, some of the

-- they' re finding

19 became quote unquote, best guess. Simply because there

20 were

-- they had not lived, experienced the means to reach

21 the

-- much here's the walk the walk, talk the talk that

22 w e do.

23 This amendment is composed of

-- made up of who

24 we buy or sustain from

-- our lands of timely this day and

25 age by actually take use and hand on experience harvest

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1 dressing operation clean, cook, and drink process of

2 harvest to taste is to

-- out this process up here points

3 to head. This end process is what we eat when something

4 does not look exactly how it is to look, when there's

5 something wron g with the food chain and is the

-- on the

6 way. We are here for compelling reason.

7 Yet again, faced with issue at the idea of the

8 Pebble project but careful pattern of thing fish

-- which

9 impact youth and taken part of the diet would be

10 eliminating, not if topics come into contact with the

11 world renowned salmon with proven that fair oil is not

12 good for the heart. And howev er, I conclude and thank you

13 for

-- to collect the first

-- firsthand and concern that

14 is the dramatic live off this land.

15 However, I urge your good office to convey with

16 the vote of confidence to Secretary of Interior to act

--

17 move under

-- the fish responsibility the office carry to

18 protect the fish population that

-- protect my statutory

19 definition by congress and other public law. I would like

20 to submit this for the record.

21 MS. CARSCALLEN: Good afternoon. Thank you. My

22 name is Katherine Carscallen; I'm was born and raised here

23 in Dilling ham. And I' fish commercially and subsistence

24 my whole life. I'm a third generation fishermen here.

25 First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the

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1 time and effort and all the hard work on this assessment.

2 I believe it's a preposterous task to define the volume as

3 fisheries and adopting it and numbers will always

4 undervalue resource means to people who depend on most.

5 But what you're hearing here today will hopefully he lp

6 fill the rest in on the assessment.

7 There was one major point that

-- given so far,

8 it's a detail that should be included in the assessment,

9 but also it's reason why the tr ibal fishermen are asking

10 for your help and action now. I'm talking about impacts

11 region that are going on right now on a massive scale with

12 no end IN sight. Effects of fuel spills, water

13 generation, connection of generation degradation of

14 significant and going on unchecked. I'll submit that

15 subject and hope it be included in you're final

16 assessment, more often the social impacts of the

17 exploration region right now.

18 You can ask anyone what the concern for future

19 is, overall it's about worrying about losing their

20 livelihood or way of life, all to mining development that

21 we don't want and thus has been out of our power to stop.

22 It's tremendous

-- have stopped mine by now we would have

23 not

-- jumping to the conclusions antidevelopment gone

24 through the process you're going through right now. Our

25 local city comments fishing organizations we've all done

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1 everything we can to ensure that fisheries protection

--

2 protected, but we're not the agency with the power to do

3 that; your agency was given the power on the nations Clean

4 Water Act gives you the authority and responsibility to

5 take actions in situations just like this now.

6 And so I thank you and hope this

-- your

7 assessment. And what I really ask you to do, the

8 conclusions you've already found are very clear what we

9 already know that this type of development pose an

10 unacceptable a dverse to the resources; please take action.

11 Thank you.

12 MS. TINKER: My name is Tina Tinker. I was born

13 here in 1958, but was raised in the Lower 48 until I was

14 19 and retur ned to meet my father. Since I got back I had

15 to learn my Native ways, ways of life. I remember when I

16 was a little girl sitting on my mother's lap and eating

17 dried fish and

-- I still remember my mot her getting

18 upset, she wanted to eat her fish she loved, which she

19 loved so much by herself and wishing I was playing

20 outside. But I couldn't stop eating and couldn't get

21 enough of ou r dry salmon.

22 When I first heard of this mine pebble, I told

23 myself, "Why would we want to destroy our lands and fish

24 when we have so much pristine water, which gives us life

25 for so many generations?" Since my Natives presence

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1 known, I have made great efforts to correct great baseline

2 water quality studies and influence data since 2004, and

3 have seen a change to this land. Truly there is salmon

4 all o ver the area now, a day

-- now a day we go up there

5 and you don't see them like I used to. This is telling me

6 that the exploration for gold and copper may already be

7 affecting the salmon that returns e very year.

8 Now, that rock is doing exploration, we are now

9 seeing the pike population be affected. We ask Bristol

10 Bay residents, fish resources, whether it's salmon or

11 other and fish that has kept our Native culture alive. We

12 also take great pride in teaching our children our way of

13 life by living off our resources like fish, caribou, and

14 moose. Which gold and cooper will never teach our Native

15 way of life or even feed our children.

16 So I'm asking you today to please help protect

17 our Bristol Bay watershed from large scale mining; because

18 if we don't act now, we may never see our way of life

19 again. Thank you.

20 MR. HIRUTSUKU: Hi, My name is Thomas Hirutsuku

21 from Dillingham and up the villages. You know, even if

22 this mine

-- I hope you it don't go through, because, you

23 know, the come

-- I've been all the way up the river, you

24 know, because I drink that water, because if this mining

25 does come through, we won't be ab le to drink it and camp

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1 on i t, we won't live off it. It's going to hurt us and

2 the salmon. Because we do go up there, go up the river

3 because we like it, it's clear, good water.

4 I like drinking that water. That's the g ood area

5 for camping and enjoying our freedom with the animals and

6 fish. And I love fish. I've been fishing all my life.

7 And, you know, and we want our grandkids to enjoy that,

8 you k now, enjoy our fish, enjoy our wildlife, and

-- good

9 fresh water we have. There's a fish fresh water, it goes

10 back whether they're going to drink when they go up river.

11 What they're going to have? The re's nothing to drink

12 because the water's all spoiled, because

-- I like to have

13 that water good, nice, and clean for our

-- our

14 generation, for our kids to be more happier. Thank you.

15 MR. CHEYETTE: Good afternoon, my name is Daniel

16 Cheyette. I represent the BBNC Native Corporation. This

17 past year I've had the honor and good fortune to work with

18 the BBNC board and shareh olders, and I've come to greatly

19 appreciate Bristol Bay and its people. The people who

20 live here love this land, this place. And I've heard from

21 so many the resource have supported their families for

22 thousands of years. The fish of Bristol Bay are the

23 region's greatest resource. Thank you for undertaking the

24 assessment and assembling a better understanding of

25 potential impacts of large scale mining development.

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1 The

-- there are many areas that the assessment

2 has gotten right. The Bristol Bay supports the world's

3 largest sockeye salmon fishery. That the fish and other

4 wildlife are essential to t he culture, structure, and

5 economies of the region. And that subsistence harvest are

6 essential to the people, on average obtain 80 percent of

7 protein from these resources, yes, yes, yes. But

8 nevertheless, there are other areas assessment that should

9 be expanded.

10 More attention should be focused on social

11 economics of the fishermen and on other resources mean to

12 the personnel economy economies of families. The roles

13 the subsistence plays to the cultural fabric of these

14 families and communities. The social cost to the

15 communities if these resources disa ppear. The assessment

16 should focus on how Bristol Bay would change if a mine or

17 mines were to be developed, the additional social services

18 that would be necessary, the stresses that would be

19 introduced by the necessary expansion that would

20 inevitably occur.

21 In short, the assessment does a great job of

22 identifying the more direct and immediate impacts that

23 would result from the mine; but we need to peel back more

24 layers, underlying changes of mining would cause the

25 communities, families, and lives of Bristol Bay. I urge

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1 you to finalize the assessment on the current time line

2 and th en start your restrictions that will protect the

3 unique and special place. Thank you.

4 MR. VICTOR NICK: I'm Friar Victor Nick. My son

5 and I are both commercial fishermen here. I've always ha d

6 fishing net ever since we were little children. A few

7 years ago our

-- our leaders in the church, known as the

8 Bristol Bay Church, came together to allow the rest of us

9 TO discover the uniqueness and the people within our

10 church to bless the waters of the lake. And to sand they

11

-- the waters, and so they the

-- the

-- the fish and

12 moose, caribou, and everything that touches these

--

13 touched by the waters, including all our communities. And

14 that's something we've done a few years ago, but that's

15 what we've within doing for the past 200 years.

16 Once the orthodox missionaries landed in the soil

17 of Alaska, they've always do the blessings of waters. So

18 this one realized that not just the orthodox enjoy these

19 blessings, but everyone here in the

-- in the town of

20 Dillingham, in the villages up river and Togiak and all of

21 us are touched by the waters; therefore, we're all touched

22 by the blessings. Last year I was approached by members

23 of the Pebble Mine, and to introduce themselves I once

24 realized that I'm

-- I'm for fishing, he walked away. How

25 can I bless that mine that destroyed us? The mine takes

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1 gold and cooper into one pocket and then take out the

--

2 fr om the other pocket for which way to vote.

3 So I thank you very much for being here for the

4 people here. This is our life

-- this is our life. Thank

5 you.

6 MS. HURLEY: Good afternoon. My name is Alannah

7 Hurley. I'm here today as grandmother and the daughter of

8 parents Dessert Hurley [phonetic]. I was born and raised

9 here in Bristol Bay, and I'm fortunate to live a

10 subsistence way of life. I'm also a commercial

11 fisherwoman. First, thank you very much for

-- water

12 assessment. I saw your slide earlier that our subsistence

13 way of life is qualif ied worth of $6,000,000 annually.

14 Although I appreciate your calculation, I beg to differ.

15 You cannot set a price tag to define yourself as

16 subsistence, some people of

-- attempting to assign a

17 price tag to life itself. Listen to us, as you've heard

18 all day from all these people with the culture and way of

19 life is priceless.

20 The last point, the executive summary states that

21 the actual response of Alaska impacts is uncertain. And

22 it isn't possible to predict specific changes in

23 demographics, cultural practices, or physical and mental

24 health. You can get the answer to this question by simply

25 looking into history of many of the innocent people now

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1 impacted negatively by mining like the

-- whose cultures

2 existence has been and continues to be affected by the

3 mining industry. And a s you've heard today from every

4 single person who stood up and is connected to Bristol

5 Bay, we will tell you what will happen to our people if

6 miners were

-- you destroy our home. Our culture will

7 die. Our fishing economy will crash, and our thriving

8 Bristol Bay will be a haunting memory of what we used to

9 have.

10 I have a hundred voices of people who couldn't

1 1 make it today pleading with you to not let it happen. You

12 have your scientific evidence of

-- have always known.

13 Bristol Bay is worth protecting. We know our land will

14 always take care of us as lo ng as we fight to protect it.

15 Now, do what we all know is right to Bristol Bay watershed

16 into action and use your authority under 404(c) to protect

17 Bristol Bay.

18 MR. CHYTHLOOK: Hi you guys, good to see you. My

19 name is Daniel Chythlook, you know me you as the tribal

20 coordinator. Clean water has been told by

-- without

21 clean help to water not. You want to ensure that you ar e

22 drinking clean water. Salmon, along with fresh waters

23 fish, has been part of the food system and will continue

24 to be part of the food system; so we hope you guys keep

25 it.

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1 I don't

-- the one place that 's major salmons

2 spawning tributaries that salmon goes to hatch. Salmon

3 has been part of our Native spiritual food; and without

4 the food and waters we will die slowly, we'll be here

5 e xisting, but our spirit will be gone. Other people

6 realize our salmon is commercial and Bristol Bay is one of

7 many areas of five species of land is spawn. We'd like to

8 see our salmon continue to retur n and the waters remain

9 healthy so they can spawn and other places that, of

10 course, clean waters are needed to help our moose,

11 caribou, fresh water fisheries all to survive. It's a

12 gi ft to be here today at this assessment. Yee haw.

13 MR. CUNNINGHAM: Hi, I'm Curry Cunningham. I do

14 commercial fishing in Bristol Bay. With college fishing

15 out here. While I'll applaud your as sessment, I wonder if

16 the risk

-- that risk probability that is generated is

17 underestimated, they come from the literature review of

18 other mines around the world is one of the most unstable

19 places on the earth. Another question that proposed to me

20 after reviewing the document was the cost of maintaining

21 the mines for long time, forever is a long time. Much

22 longer life span of most corporations, so then who's going

23 to foot the bill in the long run?

24 To save a last effort to save the residents of

25 Bristol Bay and finally plea with respect to the criticism

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1 that your actions are premature, being the lack of permit

2 applications. I would venture to say that there has

3 already been an impact. Exploratory mining is already

4 ongoing. In just two years ago gallons of fuel were

5 spilled in t he river as a direct result of development

6 actions. That's all. Thank you.

7 MR. RADENBURGH: Thank you very much. I very

8 much appreciate all the work that's been done, and my name

9 is Todd Radenburgh. I'm with the UAF Bristol Bay campus

10 environmental, I'm a professor here. And you say we need

11 science, getting science you need one thing, I would like

12 to mention we didn't s ee in the reports that say we had

13 two very fabulous

-- last nine

- months hear in Dillingham.

14 A lot of people who are in this room presented all kinds

15 of data that abstract books, and I guess you call it

16 literature. We'd like to see some of that information

17 maybe to be included in this next version of the document.

18 Another issue is, I love to see a real definition

19 of the worl d perpetuity. The second generations pay the

20

-- to me it says seven million years, 100 million years,

21 all this has implications of scale. So I'd like to see

22 scale issues as well, individual scale, ind ividuals going

23 up to the communities, and both the social aspects as well

24 as the major or natural aspect, ecosystems services; there

25 is nothing like that in the document.

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1 From the perspective, where does the value of

2 undeveloped real estate. Usually the London School of

3 Economies says it doesn't have a value until you cut the

4 trees or you put a farm plot on it. Obviously it has

5 value. I'd love to se e that value in a document

6 somewhere. Nature has to be more developed and it's

7 getting less and less from an economic value should have

8 more value. This region not being able to have major

9 value. Thank you.

10 MS. LIND: Good afternoon, my name is Gladys

11 Lind; and I'm a third generation commercial fisherwoman on

12 the beach, which is about 30 miles southwest of here.

13 I've also subsistence fished my entire life. And my

14 husband and I are raising our four children to do the

15 same. I speak to the assessment. Thank you for providing

16 the assessment in response to the six tribes that

17 requested it be done.

18 In reviewing the material my daughter copied

19 yesterday, I saw that the EPA conducted extensive

20 scientific research that basically supports all along what

21 we feared would happen should a large open pit mine be

22 allowed to go through. My only critique surrounds the

23 portion of the assessment which is titled "fish mediated

24 risk to indigenous culture." I want to point out that

25 indigenous

-- and the daughter of a culture for over

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1 88 years

-- I read it with great indifference, because

2 what is lacking is how can one remain scientific and

3 predict the effects having the main stay of our

4 subsistence culture taken away from us? To attempt to

5 document any predictions or produce any scientific

6 hypothesis could not be able to describe the devastatio n

7 to our way of life could not be captured in two

8 paragraphs. I'll leave you with that. Thank you very

9 much.

10 MS. JENKINS

- BRITO: Hi. My name is Susan

11 Jenk ins

- Brito. I'm a lifelong Alaskan, a Dillingham

12 resident, and a sports subsistence commercial fishermen.

13 My husband is a lifelong Bristol Bay resident and third

14 generation, and we hope our daughter fol lows in our

15 footsteps. As a family who are opposed by the Pebble

16 Mine, we want to thank the EPA for this assessment of the

17 potential impacts that could come to subsidiary companies.

18 We were concerned about the king salmons freely

19 stopping being a species, and we were concerned about

20 protecting the other four species of salmon. We need to

21 protect our clean water sources fro m contamination and as

22 well as our fresh water, salt water, and salmon stocks

--

23 or fish stocks, I'm sorry. Not to mention all the water

24 foul in the area that rely heavily on catches to feed our

25 family year around and commercial salmon fishing our

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1 livelihood.

2 Thank you to EPA for coming to Bristol Bay and

3 for your scientific efforts to help keep Pebbles and all

4 mines out of our precious home. There i s just too many

5 uncertainties to take this risk. Thank you.

6 MS. LARSON: Good afternoon; and hello to Rick,

7 it's nice to see you again. So that was nice since

8 talking to you . I'm Dorothy B. Larson. I'm the

9 administrator to the tribal council here in Dillingham.

10 And we reviewed as much as we could, the assessment we've

11 had it for a couple weeks; so I haven't gotten throug h

12 every page. We hear all the time that the EPA is a pain

13 in the butt, so I wanted you to know personally that we

14 appreciate you being here and some of

-- that you can help

15 us with pr otecting our environment.

16 I think to me the EPA main focus is the

17 environment. It's not business, it's not money, and maybe

18 not even government, but the environment; and we

19 a ppreciate that you are experts in that. I also

20 appreciate the research that

-- new assessments. And it's

21 pretty astonishing to see in black and white what we know

22 what

-- happen to our renewable resou rces if any little

23 mishap happens at the mine. We requested that the EPA

24 utilize their authority to enforce the 404(c) on the Clean

25 Water Act to protect the watershed that request still

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1 stands.

2 I'd like to remind you that to use your authority

3 to do so, we don't have to prove that a mishap will

4 happen, but that if a mishap does happen, that it will

5 cause horror to renewable resources. I believe this

6 assessment makes it clear that even a smallest of mishap

7 in a mining scenario will harm a renewable resources. And

8 I also am concerned that when you talk about close mining

9 monitoring , that you use the word potentially continue and

10 perpetuity, I don't think that's an option, the continuing

11 perpetuity is an absolute necessity and a must.

12 So thank you for your time, and we do appreciate

13 the assessment; and we're glad that you're here; and we'll

14 see you at the pot luck at 5:00.

15 MR. MONTECUCCO: Hi, I'm John Montecucco. I've

16 been fishing here, I gu ess, for about 22 years. I guess a

17

-- parts of the assessment that I have a little bit of

18 emphasis that has the seismic; because like when I look I

19 see a little in

- perpetuity constitutes the old saying what

20 goes up must come down. And in perpetuity in essentially

21 I think look like from giant

-- either it seems like, you

22 know, that eventually there will be an earthquake and it

23 could come very

-- and it seems to me that less than

24 50 years ago we had a 9.2 earthquake here in Alaska, and

25 we have an active volcano here.

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1 And I think that to be told they

-- that somebody

2 think that they can safely enginee r a dam of that size

3 here

-- you know you're watching footage from, you know,

4 the tsunami in Japan, and I think safely engineering with

5 Mother nature is kind of difficult. And I guess you're

6 the Environment Protection Agency, I would just ask that

7 you protect our environment. Thanks.

8 MR. FAITL: I'm Joseph R. Faitl. My family and I

9 live in Dillingham. I have extended fam ily in long

--

10 fish and mining. I prospected for gold in Wyoming and

11 Flagstaff, and I commercial fish here in Bristol Bay.

12 Strongly oppose Pebble Mine and any other mine in Bristol

13 Ba y, for many reasons I've already given today. I support

14 the EPA assessment, and I also ask that you consider

-- or

15 continue to consider, if you have our cold temperatures

16 and recovery rates of our plan ts, fish, water and so forth

17 when considering mitigation measures or damages to the

18 area.

19 The recovery rate in Alaska, I believe, is very

20 slow. We were at very cold temperatu res, 30 below

21 temperatures for weeks. I also was pleased to see that

22 assessment considered rain falling on top of spring snow.

23 It is fairly common for rain to wipe out our snow in two

24 or three days, not just in spring, but during the winter.

25 And if you know the rain and snow combined together can

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1 create a risk of flood or erosion. Additionally, the

2 facts that do matter concern that you

-- getting some

3 cherry picked facts from some of those collecting the

4 data. I hope there is a way for you to verify that facts

5 are objective, not cherry picked for your assessment.

6 Finally, I thank you greatly for your asses sment and

7 coming to Dillingham.

8 MR. McCANABLY: Hi, and thank you very much for

9 the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Kevin

10 McCanably. So to a lot of the owners in the region you

11 know why I come today. I'm 26 years old, going to my

12 ninth year or ninth season of permit holder; and I've been

13 fishing since before it was commercialized. So I feel

14 that not only the fish and the wildlife that depend on

15 them, myself included, are too important to risk for any

16 economic reason that the mine could bring.

17 Accidental discharge of processed chem icals and

18 byproducts and acid mine leaks are realistic concerns.

19 Mining has an approximate important environmental track

20 record according to USPA of contaminated waters of 40

21 waters of western continental U.S. and 500,000 abandoned

22 mines in 32 states that can cost tens of billions of

23 dollars according to Earthworks. A recent study of 25

24 modern large rock compared water volume with e nvironmental

25 impact statements predictions from the permitting stage,

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1 and 76 percent of those 1,925 exceeded water fall and

2 released either surface or ground water. And community

3 worker safety public health and environment proble m that

4 is mining on races south gone other in the U.S. down from

5 of Canada

-- they also already been a permit progress and

6 have 45 land and water use violations.

7 And in closin g, I kind of had another mine in

8 mind where they had failures, where it leaked into the

9 river and up 250,000 lives from one of 120 down stream of

10 the mine has been affected and all the leak for liveliho od

11 far out weigh the risks in the area.

12 I really appreciate your time. And seriously I

13 do understand that the State of Alaska really is looking

14 to, you know, keep the governm ent, the Feds out of this

--

15 this decision

- making; but the State of Alaska and the

16 Alaska day

- to

- day of resources repeatedly violates section

17 8 of Alaska

-- issue with specifically provide of leases

18 of state land were prescribe public notice of safe

--

19 permitting is, in my mind, effective because it has

20 sufficiently rigorous determine that issue of permit will

21 best as demonstrated by on by the a lack of received

22 served as an input.

23 MS. ALAKAYAK: (Speaking Native tongue.)

24 (Indiscernible speaker.) That's my name, my

-- I survive.

25 My great

- great grandma su rvived from starvation. Sockeye

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1 salmon is needed to survive. And then I thank you guys

2 for coming here and supporting our effort to keep our

3 waters clean here in Bristol Bay. Here we have our

4 subsistence lifestyle. We eat the food, fish all the

5 animals in the

-- on the land. And we set the mouth and

6 help to feed the rest of the human population out on the

7 earth here on this globe.

8 And I appreciate the assessment that you bring

9 here. And the one word that stands out when I see the

10 assessment is the word "forever." You know you bring us

11 your scientific research. We read that and we

-- we have

12 to give

-- what

-- what

-- what happens as the process

13 goes in this

-- this evolution? Here the earth

-- if

14 we're feeding the moose on the earth, as are salmon, just

15 through the cracks if the mine drainage with all of the

16 elements, the raising of the flood poisoning the water,

17 that means we're going to be poisoning the rest of the

18 people on the earth. And here our human rights are

19 recognized as tribal state United States citizen Americans

20 and the UN recognizes us as well. So thank you.

21 MR. MOORE: Hi, I'm Ah

- by

- you Moore; I'm from

22 Dillingham. I'm a lif elong resident, I'm 28. This

23 happens all the time. I love Dillingham and call it home,

24 because I love it here. And I came to realize exactly how

25 much I love it here. Talk about this strike of

-- it was

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1 like my life flashed bef ore my eyes. I'm an artist, so I

2 came home and I started painting murals around here is

3 what I did. This issue is particularly important to my

4 generation, because we share

-- shared resources in the

5 region

-- how able to appear.

6 We share the clean water and everything like

7 moose, caribou, and salmon that live because of the clean

8 water. I was just watching the Mystery Cha nnel the other

9 day, that severe water shortages around the world in 50

10 years. This is about the time that Pebble will be done

11 mining and when the world will desperately need clean

12 dri nking water. We utilize the food and water here

13 perhaps it will still be edible in 50 years. Lets face

14 it, without clean water, our chances to live our

15 subsistence lifestyle are slim.

16 Like the salmon, I plan on spawning out here in

17 Bristol Bay. My daughter will be raised eating

18 subsistence food, she's four months and I'm feeding her

19 dried beef. Please protect our lifesty le and our culture.

20 Thanks.

21 MS. ROEHL: My name is RaeAnn Roehl. I love

22 Bristol Bay; because ever since I can remember, my fresh

23

-- my home, my whole family has been subsiste nce fishers.

24 So that could possibly pollute Bristol Bay making this

25 planet

-- because my family and so many others have been

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1 reliant for food and money. Pollution of the water won't

2 just affect the animals in Bristol Bay, but it will affect

3 all wildlife that eats and drinks from the bay. And

4 please use the 404(c) authority to protect Bristol Bay and

5 my future. Thank you.

6 MS. MOWER: Hello, my name i s Katrina Mower; and

7 I'm Crystal Nixon's daughter. We eat a lot of fish in the

8 family and lots of fish at the house. I think that the

9 fish we enjoy at our house and the water we drink will

10 probably be polluted. It breaks my heart, because fishing

11 with my family is one of the great times I enjoy. And a

12 big reason why I

-- I know that all my family members love

13 to teach me and my s iblings to fish. I would like to do

14

-- I would like to do the same with my kids and grandkids.

15 If this Pebble Mine goes around, could

-- never

16 be able to fish the same way as we do now. I'm s ure that

17 people going along with this will try not to pollute our

18 fish, but it's very, very sure they can't. So please help

19 stop Pebble Mine. Thank you.

20 MS. SORENSEN: My na me is Chenita Sorensen. Ever

21 since I was a little girl I have been fishing with my

22 Grandpa Pat. The smell of fish brings to my memory of

23 when I think of Pebble Mine. I with

-- worry this

24 happening would be a risk of pollution in the water

25 culture in many ways. Fish is a huge resource and

--

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1 throughout Alaska. If you think of the children and what

2 they will do when they are all older and generations to

3 come . Please stop the Pebble Mine and use your 404(c)

4 authority to protect Bristol Bay and my future.

5 MS. NIXON

- LUCKHURST: Hi, thank you for being

6 here today. As she said, my name is Crystal

7 Nixon

- Luckhurst. I grew up in Dillingham; and subsistence

8 is a major part of my life while growing up, and it

9 continues to be today. Throughout the year we might fish

10 and gather from th e land. The majority of my food in my

11 house is the fish, it's frozen, canned, salted or smoked.

12 Salmon is important to me culturally and spiritually. I

13 prepare fish for my mom and my grandmother and m y aunties;

14 and we're all teaching my children how to prepare fish,

15 and they're ages 2 to 13.

16 Besides fish, we are very active with other

17 subsistence food from this home. When I grew, I looked in

18 the freezer you would find blueberries, red berries

19 blackberries, huckleberries, chicken, duck, goose, smelts

20 wild greens, and if we're lucky, a moose and caribou,

21 along with king salmon, red silver, and my favorite is dog

22 salmon. I will believe that proposed Pebble Mine would

23 hurt our subsistence way of life. And it would directly

24 hurt my family and our future generations of the people of

25 Bristol Bay. And it would

-- it would literally kill our

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1 way of life here. So please use your 404(c) authority to

2 protect our Bristol Bay and our families. Thank you.

3 MS. LARSON: Hello. I would like to first

4 welcome the EPA to Bristol Bay, and thank you for this

5 opportunity to speak. My name is Delores Larson; I'm an

6 Eskimo. I was born here in Dillingham and raised in the

7 Native village. I am the environmental coordinator,

8 village council and also proud to say that I'm a

9 commercial fisher woman and lifelong subsistence user.

10 Curley [phonetic] is located on the le ft bank furthest

11 village of the river. Curley has about 300 tribal

12 members, and with a population of approximately 210.

13 With that said, I would like to thank the EPA for

14 doin g the Briston Bay Watershed Assessment. We have been

15 concerned with the Pebble for many years and asking the

16 EPA to please use your authority under section 404(c) of

17 the Clean Water Act to protect our watershed and

18 everything that goes with it. This includes the very air

19 that we breathe; our pristine water; the land that we live

20 off of; and most importantly, the Fish and Wildlife; and

2 1 ultimately human health.

22 I consider myself a rich Native resident, but not

23 because of money and

-- but of the food in my freezer; the

24 food that comes from my land; the food that comes with

25 every season all year long; whether it's salmon, wild

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1 plants; berries in the summer; moose, pike, whitefish in

2 the fall; caribou, geese, and ducks in the spring. You

3 name it, we eat it. Our Fish and Wildlife are not only

4 fresh and abundant, but also very lean and healthy. I

5 truly believe that the proposed Pebble Mine, the

6 traditional Native subsistence lifestyle, a lifestyle that

7 flourished for nearly 10,000 years.

8 Bristol Bay supplies the largest wild salmon fish

9 left on earth. Already there are concerns about mining

10 exclusions going on, we were noticing a change in our

11 caribou that usually come straight through or near my

12 community. We have also noticed in our

-- very concerned

13 with fresh water, fish like our pike and whitefish. I'm

14 not certain that these are results from the mining

15 exclusions but certainly will not help it. From the

16 watershed assessment, EPA find that even if the proposed

17 Pebble Mine would run time still have an effect on our

18 salmon h abitant and in passing our culture and our way of

19 life, primarily food sources and long term subsistence

20 economy they are too great for the Native people of this

21 land.

22 I speak on behalf of my family and community in

23 Bristol Bay, And for future generations will not have the

24 best of both worlds that is the money and jobs that come

25 from mining, and in the salmon and wildlife th at coming

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1 from the very land . I mean no disrespect, but it is

2 common sense that mining and salmon cannot co

- exist. I

3 choose salmon, I choose Bristol Bay; it is time for EPA to

4 take action under section 404(c). Thank you.

5 MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. My name is Fritz

6 Johnson; I live in Dillingham. Bristol Bay became my home

7 when I became a commercial fishermen, I've been here ever

8 since. I don't have any recommendation for modifying the

9 science of the watershed assessment. I want to thank you

10 for documenting what the people here are confirming, that

11 Bristol Bay is a natural treasure that needs your

12 protection.

13 You're all aware, I'm on both coasts of North

14 America less than a hundred years ago, specifically

15 northwest in California, commercial salmon fishing there

16 described as producing money and fish like rain. Those

17 are not existing anymore. They weren't

-- just a shadow

18 that they used to be. And they weren't doing it on

19 purpose but population gro wth development.

20 In Bristol Bay

-- telling you experience it's

21 difficult to comprehend what right described salmon runs

22 here

-- biblical hoards. It's the last on the planet and

23 the protection of places like this is

-- is the very

24 reason that the Environmental Protection Agency exists.

25 Please hear our voices and let the science guide you.

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1 Political pressure call as such serve the sciences and it

2 won't serve your mission. Thank you.

3 MS. SEITZ: Good afternoon. Timing is

4 everything. Thank you so much for the opportunity to

5 comment on your assessment of the potential mining in

6 Bristol Bay. I'm Jody Seitz, I'm the planning director of

7 the City of Dillingham. I was asked to testify on behalf

8 of the City of Dillingham. The Dillingham City Council

9 have showed repeatedly th at they are in favor of

10 protecting the resources of Bristol Bay and is evidently

11 opposed to offshore oil exploration as well as large scale

12 mining in Bristol Bay. That's specifically the Pebble

13 Mine.

14 The EPA review of drafts are very consistent with

15 recently opposed large scale mining first in 2006.

16 Resolution 2006

- 201 is about how Dillingham depends on

17 se rving as a major hub and import for the world's largest

18 salmon fishery. And on the commercial wild salmon fishery

19 has been the backbone of many people's livelihoods and

20 subsistence for many generations . There are 297

21 commercial in the world watersheds here in watershed of

22 those 156 drift, 112 near Dillingham. Multiply that by

23 three, that's the number of jobs created.

24 You can see that Dillingham hosts one of the last

25 working fisheries in the nation. When driving through

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1 town you see fishing boats in people's yards, nets being

2 hung, the BA boatyard, the protected harbor in Bristol

3 Bay, processing p lants, trucks full of fish boxes out to

4 the airport, the airport

-- air cargo planes are

5 frequently flying out. Fish nets and subsistence signs on

6 the beaches now for the king salmon run to arrive.

7 We post no

-- that benefit the fisheries, and the

8 fisheries require pristine water for the survival of fish

9 and everything that's connected to them. As the sign

10 says, crystal wa ters communities as well as people in the

11 area depends on wells for fresh water. The cities of

12 large scale mining recognizes other large scale spawning,

13 the other species are susceptible to earthquakes . Thank

14 you for validating the other risks posed by the mining

15 discussed, as well as looking at the consequences over of

16 the mine. This city offered to staff and air $7,000,000

17

-- it spent 82 million the deferred products 38 needed

18 just to mix light on safety problems with our own

-- fail

19 equipment. You think be last oppose mining it opposed

20 large scale mining when though 201 it b anned any funds the

21 Pebble fund due relationship the pearl partnership.

22 The council is protecting the urban living and

23 the salmon fisheries. The best option for survival for

24 our community long after peak oil, copper and gold run

25 out. Thank you. I'll submit industry resolutions for

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1 your record.

2 MS. BENNS: Wassilliisia Benns. I'm here to

3 represent my family members. I was born and raised h ere

4 in Dillingham. I'm a subsistence user first and foremost.

5 My family will be fishing both for commercial and

6 subsistence. We hunt for moose, caribou, and birds. I

7 also harvest be rries and plants. It breaks my heart to

8 think my grandchildren's children may not be able to do

9 the same thing and have the great resource we have in

10 Bristol Bay. I practice and I teach my children an d

11 grandchildren how to process fish. We smoke, we salt, we

12 can, and we freeze. We pick berries. We have black,

13 blue, red berries that we all pick together. And we also

14 process as a fundamentally moose, caribou, and birds.

15 The life

-- the lifestyle we have here in Bristol

16 Bay has taught my family to be productive citizens,

17 commercial fishing, working as a family or to wor k all

18 together. All my family members, including my brothers

19 and sisters, live here in Dillingham. We grew up eating

20 fish, and we will die eating fish. And

-- and we'll

21 continue to live off the land. Please protect our

22 resources. Thank you for taking time out. And I don't

23 see

-- end of day, but I wanted to share with you some of

24 what my family does every summer. So thank you.

25 MR. WASSILY: Hi, good morning; I'm Danny

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1 Wassily. I'm a commercial fishermen and subsistence user.

2 I love subsistence, I love to hunt, I love to put up fish,

3 I love to hunt moose and caribou, I love to pick berries.

4 I'm against the Pebble Mine; I like you guys to join them.

5 The watershed is a very important part of life, it does

6 feed the fish, it brings fish back to spawn and bring the

7 small fish and also to the birds and the life of animals.

8 To take away the water we have nothing.

9 The water in front of you right now

-- like my

10 brother said, it may run just for a two, it could run from

11 10 to 20 bucks. You take away our water we're going to

12 have nothing; we're going to starve. We're going to have

13 nothing to drink but this toxic waste. And we build that

14 dam in the wint ers to come all that snow and water it

15 melts, that's going to overflow and bust; and it will

16 contaminate the whole Alaska, all the rivers. Like I

17 said, it will kill everything that's right now. You se e

18 the pictures of what they're doing and the holes they dug.

19 I guarantee all the animals will have to move

20 away from here. You go to all the holes they dug, they

21 dug nearly 6 00 holes, I heard maybe 12

-- 12 holes. I

22 guarantee you I know the Pebbles eventually as of

-- I

23 thank you for your time.

24 MS. MUIR: Thank you for doing the Briston Bay

25 Water shed Assessment. And thank you for coming to

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1 Dillingham. My name is Rachel Muir. I'm a practitioner

2 in the

-- here. I'm a 20

- year resident of Dillingham.

3 I'm representing myself and my experience here in Bristol

4 Bay, and I'm o n leave time right now. The people of

5 Bristol Bay have supported themselves on the land and

6 water for thousand of years through subsistence and

7 commercial fishing, and this community in balance. In th e

8 watershed assessment it states that 46 percent of the

9 world's sockeye salmon comes from Bristol Bay. So

10 technically the people of Bristol Bay have been supporting

11 themselves for tho usands of years so the people of the

12 world can afford to buy wild salmon for hundreds of years.

13 From my perspective, the last hundred years

14 compensation by agencies in the state. Social

-- of the

15 new change, just purification is much stronger, as already

16 incurred

-- it seems absolutely unethical to allow

17 corporation intervention to divide the people of Bristol

18 Bay. Over a 20

-- over a 40

- to 70

- year stretch, rare

19 metal resource extraction and

-- in the regions rich and

20 balanced ecosystem recognize their strength and our EPA a

21 survival by taking action

-- clean water acti on section,

22 404(c).

23 Thank you for standing up risk assessment,

24 understanding benefits of clean water, and for listening

25 today. Please use your authority to protect this corne r

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1 of the world with 404(c) s ection of the Clean Water Act

2 you are supporting here by the people of Bristol Bay.

3 MS. MERAZ: My name is Colette Meraz; I live in

4 Dillingham. I am the daughter of Carrie Barnes. I spent

5 most of my childhood with my grandparents, Daisy Barnes

6 and the late Harley Barnes Sr. I come from a family of

7 commercial fishermen. I spent my time at fish camp or on

8 my grandfather's boat, and I have many wonderful memories

9 fishing and gathering subsistence foods. I am now married

10 and have three wonderful children. Sunshine was 11;

11 Aubrina was three; and Wakey, who is one. And ev ery year

12 we freeze, smoke, salt, and can fish. We do this because

13 this is who we are.

14 My children know how rich our future is from the

15 net. They help process the fish and st ore it for the

16 winter months. This way of life was passed down to me

17 from my mother and my grandparents. And I am passing my

18 way of life to my children. And the thought of my

19 childr en not being able to pass our way of life to their

20 children makes my heart hurt. I come to you today for my

21 children and my grandchildren's way of life to continue to

22 be passed on to the future generat ions. Please protect

23 our water. Thank you.

24 MR. SMALL: [Indiscernible speaker.] Hi, my name

25 is Stan Small. I live in Dillingham. My wife and six

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1 kids and six grandchildren. And the one thing that they

2 forget to say about the little bit of fishing tributaries

3 of that

-- the title folks goes all the way up to passed

4

-- up the new

-- up the

-- all away

-- everything coming

5 out of this bay may go

-- these different tributaries.

6 Outside the fish travel down there like the trade they

7 don't swim against the tide, they come back up

-- tide

8 come with them. All the toxins would go right along with

9 them with the ice and the ice breaking them up

-- dirt

10 into the mud it thickens, moves the mud on down pretty big

11

-- sandbar across the bay here or come here the next year

12 pick up, disappea r, move down the bay some place else.

13 So it's not just

-- just the one place, it's all

14 these other

-- these other mining concerns are waiting for

15 you to pass this one. So they can set more min ing Bristol

16 Bay. It is by

-- guys said it was already

-- so why don't

17 you. So this isn't just one little thing or do this one

18 thing and try this is a whole of Bristol Bay and that

19 af ter they

-- they sell this thing off, then the big guy

20 takes the big bucks, all the flex guy who has a couple of

21 dollars less and sells to the next guy who dime

--

22 collapse or somebody owns that 50 cent pocket shoot

-- fix

23 that sorry bankrupt; and that's how it goes.

24 It'll go right on down. The big guy wrote sets

25 that I'm going to cover my bill, I'm

-- pay my way, before

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1 it ever gets to where it's that bad. A hundred years from

2 now we're all gone in affect us Pebble Mine told me you

3 don't have to worry about stand, because by the year 2020

4 is building the dam. And my kids won't get to fish but

5 you won't have to worry about it, stand. But I worry

6 about my kids I said what about my kids whether or not get

7 a job working an the mine. Yeah, okay. Thank you very

8 much. Thank you very much for think ing about this and

9 doing this before something happens. Why wait till later?

10 MR. LIBOFT: Hi, my name is Jerry Liboft. I am a

11 45

- year resident of Bristol Bay, and I fished all of these

12 years. Thanks for endorsing the 404(c) and for setting

13 the issues, and I really appreciate it. My concerns

14 outline your draft assessment at two levels of

15 uncertainty. The first level of u ncertainty is the

16 uncertainty the inconclusiveness of the existing knowledge

17 that we have in the ecology region. We still don't know

18

-- very little of the geology, biology, seismology, and

19 their interactions in the sensitive area that we call

20 Bristol Bay. We need science and setting up the area

21 before we risk large scale mining.

22 My second level of concern on the uncertaint y is

23 the extent of our ability to quantify and effectively

24 mitigate potential failing on operation and closures of

25 mines the size of the Pebble. Experts have proved the

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1 operations were three times in the last couple of years.

2 We were told that they somehow leaked; and they said it

3 never happen, and if it did, it could be effectively

4 vague; that the experts were wrong on both counts. We

5 were told the same thin g for The Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

6 The largest oil spill in northern American history, the

7 experts said it wouldn't happen, they were wrong.

8 And finally, last year the earthquake and Tsunami

9 in Japan, it caused a meltdown of the reactor; the results

10 of which were not predicted it couldn't happen, yet it

11 did. Japan lived with the consequences for generations.

12 I think the know n and unknown risks outlined in your

13 document lead me to say, "Invoke the 404(c) and stop big

14 mining now." Until you can be assured, really assured,

15 that nothing will go wrong. President Obama said la st

16 year in closing offshore oil rigs, mentioned Bristol Bay

17 and mentioned it is a treasure that we can be

-- risk, the

18 same applies to large scale mining. Thanks for your time

19 and con cern.

20 MS. DUNLAP: Hi, my name is Heidi Dunlap; and I'm

21 a second generation commercial fishermen. I've been

22 harvesting salmon here in Bristol Bay for 19 years. This

23 is been my only job. Catching fish, processing fish or

24 selling fish, particularly salmon. I strongly

-- I

25 strongly oppose Pebble Mine. Our salmon needs clean water

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1 to exist and prosper. I would like to propose the idea

2 that Bristol Ba y salmon could quite possibly be the

3 largest most sustainable wild food base resource in the

4 world. Why risk something so great?

5 If our salmon stopped returning for some other

6 reason, then maybe we could consider extracting these

7 resources. In another hundred years these minerals will

8 still be here, and my bet is that the industry will have a

9 better method of extraction by then. Thank you for being

10 here, thank you for doing this assessment. I support and

11 agree on most aspects of it. However, with the final

12 assessment I would like to see more research and emphasis

13 put to seismic activity of the area and it's potential

14 impacts on a massive mine and an ecological and sensitive

15 environment. I also think the comment period should not

16 be extended. This process does not need to be further

17 postponed. Please initiate 404(c) of the Clean Water Act

18 to protect Bristol Bay, its watershed, and its people.

19 Thank you.

20

21

22

23

24

25

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1 CERTIFICATE

2

3 I, BROOKLENDE D. LEAVITT, notary public for

4 the State of Alaska, and Certified Shorthand Reporter, do

5 hereby certi fy that the foregoing proceedings were taken

6 before me at the time and place herein set forth; that the

7 witness was sworn to tell the truth; that the proceedings

8 were reported stenographically by me and later transcribed

9 by computer transcription; that the foregoing is a true

10 record of the proceedings taken at that time; and that I

11 am not a party to, nor do I have any interest in, the

12 outcome of the action herein contained.

13 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my

14 hand and affixed my seal this 3rd day of July, 2012.

15

16

17

18

_______________________________

19 Brooklende D. Leavitt

20 Notary Public, State of Alaska

21 My commission expires: 1/30/2016

22

23

24

25

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