It's not surprising that the five-member Iliamna Village Council, four of whom are employed now or have been employed by the Pebble Partnership, would be critical of the EPA’s Bristol Bay watershed assessment. The council requested that its own handpicked scientist review the EPA’s work and prepare comments to the EPA for the council’s submission, take that EPA!
So they hired Dr. Donald Macalady, professor emeritus of chemistry and geochemistry at the Colorado School of Mines, and the school’s previous director of the Center for Environmental Risk for the job.
The result? In addition to other various environmental nastiness, Macaldy's report said the mine would likely eliminate the salmon spawning runs “in a large portion of the area’s watersheds,” and that this “elimination will be essentially irreversible.”
Oops!
Unfortunately for the Village Council their President Lorene Anelon neglected to read Dr. Macalady's report before formally submitting it the EPA, assuming it "was all on the same page as the village."
LINK (via: Amanda Coyne)