Governor Sean Parnell, Keep Your Word

Governor Sean Parnell says: “I’ll never trade one resource for another.”

Yet 45 miles west of Anchorage near the communities of Tyonek and Beluga in upper Cook Inlet, PacRim Coal wants to build a massive coal strip mine that will completely remove 11 miles of Middle Creek (Stream 2003), a major tributary of the Chuit River – a stream deemed important to salmon by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

PacRim claims they can rebuild Middle Creek, returning it to pre-mining productivity, yet they have not provided a single example of a reclaimed salmon stream after this level of impact.  Scientific experts are clear, it’s not possible to reconstruct a new wild salmon spawning stream to the same level of productivity after mining ends, see Trasky, Wipfli and Palmer.

So why should Alaska risk losing a wild salmon stream so an outside company can send coal to China?

Please send a letter to Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, tell him we Alaskan’s should  never trade away a wild salmon stream, especially for coal to power Asia. Point out the Chuit River, its tributaries and surrounding wetlands, are unsuitable for mining because, like Humpty Dumpty,  once the ecosystem is taken apart it can never be put back together.

Learn the facts about reclamation here.

The Chuitna is an amazing river filled with all five species of wild Alaskan salmon. Coal strip mining and wild salmon streams are incompatible.

Tell your friends!