BERNERS BAY, ALASKA — Sitting like a turquoise gem in a bowl of hemlock, Sitka spruce and ice, Berners Bay has long been a jewel of Alaska's Tongass National Forest.
In the spring, swarms of tiny eulachon rush in to spawn, and the bay floods with hundreds of killer whales, humpback whales and sea lions in hot pursuit, along with eagles and seabirds by the thousands. Fishermen flock to its herring, salmon and Dungeness crab. Its chilly, tranquil waters are a favorite destination for kayakers.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, March 03, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 49 words Type of Material: Correction
Alaska gold mine: A graphic in Monday's Section A that accompanied an article about a mining company's plans to dump millions of tons of tailings into a small lake in Alaska had the wrong location for the lake. Lower Slate Lake is south of the gold mine, not northeast.
Berners Bay also has become one of the epicenters of a new Alaska gold rush. High in the snowy peaks at the top of the bay, miners struck an estimated 1.4 million ounces of gold -- a prize that is looking better every day as investors flee the stock market.
An Idaho-based mining company has pledged to rescue southeast Alaska's crippled timber and fishing economy by opening an industrial-scale mine above the bay. The problem is how to do it.
The company had planned to pile its leftover debris on a wetlands on the other side of the mountain from Berners Bay -- a solution embraced by environmentalists -- but has shifted to a cheaper alternative. Taking advantage of a little-publicized regulatory change adopted under the Bush administration in 2004, Coeur d'Alene Mines has obtained a federal permit to dump 4.5 million tons of tailings directly into a small sub-alpine lake near the mine, just above Berners Bay.
Conservationists say the plan is unprecedented in 30 years of mining under the federal Clean Water Act.
Lower Slate Lake, whose deep indigo waters are home to about 1,000 Dolly Varden char and a small species of fish known as stickleback, will become a repository for 210,000 gallons a day of thick slurry, laced with aluminum, copper, lead and mercury -- enough to kill all the fish and raise the lake's bottom by 50 feet.
The waste would be prevented from seeping down the adjacent creek into Berners Bay by construction of a large dam that, environmental groups warn, would have to last for eternity.
The mine tailings on the lake bottom eventually would be sealed and fish would be restocked, the Environmental Protection Agency says. That, state and federal officials say, means the lake would become a prime recreational resource for fishermen and boaters.
The nearby city of Juneau, Native Alaskan leaders and Gov. Sarah Palin have hailed the project as a godsend for a region desperate for jobs amid logging cutbacks, the closure of two big pulp mills and dwindling fishing opportunities.
