More on Ballot Measure 4

Well, the official election results aren't in yet, but its not looking good. 57% no and 42% yes at this point.

But I realized I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be last night (given that I was really sleepy when I was writing) - in terms of allowing Pebble Mine to happen, Ballot Measure 4 would prevent the proposal to reach the permitting process. Those against the mine do not want it to reach the permitting process, because the precedent is that every mine that has reached the permitting process has gone through. Of course, the proponents are just trying to say "wait and see" - they are doing some preliminary exploration to determine the environmental impacts of the mine, and preliminary drilling to estimate the claims. They are arguing that if they are able to get permits, that means that the mine will be ok for the fish.

I'm actually really jealous of my boss, because on Friday she is flying across the Inlet to the Pebble Mine area as part of a field team funding by the Nature Conservancy. The woman leading the team apparently used to work for USGS, but resigned, because she was trying to voice her opinion about Pebble Mine and the government didn't want that. Anyways, the point of this expedition is to get baseline data about the area for the impact assessment. Except one could argue that there is no way they can get true baseline data at this point, since preliminary drilling has already started (therefore we don't know what the environment was like before that started). Anyways, one thing that is really awesome about this expedition has to do with those laws regarding anadramous streams. Because that area is so largely uninhabited, there are a lot of streams and water systems that haven't been documented. Hell, I got to help out with a headwater stream project about 40 miles north of Homer, and we found undocumented streams. There WILL be salmon in the streams across the Inlet, and if those get documented, they'll be able to get more protection. God, what a cool expedition to be on - being the first to document salmon in streams in order to prevent a mine from poisoning them all....