The Kobuk River has kept my ancestors alive for thousands of years. This river and land are very important to me because this is where I’m from; I grew up fishing and camping on this river. Shungnak, Ambler, and Kobuk are part of a beautiful, healthy, sacred land, and the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road would ruin that. This road was proposed because AIDEA and Ambler Metals (Trilogy Metals) want to build a huge open pit mine on our sacred lands to extract heavy metals. There is a lack of awareness about the negative impacts it would bring to the Kobuk River and the surrounding villages.
Kotzebue, Kivalina, and Noatak have been affected by contaminants from the Red Dog Mine. In 2017, the EPA listed Kotzebue as the most industrially polluted community in the U.S. due in part to the millions of pounds of poisonous heavy-metal-laden dust that come from the mine. Noatak and Kivalina’s lands, animals, and people are also affected by dust and chemicals containing heavy metals released from Red Dog that impact local rivers and are scattered along the 50-mile road corridor where people gather food, as ore is hauled from mine to port on the Chukchi Sea. There are serious concerns about these contaminants’ impacts to community health, including kidney disorders and neurological issues. Research shows that when people consume high levels of heavy metals, they risk acute and chronic toxicity, liver, kidney, and intestinal damage, anemia, and cancer. They might also develop neurological degenerative processes that are similar to diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and Alzheimer’s disease.
We need to learn more about the impacts already caused by mines in Alaska, and we must stop this from happening to more Alaskans. I do not believe what AIDEA, NANA, or Ambler Metals say about how “safe” it will be. They will say and do anything for profit. Research on five major mines in Alaska found that there were 8,150 total spill incidents releasing 2,360,000 gallons, and 1,930,000 pounds of hazardous material since 1995. There’s no question that there will be pollution. We should be asking ourselves: Do we want our lands, waters, and animals to be contaminated? Do we want the 11 villages along the proposed Ambler Road corridor to suffer from the same mining and transportation pollution that those in Kotzebue, Kivalina, and Noatak do? No amount of money is worth the pollution and scarring of our sacred Kobuk River valley and the communities who depend on it.