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The 'Pebble Mine girl,' Alaska's most unlikely celebrityMartina Arce might be the best known, least known person in Alaska these days. The "Pebble girl," as people tend to call her, is all over the place. You can't turn on your TV or surf to a news web site without seeing the perky, dark-haired young woman explaining, in her now characteristically calm and deliberate way, the economic concerns in southwest Alaska and what part the proposed Pebble Mine might play. She talks just like that, too, even when she's not on camera. In an interview with Alaska Dispatch Tuesday, the 30-year-old single mom talked about her home town of Iliamna, her background and the somewhat uncomfortable position -- smack in the spotlight -- she finds herself in. But beyond the advertisements, Arce has remained off the radar the past couple years. She's testified at local community hearings in Iliamna where she still visits relatives but otherwise lives a quiet life in Anchorage. Alaska Dispatch has been seeking an interview with her for weeks. She says she'd been hesitant to call even more attention to herself. But then the anti-Pebble people began airing TV spots recently that focused on her. "The opposition needs to get attention now," Arce says. "Instead of really going on facts it's kind of making it personal." Arce's soft spoken, gently smiling persona belies what's arguably the most heated environmental debate in the state. Even political dustups over offshore oil development in the Arctic haven't reached the level of public relations storms that swirl daily it would seem around Pebble, a copper, gold, molybdenum and silver prospect that could be one of the biggest mines in the world. It also happens to be in the heart of one of the largest salmon fisheries in the world -- Bristol Bay. The mine owners, a partnership of Britain's Anglo American and Canada's Northern Dynasty, haven't even applied for major permits yet. But the project has generated thousands of TV spots over the past year or so, including a very active-anti Pebble campaign sponsored by Alaska Wild Salmon Protection. The latest blitz focuses on Arce and features other apparently local residents declaring that the Pebble Girl "doesn't speak for me." Pebble girl says she'll 'always have a connection' to IliamnaArce says she grew up in Iliamna but moved away when she was going to be a junior in high school. She spent the next couple years in Santa Ana, Calif., and attended Mount St. Mary's College, getting her degree in business administration with an emphasis in international business and marketing. But she'd return home in summer as frequently as she could, helping at her grandmother's bed and breakfast. "All my family, my mom, and everybody still lives there," she says. "When something is your home town and all your roots are there you always have a connection there." She came back for awhile to help her aunt and uncle with their business, Iliamna Development Corp. A few years ago she did a voice-over for a commercial for IDC and worked with Bradley Reid advertising. "They were impressed," she says, "I had no experience." But she told the account managers at the company to keep her contact information in case they needed anything else. And more than a year later, in 2009, she heard from them again. This time it was to see if she'd be interested in speaking in a Pebble commercial. "I asked them what is the substance," Arce says. "I reviewed the script and I really liked it, and in the ways that it was educating people." And, no, she didn’t walk the whole way from Iliamna to Bristol Bay. And did anybody really think she did? That series of ads showed her hefting a backpack and telling viewers: "I'm on a journey from Pebble to Bristol Bay." The spots were designed to convince people that the mine itself was so far from the fish runs of Bristol Bay that the chance for devastating environmental damage was slim. But opponents quickly countered with their own spots, essentially ridiculing that contention and pointing out that salmon swim and spawn in the streams that run throughout the area and that contamination of sensitive areas is a very real possibility.
No mining plan of operations has been submitted to the State or the feds for review. Therefore, there is nothing but speculation on the part of the anti-development crowd. Typical lib whining and emotional knee jerk. http://youtu.be/hsW2itXX4C4 "The opposition needs to get attention now," Arce says. "Instead of really going on facts it's kind of making it personal." Depersonalizing and really going on facts: A lot of reading. http://tiny.cc/tsmi6 Applications filed by NDM in 2006 indicate that the proposed project will leave permanent landscape features affecting some thirty square miles, including two tailings ponds that will house billions of tons of mine tailings which will include toxic materials. The project will also include a 104-mile access road, with a slurry line and a water line that will directly affect at least 12.5 square miles and a power transmission line. II. Introduction Page 6, BBRSDA The proposed Pebble Mine Project will include several major components: an open pit at Pebble West, underground block caving at Pebble East, at least two tailings storage ponds, and an access road, a port on Cook Inlet, and power lines. Some descriptions of these components are included in the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Mining, Land and Water web site for Pebble Project which includes applications for surface water rights, groundwater rights, and applications for approval to construct impoundments (Alaska Department of Natural Resources 2007). The draft estimated area of the open pit will be about 1,400 acres or 2.2 square miles (measured from Northern Dynasty Mines 2006a) and 1700 feet deep (Bradner 2005). ~~ Let's review what we know to be factual information: > Permanent landscape features affecting some thirty square miles. Oh wait. We'd better wait for "science data" and some kind of OTHER plan that the State of Alaska will vett for us. "...there isn't a plan and it's not a mine..." Well. $91 million dollars to be spent on the permitting process through 2012, approved by the Pebble board, says it IS a mine and there IS a plan. Just because they haven't been obliged to disclose it, doesn't mean there isn't one. Right up to the moment that they throw a plan on the table, in writing, they can paint ANY concern as "emotional response to propaganda." "We need the raw science data to be evaluated by an independent scientist/geologist. With true information we can make an informed decision in conjunction with scientists not paid by pebble so we can get true information." We need the _science_ so we can make an informed decision. Hmm. Lemme think. Never mind critical thinking skills and evaluative analysis. Nah, we're just being emotional. Better wait for raw science data. And the State of Alaska. But could we just get real here and be truthful, regardless of support/opposition to this mine? 2. The Anelons/Arces are a big family in Illiamna. Illiamna Development Corporation is the "family" business: Lisa Reimers, William Miller, Sue Anelon, Martina Arce, Sondra Crippen, Steve Reimers, Gerald Anelon. Their other family member Charisse Arce is marketing staff. The "village" video production she produced was paid for by Pebble, under contract. http://iliamnacorp.com/community/ 3. Charisse Arce served in Alan Austerman's office, working on the Pebble project as it relates to state business. Um, little conflict of interest there? She was financially involved with the Pebble Partnership/Northern Dynasty at the time. Would that be an ethics violation? 4. Lisa Reimers (IDC, Anelon/Arce family member) is teamed up with former Speaker of the House, Gail Philips, pimping Pebble Mine. Ms. Philips got a few things wrong in an April 2010 response to the pledged international boycott of Pebble-produced gold, led by Zales. Shucks, as a career Alaskan politician, she really ought to know better. Ah, okay. You're not going to say anything about how the mine might be less destructive. Nothing about assurances, oversight, HOW we would avoid unmitigated disaster, or that you even plan to address it. Just one single sentence about the mine and permitting process - then directly to the dire economic situation that Pebble can rescue us from. Then she says "Few local residents own and fish commercial fishing permits with more than half of the permits fished by non-Alaska residents." That's just simply not true. I have no beef with protecting one's financial interests and securing opportunity. I don't have to agree philosophically to understand and appreciate their desire to see this come to fruition. What I am trying to figure out is why would you even want to consider anything this obvious puppet would have to say? Good lord. I'm a tad bit dissapointed with people. They are acting like it's this woman alone whose saying the pebblemine is a good plan. No, I don't think it is, and I'm strongly against it, but I don't think this woman makes a difference on wether or not this should pass. However, there is a flaw in the commercial. She says "protect tradition" but how stupid can you be? The scripter CLEARLY did not think that the tradition of villages is fishing. The pebblemine will ruin this way of life. If they take out the "protect tradition" in their commercial, and state that all the salmon will be killed, I think that they will put ALL the facts in the commercial, maybe they'll fight a better fight. Ha! Who am I kidding? Since when are polotics fair and with ALL the facts? Anyway, try not to put all of your anger on this lady, she's just a quiet young lady who happens to talk about something not all of us agree with. Cheers. When will the good people of Alaska realize they are simply putting on a show over something you will never have any control over. Right now, as the pretend debate occurs, the Canadian owned company is stripping the land in search for minerals, and wealth that belong to the citizens of Alaska, and America. Your not getting a dime. The jobs are from out of state. Your being fooled! I wrote something and then deleted it. It just isn't worth it. This mine will go ahead and the entire Bristol Bay drainage will become another mining district wasteland. Nothing the opponents of this mine say will matter in the end. Money will win this time just as money always wins. The owners of the mine will get richer and Alaska, after getting a few crumbs, will be left with a mess larger than anyone can imagine. The Pebble Girl is just another shill, lackey, lickspittle, backbiter selling out for a few dollars; trading her Native-ness for cash. Why is the Alaska Dispatch interviewing an advertizing agency pitchman about the product she pitches? If you haven't been there, go see it now. Mcfarlane wrote, "there isn't a plan and it's not a mine." and he is right. Facts are boring and this woman is a good looking actress. She has successfully taken most of you off topic here. Whether you are for or against the concept of this mine you are missing the point by attacking or supporting this woman. Research mining, development, fishing, molybdenum, whatever it takes and stand up in your community. As long as we Alaskans are starstruck by the latest Caribou Barbie to take the spotlight we will never have the intelligence to look behind the curtain and see who the real puppet masters are. This is the biggest welfare state in the Union and the amount of hypocrisy that flows through it could make the Yukon River run backwards. If the Pebble Mine issued a million dollar dividend to every Alaskan how outraged would you be? That doesn't sound like a good deal to me. With the price of gas, whiskey and a good sno go I'd burn through my half million before my liver gave out and then what? *I'm not a mathematician- if these numbers are wrong go after the right ones, not me. Let's work together people, and remember, Smart Water does not make you smarter. I know, that was a tough one for me too. "Poor and dangerous mining practices" is a common fear promoted by anti-Pebble activists. But those practices are never made clear, or how they relate to the Alaskan scientists currently working on the project. Failed operations are suggested as the norm, such as at Butte. Here in Alaska was recently witnessed the failure of Rock Creek in Nome. A good idea but poorly executed and currently no mine in operation. However, I encourage everyone reading to investigate Red Dog, Fort Knox, Pogo, Usibelli, Kensington, and Greens Creek, and give me clear evidence that Alaskans (Native and Non-Native, Rural and Urban) cannot operate a successful, large-scale mining operation. I believe we can, and we do, and I support the continued studies of the economics and engineering of mining the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum deposit. Or maybe more people will be forced to work on government subsidies, oil companies, and fishermen will lie more about the by-catch they sell illegally... Thank you Dylan McF for a sensible and logical response to some very limited ALASKA must grow and build and create solutions to tough problems, we have and we still will! The markets are in great need of our products, world -wide: We must help fill those markets with our multiple, rich resources, if Alaska is to survive and be a STRONG STATE. We have done it with care, always, but we must do the brilliant work to make our own way--we have been a govt.controlled arena for much too long! That, she was never destined to be! Too many states are weak and declining, not supporting their own--we have hardly begun the great growth of our promise in Alaska!! Aleut Granddaughter wrote: "... that any risk at all to our salmon resource is ridiculous and dangerous." http://www.adn.com/2011/07/10/1961309/fuel-barge-grounds-near-dillingham.html Interesting article, especially considering the U.S. Coast Guard's comment (in a follow-up piece) that such groundings happen "all the time". Oh yeah, and the irony of why this ecological disaster almost happened is just too good to be true. "The opposition needs to get attention now," Arce says. "Instead of really going on facts it's kind of making it personal." Martina, I haven't seen those "opposition" ads yet so I can't speak to the validity of your assertion. However, I have seen every one of yours and find it hypocritical of you to charge them with "really never going on facts" when that's exactly what the ads you appear in do. The ads you appear in do nothing but try to make the Pebble Mine issue "personal". Who wrote your ads? Are you saying that those scripts are not subjective commentary & opinion in nature, but only fact? Like the poster below said, "Just how dumb do you think we are?" Yes, this issue should be debated heavily as I am aware that many rural Alaskans would like a clearer picture of what the real choices are here. I personally believe it's an absolute that given the history of poor & dangerous mining practices, especially with these two companies, that any risk at all to our salmon resource is ridiculous and dangerous. However, I am willing to listen to rural Alaskans who are impacted greatly by these choices - but not to your brand of propaganda. So who again is trying to make this personal? You'll get less negative attention if you drop the blatant hypocrisy. Howcome every time this woman opens her mouth about Pebble she says something that insults my intelligence? Get the facts? Okay, here's a fact: The Pebble Partnership proposes to put a giant lake of poison upstream from one of the Earth's last remaining pristine fisheries, in one of the world's most geologically unstable regions, where the dike that will contain said lake of poison is entirely likely to rupture. So I'm 100 percent against the Pebble Mine. End of discussion. That's not a decision based on emotion, that's a decision based on common sense, something that Martina Arce and every other Pebble shill apparently lack. But according to Arce's TV commercial from last summer, there's nothing to worry about, because the Pebble site is several days' hike from the shores of Bristol Bay. My responce to Arce--and by extension, everyone at Pebble--is best phrased as a question: Just how dumb do you think I am? "...While at IDC, she and her relatives visited other projects including the Berkeley pit in Montana, a large open-pit copper mine that has been criticized for its environmental problems..." Such a soft phasing for one of the great environmental disasters of all time. Toxic waste still leaching into the rivers for hundreds of miles downstream, and the historical destruction of human life from the smelting operations owned by the Anaconda(apt name) Company. The Company as part of the Standard Oil Trust owned by the Rockefellers and Hearsts and J. P. Morgan, the richest Robber Barons in the world whose heirs are still looting the nation to this day. "That was an example of a mine that went horribly wrong and we asked if they had any advice," Arce says. The most important advice she got, she says, was from one person who said the community didn’t get involved until it was too late. "He said 'our mistake was that while it was happening a lot of us would just get mad about it. My biggest advice is whether you’re for it or against it or afraid of it get involved now so you can make informed decisions based on fact.'" The fact is: the 1872 Mining Law, still the law today, eliminated any possibilities for community involvement. Western Montana was owned and ruled by the Anaconda Company as they gobbled up huge quantities of forest lands to feed their mining and smelter operations. Butte was company town just as all of Bristol Bay/Iliamna will be owned and controlled by the "Pebble". Anaconda owned the newspapers, the radio stations, the electric company, and they ruled the entire Montana governing system from local to state to elected federal officials. The community was the Company. Eminent Domain was used to expand the mine and the Pit including miner's houses and local stores. A few yapping dissenters were allowed to give a semblance of "democracy", but, after the Company had exhausted the best veins within the mine, they sold it all off after passing it around through a few Wall Street "purchases" to gain maximum wealth from the stocks.(Gee, sounds just like Alaska and the Oil Monopoly, heirs of Anaconda owners). They, finally, closed it all down and most businesses and people left. From 100,000 population at its peak to the current 10,000 barely hanging on through government jobs and retail as all that is left. One billionaire now owns the mine and broadcast big plans, but little has happened. More of a write-off from those evil taxes from all of the profits from his other giant enterprises. Today, the entire nation is paying for the cleanup of some of the mess. Anyone with any intelligence who has seen Butte and the piles of toxic waste downstream would never make these blatantly false statements. The best means to see the effects of a Anaconda-sized mining operation would be to use technology to physically superimpose the old photographs of the area over the proposed Pebble area to see just how devastating it would be. There are other examples of past mining ventures around Montana bought, operated, and abandoned by Canadian Mining Cartels. All of them are now left to be cleaned up the us, the federal government. By all means, bring another boom and bust entity to destroy another subsistence, sustainable economic entity providing food for the world just to satisfy another group of Corporate, Toronto/Wall Street, Greed Merchants. The petty sniping politics of personal destruction comments typical of Pebble Project opponents being the norm in this debate it is a hopeful sign that there is at least one relatively reasonable voice to be heard. That reasonable voice even has a face, and name, attached to it. Hats off to her. She's one brave young woman. Another insult to Alaskan intelligence is your assertion that the sniping politics of destruction are only heard from Pebble opponents...you've got to be kidding. Share the good stuff you have, OK? She being able to stay home as a full time Mom, goes to prove that she is getting paid for what she says. Duh! Her having a portfolio with an ad agency and being featured as the voice/face of these ads didn't clue you in? Nope, it's because she's a single mom and HAS A JOB that allows her to spend time with her child. Quit drinking the Kool-Aid. Sounds like she is nothing more than an actress who once lived in the region and now chooses not to live there. That is hardly a connection. When I see a documentary showing her working a fishing boat through a fishing season and her talking the details about how this mine will be safe with experts not paid by pebble then I'll see what she knows. Show me an earthen dam still standing after 100 or 150 years. We can't even keep an earthen dam in the valley from falling apart and who pays for it. One common fact with mines is the owners are gone in less than a generation and the pollution lasts hundreds of years and the cleanup is paid for by the tax payers. In one generation the salmon will be gone due to this mine and The cleanup will be in line as a super fund site to be cleaned up in 2210 behind the thousands that came first. The companies will be gone like in 95% of past mine owners and Alaskans will pay. We need the raw science data to be evaluated by an independent scientist/geologist. With true information we can make an informed decision in conjunction with scientists not paid by pebble so we can get true information. All I have seen from her is misdirection and acting with a few grains if fact. The comercials are not education they are propaganda. If the mine is so safe they only need to get a bond to cover any potential damage from the mine for the life of the damn plus 100 years. Better to be safe than sorry. "We need the raw science data to be evaluated by an independent scientist/geologist. With true information we can make an informed decision in conjunction with scientists not paid by pebble so we can get true information." Thank you wolfcrow for some valid criticism. Of course this person does not speak for everyone in Bristol Bay. But I also doubt that Art Hackney or Bob Gillam speak represent anyone in Bristol Bay either, except for a handful of other millionaires. They are behind the money laundering RRC, Wild Salmon Protection, and other insane anti-Pebble media campaigns. All of this nonsense is just that - a media campaign. Wolfcrow, would you like to sit and listen to the hardcore scientists on the radio and tv all day, telling you about pH levels from borehole 07-UTC-14? Or background discrepancies in the standard deviation of Arsenic data? Most people prefer propaganda, because it's easy and our emotions can take over. Go talk to some professional scientists. I'm glad we've got them working on Pebble. "I reviewed the script and I really liked it, and in the ways that it was educating people." she actually saw the raping of Montana by the corp. and still believes that the mining corp. will not try to get away with cutting corners here to maximize profits. ?? wow. if she truly is undecided she should do her homework and then when she listens to mother spirit she will know that she needs to stand up publicly and denounce her temporary lack of awareness of what is a responsible stewardship of this planet. "Instead of really going on facts it's kind of making it personal." Poor gal sounds like our former half-term governor whining about the lamestream media pointing out the absurdity of her own words, verbatim. I think the media campaign is hurting Alaska. I bet the salmon think we are really stupid, watching this stupid fight between a few rich and powerful people. But then they get caught and slaughtered and eaten by some fisherman (who probably isn't from Alaska)...I work in the mining industry and I don't support Pebble Mine yet, because there isn't a plan and it's not a mine. But I do support the fact that there is a metal deposit in Southwest Alaska worth hundreds of billions of dollars, today, or ten years from now. Unfortunately my bet is that certain figures in the Lake and Pen borough and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (not to mention lodge owners hmm hmm) that want a bigger cut of the pie before the let mine development continue...Who's got a problem with science!? That is all the pebble partnership is doing right now. And finally, let's not forget that fishermen too would have killed all the salmon and destroyed the resource in the 1940s through the use of fish traps. It's not one or the other, it's smart and responsible operation of both resources. The years when fishing was destroying the resource was when Alaska was a territory and had no control over the resource. When pebble releases the science we'll look at it and looked at by our own professionals.Right now the secrecy looks suspicious. Those fisherman were from outside in our Colonial days as a Territory not since statehood. Given the state's history the decision will be in court. |
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