Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

If you plan to attend this weekend’s mining forum, please be cautious of outsiders being paid big bucks to influence our community. I’ll start by saying that I respect locals who are in favor of the mine because they want a better future for us all, even if I don’t believe that the evidence supports that outcome. Our visions may be different, but we are united in our devotion to this place and the people who live here. Unfortunately, companies like Hemmera are not here to help us learn about mining. They are here for one reason, and that is to help Constantine obtain social license to operate in our community. Their website states, “The client is our focus... By delivering extraordinary results, we build their business and our own.” To be perfectly clear, the “client” here is Constantine, not our community. And before you dismiss conservation organizations as the other side of this equation, please keep in mind that there is no profit behind the science-based information presented by these groups. People involved in that struggle (myself included from time to time) work very hard because they care about what happens to the land that we live on. Even after all the POOs and permits are in place, accidents still happen and no permit or SLO will prevent them. It is time that we tune out the profit driven influence of foreign companies, and figure this out as a community.

Stacie Evans