Governor Palin ready for mining education

Alaska's governor-elect, Republican Sarah Palin, made the annual miners' convention in Anchorage the venue for her first official engagement after the election, promising to listen to the industry as she selects her advisors. Palin's predecessor, Frank Murkowski, gave strong support to the mining industry, including initiating the Roads to Resources program, but lost valuable employees at the Department of Natural Resources when they resigned in protest at his handling of gas pipeline negotiations.

"It's my pleasure to introduce someone who has a lot in common with us," said John Reeves, owner of historic Gold Dredge No. 8 in Fairbanks, a tourist attraction, at the convention Nov. 9. "Anyone who knows miners knows that they are independent, hard-working, occasionally opinionated, and undeterred by long odds. You have to be tough to be a miner, or maybe just plain stubborn. Governor Palin could have been a miner. She has shown her own independence, ran a campaign on her own terms against long odds, worked hard and got the job done."

"I know that you are the salt of the earth, hard-working Alaskans, and I respect you all, and I appreciate the time that some of you have spent with me to help educate me also on some of the mining issues that are going on in the state, and you'll help me do a better job as your governor," Palin said. Previously mayor of the town of Wasilla, north of Anchorage, Palin added that she has been a commercial fisherman and a politician, but never a miner.

"I do want to help you, I want to serve you," Palin said. "I'm not going to stand in front of you today and say that the mining industry in Alaska is at a point that conditions can't improve. Of course they can improve. We can and we must do better," she added. Palin would like to see the Mental Health Trust be more proactive in development of the lands it controls. The Mental Health Trust should be responsive to companies and individuals wishing to do business with it, and if it doesn't have enough people with expertise in natural resource development, it should hire them, she said.

Palin interested in NPDES primacy

Palin is keen to hear discussion about the state's efforts to assume primacy over the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program, which is currently overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"I'd also like to see us work towards the State of Alaska taking title over the 104 million acres of land that we were promised at statehood, remember when we became a state all those years ago, we struck deals with the federal government, where we said, let us into the union and we'll be as self-sufficient as possible, and the feds said, yep, come on in, you're the 49th state, and you will be as self-sufficient as possible, and you do that by developing your God-given resources," Palin said.

Sean Parnell, the new lieutenant governor, addressed the miners' convention the following day. Parnell is a commercial attorney and former state legislator. "Our guiding principle will be fiscal stability," he said. "I have a background in the oil and gas industry, I know how important fiscal stability from the state perspective is - if you and your companies have the ability to model your accounting, your investment, your plan for 10, 20, 30 years out, providing those jobs that are important to Alaskans."

Parnell says regulatory certainty will be a priority

Regulatory certainty for the resource industries will be one of the new administration's priorities, Parnell said. "If you can count on a timely and consistent permitting system, that's one of our guiding principles," he told the convention. "The reason that the governor-elect and I support resource development, responsible resource development, is not about the industries or the companies, so much as about the opportunities as a whole that are provided to Alaskans. When we have young people in the villages who want to stay there because they've seen an opportunity and you help provide the jobs that enable them to stay there."

In addition to Alaska's newest leaders, one of the state's longest-serving politicians also spoke at the convention. U.S. Rep. Don Young, a Republican, began his congressional career in 1973 and achieved his latest election success in November this year, fending off a determined challenge from Democrat Diane Benson.

In his speech, Young urged miners to become more aggressive politically. "The extractive industry, you're still at the bottom of the barrel," he said. "You are the destroyer of the environment, you are the ones that are the people that uproot what God's created, and you're evil. Now that's what people think in the larger cities. They don't understand that everything they deal with comes from the earth in some form or fashion, and that education program has to begin."

Young defended the controversial Pebble copper-gold project without mentioning it by name. "As you know, there's a huge campaign going now to stop a mining development, done for political reasons or emotional reasons, though not scientific reasons," he said. "It's on state land. If that was to continue, if they were successful, then all of you that are dealing on other areas would be susceptible to the same type of unwarranted attack. ... To have a project actually come under attack and actually taken off the track because of interests outside of yours, and really outside of the state, I don't think is appropriate."

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens has said he opposes the building of a mine in the salmon-rich Bristol Bay region of Alaska.