Overshadowed by Pebble Mine but equally troubling when it comes to potential for a large-scale environmental beatdown, a dam proposal targeting the Susitna River continues to make headway. Alaska recently authorized expenditures of $165 million to push the project through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s expedited permitting process.
Matt Stoecker and Travis Rummel, who’ve teamed up for the soon-to-be-released DamNation film, floated 42 miles of the Su to visit the dam site and document what would be submerged and buried under glacial sediment.
The 735-foot-high hydro dam would be the nation’s second tallest, blocking upstream passage of king, sockeye, pink, coho and chum salmon. Considering it won’t cut electricity costs, nor help with Alaska’s critical heating needs, it might also be the nation’s most useless.
Read the full story, here.
[Matt Stoecker images]
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.