Constantine has yet to hold a community meeting in either Haines or Klukwan showing the ultimate buildout plans for the Palmer Project. Therefore they, and anyone complicit in pushing forward with plans to fund and/or accommodate the project within the Chilkat headwaters, are operating in bad faith with the people in these downstream communities.

According to the report by Jim Kuipers and Associates, analyzing the Palmer Project’s Preliminary Economic Assessment, the project rests on shaky economics.

After the events of last December that devastated our community with heavy rains and landslides, the last thing the borough and the chamber should be pursuing is a boondoggle project risking all we hold dear: healthy fisheries, wildlife, estuaries, bald eagles, migrating birds, marine mammals and oceans.

Our community needs to move forward gently and with healing and maximum community input on something so large and threatening as developing the Palmer Project in the Chilkat headwaters and an industrial timber/ore terminal at Lutak.

If we have learned anything during this pandemic and this past four months following the Beach Road landslide, it is that healthy food, secure shelter, and community caring for each other matters more than anything else.

Kathleen Menke