Sen. Ted Stevens who never saw a mine he didn't like. said: "If this was some essential commodity that we absolutely had to have to run our economy, it would be a different matter; and even then I would want to have a lot better attention being paid to the environmental process. But this one, I just don't like it. . . . We really don't know what's happening with the reproductive capability of those streams out there. . . 

"I'm not going to change, and I hope people will listen to us. That resource is an enormous resource not just for the Native people but for the Bristol Bay run, and it ought not be tampered with by a gold mine. . . . If that makes me a turncoat from being an extreme developer, so be it. . . . They [Northern Dynasty] are hiring people from all over the place to criticize me, to fly back to Washington to talk to everybody about my opposition to this mine. . . . My old friends in the mining industry. . . are ready to put a red-hot poker to my throat."