ENVIRONMENT : Alaska Town Weighs Jobs Against Loss of Lifestyle : Canadian mine would aid area’s economy but might threaten tourism, rivers and wildlife. Residents split by issue.

They have been having the same argument around here for about 20 years. It died down for a while after the bald eagle controversy passed; but then Windy Craggy came along, and all the old battle lines were drawn again.

A Canadian mining company, Geddes Resources Ltd., wants to slice the top off 6,500-foot Windy Craggy Peak, in the Canadian wilderness 80 miles northwest of here, creating the largest copper mine in North America.

The nearest town is Haines, a community of 1,200 on a long finger of land between steep mountains and a glacier-fed fiord in Alaska’s panhandle. The company wants to build a port here to ship ore to Asian smelting plants, with trucks rumbling into town from the mine 60 times a day.

Windy Craggy Mine is becoming one of the most heated environmental controversies in Alaska and western Canada, resulting in an unusual joint review by governments on both sides of the border.

So far, the company said, it has spent about $50 million developing the mine, but agencies in both countries are skeptical that the giant project can be built without major harm to nearby salmon-filled rivers and the surrounding wilderness, which contains western Canada’s largest populations of grizzly bears and mountain sheep.

Canada rejected the initial mine plan as too risky earlier this year, and now agencies are reviewing a revised proposal.

Here in Haines, Windy Craggy has renewed an old debate over something even broader--how does a town achieve progress without destroying the things that made people want to live there in the first place?

Everyone in town seems to have an opinion. They argue about it in big meetings at the high school gym, home of the Glacier Bears, and in the smoky taverns where sawmill workers and fishermen shoot pool and socialize on dark snowy afternoons.

“We’ve got an economy that’s hurting, and now we’re looking at a bunch of jobs--12-month-a-year jobs,” said Ray Rose, a wrinkled retired heavy-equipment operator. He sat in the Fogcutter Bar having his usual Friday lunch of clam chowder and black coffee.

“Most places, they’d welcome it,” Rose said. “That doesn’t interest some people around here, though.”

One of those people is Norm Smith, a middle-aged former mayor who runs a bed-and-breakfast in a roomy house with a sweeping view of the inlet and mountains. Many of his guests are tourists who come for expensive 10-day float trips down the Tatshenshini River, which flows near the proposed mine. He’s dead set against it.

“I like Haines the way it is,” he said. “Why would I want a bunch of ore trucks running through here? I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t want to be a truck driver or a mechanic.”

Most of the 600 permanent jobs envisioned at the mine are expected to be held by Canadians, with about 130 trucking and port jobs going to Alaskans. That, and the fact that rivers near the mine flow out of Canada and into Alaskan fishing grounds, are mentioned often by mine opponents here, who say Canada stands to receive the mine’s benefits while the United States will absorb most of the risks.

But, in a town where employment regularly rises and falls at the whims of world timber and fishing economies, the prospect of any new jobs was welcomed by many.

Haines has had years of practice arguing over its future. Large industrial projects have been proposed over the years, many involving the abundant natural resources nearby: a petrochemical plant, a pipeline, an iron mine. In each case, the issue was growth versus keeping Haines the way it is. Most of the projects never materialized.

The biggest fight was over the eagles. In the early 1980s, there was a plan to allow logging near the Chilkat River, the scene of the world’s largest annual gathering of bald eagles. Up to 4,000 birds come from all over Alaska and the Northwest to feed on a late run of salmon. Others in town wanted to create a protected eagle preserve. Friends stopped talking and doing business with one another. The fight lasted for years.

The conservationists eventually won, although some logging was allowed, and, today, bald eagles have become a symbol of the town, displayed on everything from grocery sacks to tourism brochures.

Trucks from the proposed mine would rumble down a highway through the heart of the eagle preserve.

“Those trucks would change Haines,” said Peter Enticknap, a former broker and financial planner from Southern California, who moved his family here three years ago for a quieter life. He is the only real estate broker in town.

“I admit it, hey, I’m a capitalist pig. But some things are more important than money.”

MINE DISPUTE

A two-nation environmental dispute has been set off by plans of a Canadian mining company to slice the top off 6,500-foot Windy Craggy Peak in the Canadian wilderness, creating the largest copper mine in North America. The company also wants to build a port in Haines, Alaska, to ship ore to Asian smelting plants.