Study to begin on mine plan
Public to suggest major issues in proposal for Kensington gold mine
The U.S. Forest Service will gather ideas this week on the issues that should be included in a new environmental study of the proposed Kensington gold mine.
Officials from mine owner Coeur Alaska Inc. say the new way to operate the mine costs less and is better for the environment. But some Juneau residents are concerned it shifts more activity to Berners Bay and could pollute a lake.
The agency will provide information and gather comments from 2 to 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Egan Room at Centennial Hall in Juneau and 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the Haines City Council chambers.
Coeur Alaska has submitted an amended plan to run the mine, 45 miles north of downtown Juneau near Berners Bay. A plan was approved in 1998, following an environmental impact statement, but the company said the mine wouldn't be profitable under that plan.
Now the Forest Service, using private contractor Tetra Tech, is preparing a supplemental environmental impact statement to review changes in the plan. A draft is scheduled to be done by mid-March 2003, the agency said.
The new operating plan moves marine access to the mine site from Comet Beach on the east side of Lynn Canal to Slate Creek Cove in Berners Bay. Instead of putting tailings - the fine-grained debris that results from mining - in a mound on land, the new plan would place tailings in a dammed Lower Slate Lake. And rather than have employees live on site, the new plan proposes ferrying workers daily between Slate Creek Cove and Cascade Point near Echo Cove, at the north end of Glacier Highway.
Coeur has said the mine would create 300 to 400 jobs during its 22 months of construction, and 225 year-round jobs with an annual payroll of $16 million during operation. The mine would last at least 15 years, supporting an additional 180 jobs indirectly, the company has said.
Coeur Alaska Vice President Rick Richins said the downsized project has significantly less environmental impact than the previously permitted project.
"At the end of the day, basically what we're going to be required to do is prove that, and that will be proved through the environmental impact statement," he said.
Richins said the new project takes up 25 percent less space on the ground, and the site "would be virtually invisible from water level." The plan significantly reduces helicopter traffic to the mine, he said.
Richins said the mine tailings that would be pumped into Lower Slate Lake have fewer metals and less toxicity and environmental impact than glacial sediments that naturally cover the bottom of Berners Bay.
But the proposal has met with concern from environmentalists and people who use Berners Bay for recreation.
The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is sponsoring a meeting called Berners Bay Celebration from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Centennial Hall, overlapping the Forest Service meeting. The group said the meeting will include slide shows, presentations, art and poetry that represent the social, economic and ecological values of an unspoiled Berners Bay.
The mine proposal would mean building two docks and having barge and ferry traffic in Berners Bay, "and it's just not that big of a bay," said Shoren Brown, a mining and water quality grass roots organizer for SEACC.
"It's going to be a completely different Berners Bay, and we want to be sure all those impacts are considered when they do the environmental analysis," he said.
Advocates for Berners Bay particularly are concerned about a federal bill that would place about 12,000 acres of national forest above the bay in private hands. The land includes nearly all of the Kensington mine area.
Brown said the bill would make it easier for the Kensington mine to open and to turn Lower Slate Lake "into a waste dump."
Senate Bill 2222, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and candidate for governor, awaits a vote on the Senate floor before it would go to the House, said Murkowski spokesman Chuck Kleeschulte.
It would let Cape Fox Corp., the Native village corporation for Saxman, trade 2,900 acres on Revillagigedo Island near Ketchikan for 2,664 acres in the Kensington mine area. The bill also would let Sealaska Corp., the Juneau-based regional Native corporation, trade subsurface rights to the Cape Fox Revillagigedo parcel and to 5,200 acres on Prince of Wales Island for up to 9,329 acres at the Kensington mine site.
If the bill passes Congress, work on the supplemental environmental impact statement will continue, said John Morrell, assistant director of lands for the Forest Service in Alaska. But another federal agency, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, would supervise the study, he said.
Dennis Wheeler, CEO of Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp., the parent company of Coeur Alaska, has said the land trade is important to developing the Kensington mine.
In a May letter to U.S. Rep. Don Young, an Alaska Republican, he said the conveyed lands and holdings by Coeur and Hyak Mining Co. would form a contiguous block of private land managed as a mining district.
Wheeler said it would simplify and lend certainty to operational permitting and long-range reclamation planning for the Kensington mine, and would help to attract investment, but would not shortcut environmental requirements.
"What we see in terms of administration of the land, under Native ownership with a lease, is the more routine annual mining operational permits would be more straightforward," Richins said in an interview.
SEACC would rather have the mine site remain part of the national forest and the Forest Service do the environmental study, Brown said. The local Forest Service staff is more familiar with the area than is the Seattle staff of the EPA, and would be better able to monitor ongoing operations, Brown said.
He said SEACC's main concern about privatizing the land is governmental monitoring of the mine site after it opens. State agencies or the EPA would visit the site much less often than the Forest Service would, he said.