Court OKs tailings
in Slate Lake

By Tom Morphet

Business and political leaders hailed Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow Kensington mine tailings to be dumped into Lower Slate Lake.

A Coeur Alaska spokesman said the ruling means the mine would be in production by late 2010 and employ up to 200 workers. The company estimates annual payroll and benefits at $16 million.

Lynn Canal Conservation said the decision puts fisheries at risk and sets an ominous precedent for tailings disposal from other potential mines in the area. The mine has been planned for about 20 years.

In a 6-3 decision, the court majority ruled that Coeur Alaska’s permit to use the lake as a tailings dump met the requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. The ruling ends a lawsuit brought three years ago by LCC, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and the Sierra Club.

Haines Borough Mayor Jan Hill said the decision was “good news all the way around.” The mine has an agreement with village Native corporation Klukwan, Inc. to hire a certain amount of shareholders and a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Haines that residents would get jobs at the mine, Hill said.

The Haines Borough is on record supporting the project as planned.

“I think it’s great news. It’s good to know that people will be able to get good-paying jobs, and that industry has good-paying jobs. Now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Hill said. “Anything that can help people with employment we need to be doing. These are some tough times.”

Mayor Hill also said she would look into previous overtures by the borough to facilitate worker transportation to the mine. “A lot of people in Haines would like to be working there. The cost of transportation is probably a stumbling block.”

State Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, a local fisherman who gillnets just offshore the mine, said he was satisfied with the court’s examination of the question. “We’ve suffered enough at the hands of the environmental community,” Thomas said. “Maybe the economy of Haines will get a boost from this.”

If the mine only produces 25 new jobs in Haines, it would be a great boost to the economy, Thomas said. Miners from other places are likely to gravitate to Haines instead of Juneau due to better recreation opportunities and less expensive homes and real estate, he said.

“In Juneau, the average home costs $280,000. In Haines, they could buy a trailer or build a place up the highway. You can live in Haines and have a four-wheeler and a snowmachine,” Thomas said.

Thomas said Slate Lake was a better location than a 100-acre tailings mound at Sherman Point proposed years ago. He also noted that United Southeast Gillnetters Association had endorsed lake disposal. “Let’s put it at a point where it won’t slip into Lynn Canal.”

Under the plan now cleared by the courts, Coeur would dump 4.5 million tons of tailings into Lower Slate Lake, raising the water level 50 feet and killing its existing fish population. The company has said it would treat the lake’s runoff, which drains into Berner’s Bay, and dam the lake’s sides. Company literature says, “Coeur is employing the highest state-of-the-art water treatment.”

Thomas said this week that he would put his trust in the company’s precautions to protect Lynn Canal, the waterway used by all salmon caught in Haines. “They’ve got everybody who’s supposed to take care of that. I think it will be carefully monitored and watched. I hope that’s the way it works.”

 Lynn Canal Conservation secretary Ron Jackson described the court’s decision as disappointing. “I don’t believe the original intent of the Clean Water Act was to allow this kind of thing to happen,” he said. “This decision has far-reaching impacts for so many bodies of water besides Lower Slate Lake. If the (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) decides to, they can allow this kind of dumping in any river, lake or water body.”
     Jackson said the ruling raises concerns for planned mineral development at the Palmer property, a mining deposit under exploration near 40 Mile, currently held by Constantine Metal Resources. “The fear is they’d take advantage of this to try a less expensive and more risky method of tailings disposal.”

He said he feared the long-term consequences of a dammed lake above Berners Bay. “The whole ecosystem could be affected by a dump from this tailings lake if the dam were to fail. It could impact us directly as fish that are eaten here spend time in Berners Bay.”

LCC supported an earlier waste disposal plan to make the tailings into a type of paste. “It was a good compromise and they were the ones who proposed to do it,” Jackson said. Coeur later said that method was prohibitively expensive.

LCC hasn’t met to decide further action, but it would likely support national efforts already under way to revise the Clean Water Act to specifically prohibit such dumping of mine tailings. Jackson said LCC also would continue to monitor an acid mine drainage problem that has occurred at the site more than a year and resulted from excavation work around the lake.

Tony Ebersole, spokesman for Coeur’s parent company, Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp., said the mine will employ 300 workers building the tailings facility in the coming months, and will create 170 indirect jobs – such as work for equipment suppliers – during its 10 to 12 years of operation.

“We’re excited about this. In terms of what it’s going to do to the economy there, it’s a positive development,” Ebersole said.

Coeur has employed 45 workers since 80 were laid off last fall. The company will try to bring back those workers and emphasize local and Native hire in Haines and Juneau, he said.

“In the next couple months we’ll be mobilizing. I can’t be precise about how many or how soon,” Ebersole said. Information will be posted on the mine’s website, which will be reactivated soon, he said.

Most workers will commute to the mine daily, likely by a boat connection to the Juneau road system, he said.

Kensington represents a potential 135 percent increase in gold production for Coeur d’Alene, which also operates mines in Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico. It owns rights to ores at two mines in Australia and is developing another in Chile.

Its only other U.S. operation is the Rochester mine in west-central Nevada, which has yielded over one million ounces of gold, he said. Yields have since dropped at the surface mine, which recovers metals through a heap-leach process, Ebersole said.

Environmentalists said the court’s decision could have international implications, as mines in Canada that are seeking similar disposal methods were waiting to see how Coeur’s plan fared with regulatory authorities here.

Industry trade groups including the National Mining Association, lauded Monday’s decision. The NMA had filed briefs in the case on the side of Coeur.     

Coeur has described the mine as “in a remote area that is seldom, if ever, used for recreation” and Lower Slate Lake as a “small, unproductive” water body “that has never been a destination for recreation.” A SEACC press release this week described the lake as “above Berners Bay, a wildlife wonderland, productive fishery and popular local recreation area.”