A new science and policy review calls for more transparency in mining governance to reduce risks to salmon habitat across the Pacific Northwest, including Alaska and British Columbia.
While the paper doesn’t specifically address the Chilkat Valley or the potential impacts or benefits of the Palmer Project — an exploratory mixed-metals mining operation northwest of Haines — it sheds light on limitations in current policy and concludes that greater transparency would help the public predict and prevent future impacts.
The study was written by 23 scientists and policy analysts and published July 1 in the peer-reviewed journal “Science Advances.”
“Despite impact assessments that are intended to evaluate risk and inform mitigation, mines continue to harm salmonid-bearing watersheds via pathways such as toxic contaminants, stream channel burial and flow regime alteration,” the authors wrote. “The body of knowledge presented here supports the notion that the risks and impacts of mining have been underestimated across the watersheds of northwestern North America.”
Lead author Chris Sergeant said the project is the first peer-reviewed paper that synthesizes North American mining risks to salmon using data from scientific studies, mining companies, government agencies and news reports. There are nearly 4,000 mines — from small-scale placer to major hardrock — in the paper’s region of focus, which stretches from the Columbia River in Oregon north through British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and Alaska.
“There was a lot of scattered information about mining and salmon and how mining has the potential to impact salmon populations. We never saw a definitive comprehensive source of information in one place,” said Sergeant, who lived in Juneau for 10 years and works as a research scientist at the University of Montana Flathead Lake Bio Station.
The authors discuss how some mining policies do not accurately account for a mine’s cumulative ecological impacts or the effects of climate change on mining operations.
One of the paper’s takeaways is that there has been little scientific analysis comparing observed impacts with predictions made during permitting and environmental assessments. Sergeant said the authors originally wanted to do a systematic before-and-after analysis but such a study wasn’t feasible due to a lack of robust public data.
“We couldn’t do it — because either the data are not available, or they’re reported over some time frame that isn’t helpful, or … even if the data are available, they aren’t statistically robust,” Sergeant said.
The authors said they knew of only one paper that draws comparisons between predicted and observed environmental impacts among North American mines.
That study, conducted by the nonprofit Earthworks, found that out of 25 hardrock mines, 16 “exhibited poorer water quality than predicted in the environmental impact statements (EISs), representing clear failures in water quality mitigation.”
Sergeant acknowledged that Alaska’s mine permitting system is “extensive” but said “the case we make in the paper is even though there are the governance structures in place, we still see accidents happen fairly frequently.”
One example the authors cite is Red Dog Mine in northwestern Alaska, where unforeseen permafrost thaw in 2020 caused a backup in the mine’s water treatment system and forced facility upgrades costing millions of dollars.
While melting permafrost isn’t an issue in the Chilkat Valley, Sergeant said extreme precipitation and landslides could be climate-related challenges for a mine at the Palmer Project, which is in a steep, glaciated valley.
A first step toward preventing accidents and mitigating impacts, Sergeant said, is greater transparency. Given Palmer’s rugged topography and prevalence of heavy snow and rain, Sergeant said he would want to know whether infrastructure proposed for water diversion, storage and treatment at Palmer had been tested and proven to be effective at scale.
Palmer is in the advanced exploration stage, and a full-scale mine there hasn’t been proposed. Constantine Metal Resources, the project’s operating company, plans to conduct underground mineral exploration next summer before publishing a feasibility study that would provide details about what a Palmer mine might look like.
If Constantine were to decide to apply for permits to build a mine, there would be a federal environmental review process in addition to state permitting.
Alaska Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Lorraine Henry, in a written statement to the CVN, said Alaska’s permitting system is “justifiably robust to ensure any resources development is responsibly conducted.”
“DNR works with numerous state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Conservation as well as Fish and Game, to oversee mineral activities on every project phase,” she said. “From the time people are exploring for deposits, through the phase of producing at a mine, to ensuring sites are properly closed and the environment is reclaimed, to post-closure monitoring, state of Alaska professionals are keeping mines designed and operating to avoid, minimize, and mitigate significant environmental impacts.”
Such measures include “caring for any potential loss of fish habitat,” ensuring that state water quality standards are met, monitoring surrounding ecosystems and reviewing compliance and environmental data associated with major mine authorizations every five years, Henry said.
Beyond the scope of the “Science Advances” paper is the economic impact of mining — a topic addressed by a separate report published earlier this year by two researchers at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER).
That paper’s authors, ISER research professors Bob Loeffler and Brett Watson, wrote that in the state’s more economically diverse regions, including Southeast, a new mine “will bring a significant addition of high-paying jobs and important local government tax revenues.”
Constantine in its 2019 preliminary economic assessment predicted a Palmer mine would employ 94 people on site and 184 people in total.
Mining provides some of Alaska’s highest-paying jobs and could, under a “favorable scenario” projection in the ISER paper, provide close to a billion dollars in wages statewide by 2039.
The state is still reviewing a revised permit application submitted by Constantine this spring. That application concerns a new wastewater discharge system design for exploratory activities expected to begin next summer, including construction of a mile-long underground ramp into the mountain beside Saksaia Glacier.