A drill site at the Palmer Project north of Haines. (Constantine Metal Resources)
If a mineral exploration project north of Haines eventually becomes a mine, it could change the Chilkat Valley’s economic and environmental landscape. Twelve organizations are putting on a two-day forum this weekend to educate residents about what a local mine could mean for the valley.
The idea started with the Takshanuk Watershed Council, which held a smaller mining forum in 2015.
Derek Poinsette is the council’s interim director. He says what began as outreach to a couple people resulted in a 12-organization steering committee planning the event.
It includes the Alaska Miners Association, Lynn Canal Conservation, the Haines Gillnetters Association and two local tribal governments.
“It certainly wasn’t as easy as if you had a group of like-minded people,” Poinsette said. “It was the goal to bring in all viewpoints on a potential mine. So we all had to sit at the table together and figure this out. And it was a successful process.”
The forum spans two days. There are individual presentations each morning and panel discussions each afternoon. Audience members will be able to submit questions for the panelists.
Topics include the economic impacts of mining, state regulation of mines, risks to aquatic life and the social impacts of mining on small and Native communities.
“You know, everybody’s busy and not everyone has time to go and sit down and research rock geochemistry and mineral development,” Poinsette said. “So I think to bring something like this here, it’s one of the few ways that a lot of us have access to some of this information. So yeah, that’s the goal of the whole thing.”
Constantine Metal Resources is evaluating the potential for a large-scale mine about 35 miles north of Haines. The Canadian company is in the advanced stages of exploration at the Palmer Project site.
Constantine expanded exploration this past summer, to promising results. They’re searching for gold, copper, silver and zinc.
Liz Cornejo leads outreach for Constantine. She was involved in the 2015 mining forum. She says one of the criticisms of that event was that not all of the information was relevant to the Chilkat Valley. This time around, organizers are trying to make it more “locally meaningful.”
“The goal for this one versus the last one was to really keep the information relevant to what might be appropriate for Alaska regulations for Glacier Creek Valley and the Chilkat Valley, for this type of mineral deposit at this stage in exploration,” Cornejo said. “And to make it as relevant as we can without a mine plan in place, because that might still be years in the future.”
Cornejo will give an overview of the Palmer Project Saturday morning.
Local debate over the merits of a potential mine rose to the surface in early 2016. The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan nominated the Chilkat River for a high-level environmental protection. The ‘tier 3’ water status would shield the river from activities that could significantly degrade water quality.
The Chilkat River nomination, along with several others, is in limbo. The state of Alaska is still figuring out what process it wants to use to evaluate tier 3 nominations. For that reason, Poinsette says tier 3 will not be a major focus of the forum.
“We did want to stay away from it, not because it’s not pertinent but because later on this winter the state is going to release its framework for evaluating nominations and likely then we will probably have another presentation,” Poinsette. “I would imagine the Fish and Game advisory committee or some other group might bring DEC officials here to talk about that. So we thought that might be a distraction from a lot of the other topics we want to cover in the forum.”
The tier 3 issue will probably come up during the afternoon panel discussions, which are driven by audience questions.
The forum begins Saturday at 8:30 a.m. in the Haines Elementary School Gym.
The event is free, except for a suggested donation for lunch. Takshanuk plans to film the presentations for people who are not able to attend.
Schedule:
My concern is that Constantine has already invested a lot of time money in developing the area for their exploration (and all without any environmental impact statements or hearing processes) and I suspect they will use the amount of their investment as part of their justification for going ahead with the large scale mining. The Chilkat Indian Village has tried to be proactive in protecting the Chilkat River because as the indigenous people of this land we feel a keen responsibility to take care of it. I don’t want our future generations to look back at our generation and ask, “Why didn’t they do anything?” A mine is not going to contribute to the long term sustainability of this valley’s economy. It will perpetuate the “boom and bust” cycle that has plagued Alaska since the days of early contact where our natural resources were exploited to exhaustion, then those who only came to take, returned to their homes elsewhere, often leaving Alaska poorer. It happened with the fur industry, the gold rush, the salmon industry, and oil. We, as native people have been here for thousands of years and we want to continue in our subsistence life way. It is unjust to subject our watershed to these mining activities without our approval when we are the primary stakeholder. If the mine fails in anyway, we will be the people to suffer the most. We ask the community’s support for Tier 3 protection on the Chilkat River.
The incremental expansion by Constantine—periodically getting approval for a few miles of roads and piecemeal development—is already altering the landscape, Archibald says, even though the project is still in the “exploration” phase. Mining would eventually mean ore processing and steady truck traffic on steep roads, and require management of wastewater, acidic mine tailings, and waste rock, all posing risks to the river system. A 2014 tailings pond dam breach in British Columbia is among many cautionary cases. That spill poured 10 million cubic meters of tainted water, enough to fill 4,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, and 4.5 million cubic meters of mining slurry from the Mount Polley copper and gold mine into one of the world’s cleanest and deepest freshwater lakes.
Even small changes from mining could have grave effects, says Gershon Cohen, project director of Alaska Clean Water Advocacy, based in Haines. “If they change the metal profiles in those rivers by an infinitesimal amount, that can literally end the salmon runs in a heartbeat,” says Cohen, since the fish partly rely on chemical cues to find their way back to their home spawning streams. “It doesn’t have to be a catastrophic failure to destroy the salmon.”
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/where-eagles-cry-mine-looms
Big mine is incompatible with a healthy Chilkat River and sustainable fisheries. No matter how “responsible”..cutting trees, building roads, pouring concrete for mining buildings and infrastructure, ore trucks up an down the Chilkat, all are going to degrade the sensitive Chilkat River and its fisheries over time. Furthermore an ore-dock at Lutak will also jeopardize Chilkoot hooligan, salmon, sea lions, seals, humpbacks, orcas, eagles, bears and much, much more. The assets we have aretreasures. Mines are a boom and bust economy guaranteed to leave a toxic legacy. This place is one of the last with runs of hooligan and wild salmon stocks and all those associated benefits. Just say no to a big mine up the Chilkat.
The Tier 3 issue for high-level protection of the Chilkat River should be front and center on every forum regarding a possible large-scale mine up river. Perhaps it would be fair to allocate one day to pro-mining groups and the other day to anti-mining groups so that people can fully explore the risks versus profits at every forum as history clearly shows, politics aside, that any mistakes in this decision would be beyond catastrophic to the future of Haines.
Derek for president 2018.
Nice work El Presidente.
Wish we could attend.