Someone has started cutting trails in the area under consideration for seismic testing by Constantine., despite the company having not yet received a permit from the Department of Natural resources.
Constantine operates the Palmer Project, which is a zinc, copper and silver prospect in the Chilkat valley upstream from Haines and Klukwan. The company has applied for a permit to expand their operations to two sites by the Klehini river. Activities would include clearing land for drill pads, access roads and seismic lines. The company plans on blasting close to a thousand explosive charges, and is requesting authorization to drive equipment through salmon streams. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources is currently reviewing the company’s application and the public comments to it.
Haines resident Natalie Dawson wanted to see for herself the area under consideration.
Dawson: “I was just really interested to see what the areas actually looked like, and it was my birthday, and decided to go on a nice long hike with my husband.”
Her birthday was on June second, one day before the closing of the public comment period. The couple spent the day walking around both sites where Constantine proposes to blast. She says they found some freshly cut trails at one of the sites, called the Klehini site.
Dawson: “Once we started seeing these 15 to 20 foot large swaths of cut trees and alders, we went ahead and started GPSing those tracks, and they matched up perfectly with some of the proposed seismic lines.”
Dawson says she was surprised to find evidence someone had started working at the site, as no permit has been issued yet. She drew on her experience as a field biologist to record her observations on a map. Dawson and her husband contacted DNR about their findings. In an email, the agency responded that trails less than five feet wide do not require permitting, but that they would look into the matter.
The couple also say that the land does not match the maps the mining company refers to in their application to the state.
The couple say they crossed Glacier Creek to the second site, called the Plateau site. They did not see any evidence that vegetation had been cleared there, but when they checked the map Constantine referred to in their documents, they found it did not match the lay of the land. There are two creeks on the map. Dawson says what she observed in person was a network of wetlands feeding into a creek downstream from the proposed operations.
Dawson: “There were so many wetlands in those areas, and they are upland wetlands, usually associated with a small stream or tributary of one of the creeks in that area. So basically, that’s all to say that nobody was on the ground when that permit amendment was written, so it seems like they did not understand the conditions of the land itself on the ground.”
Constantine says in its application that the map it submitted was completed in 2017, and that the company intends to send crews to check the lay of the land before they start operations. The application says this will allow them to re-align roads to minimize stream crossings and avoid wetlands.
To verify Dawson’s claims, KHNS drove to the Klehini site and we observed some of the recently cleared trails. When asked for a comment, a spokesperson for DNR declined, citing the agency’s current work on the permitting decision. Multiple phone calls to constantine went unanswered.
DNR received hundreds of comments asking the agency to require Constantine go through a complete permitting process for the new activities, with a 90 day public comment period. But the company was allowed to amend its existing permit, which closed the public comment period on June 3rd.
Dawson says until recently, the Klehini and Plateau sites were still covered in snow. This limited anyone’s ability to go actually observe the site and ground their public comments on those observations.
Dawson: “The creeks in those upland areas, there’s grasses and sedges, the creeks themselves are clear running, very curvy, with lots of little pools on the side where sand and sediment is deposited.”
Dawson says once this landscape is impacted by the passage of heavy equipment, that sediment will become loose in the water and impact the fish downstream.
Dawson: “But perhaps even most damaging is the fact that it will be very hard, maybe impossible to return that habitat to what it was.”
At a Haines borough assembly meeting two weeks ago, a company representative said the sites are being considered as tailings storage areas for the proposed mine.
