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Berners Bay, Alaska
Idaho-based Coeur D'Alene Mines Corporation is building the Kensington gold mine in Southeast Alaska, 45 miles north of Juneau. The mine will generate 7.5 million tons of mine waste during the first 10 years. Though it originally planned to dump much of this waste into the Lower Slate Lake, an appeals court decided the plan violates the Clean Water Act last May.1 Kensington vows to file a petition for a new hearing on the decision.2
Dumping mine waste into a lake is irresponsible
Surrounded by forest and important wetlands, Lower Slake Lake is situated on a terrace at an elevation of 650 feet in the Tongass National Forest. Slate Creek flows from the lake about three miles downstream into Berners Bay. Berners Bay is one of Southeast Alaska's most outstanding public resources. Berners Bay encompasses a wide range of ecosystems, including snow-capped alpine peaks, old-growth Sitka spruce and hemlock forest, cottonwood floodplains, freshwater marshes, and saltwater estuaries. Opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, gathering, kayaking, air boating, and camping abound, and commercial tourism in Berners Bay has increased in recent years.
Berners Bay. Credit: Skip Gray |
The bay supports local commercial and sport coho and sockeye salmon fisheries, and also provides commercial catches of shrimp and king, tanner, and Dungeness crab. Berners Bay contains the last healthy spawning population of herring in the greater Lynn Canal region, while the spring eulachon ("hooligan" or candlefish) run forms the base of a productive food chain supporting eagles, gulls, seals, sea lions, and humpback whales. Brown and black bears, wolves, wolverines, deer, moose, and mountain goats roam the lands surrounding Berners Bay.
The Bay is also culturally significant to the Auk Kwan Tlingit Tribe of Alaska Natives. Several ancient village sites are located around Berners Bay. The Auk Kwaan consider Lions Head Mountain sacred because it contains the spirits of their shamans.
A dangerous precedent
More than 30 years ago Congress enacted the Clean Water Act to end the use of public rivers and waterways as dumping grounds for industrial waste. Now for the first time in the history of the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers has authorized a mining company to discharge chemically processed mine waste into a lake. Permitting a corporation to dump mine waste into a lake violates the Act. Re-defining such waste as "fill material" is an effort to circumvent the Clean Water Act. Several conservation groups have challenged the authorization by the Army Corps of Engineers in court and are awaiting a decision.
The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council ran this ad in the Juneau Empire urging Kensington not to dump mine waste in Lower Slate Lake. Click the ad to read. |
A particular concern is the precedent the Kensington mine would set if Coeur is allowed to carry out its waste dumping plan. State officials have acknowledged that Kensington could lay the legal groundwork for the controversial Pebble Mine at Bristol Bay, which sits at the headwaters of an Alaskan salmon fishery which generates $93 million per year. There, the Canadian mining company Northern Dynasty Minerals wants to dump an estimated billion or more tons of waste into the rich Iliamna watershed.
Coeur's critics point out that they are not against the Kensington mine, but instead want Coeur to protect Alaska's clean water. There is an alternative to dumping mine waste into the lake. For example, in 1997 Coeur received permits for a proposed mine design that used a used a land-based waste disposal facility. That plan relied on the established and legal dry stack method of tailings disposal. Coeur's critics say that rather than risking clean water -- the most precious of all resources -- Coeur should act responsibly and use an alternative method to store its waste.
For more information:
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC)
Clean Water for All
- "Court finds Kensington permit illegal, Coeur d'Alene can't dump rock waste in Alaska lake," Associated Press. May 23, 2007.
- "Kensington mine facilities are complete, mine owners say," Associated Press. August 19, 2007.
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