If you watch television, or listen to many of the radio stations in Alaska, you are seeing various ads for and against the Mining Shutdown Initiatives. The lies and rhetoric of those supporting the initiatives are disgusting. I am often asked - how can they make those statements and get by with it? All I can say is that this is a free country and we must be knowledgeable and counter those lies with the truth!

We must take every opportunity to talk with friends and neighbors and tell them why the initiatives are bad and why they will shut down existing metal mines and stop new ones from ever being developed.

Here are some specific points for you to tell them:
1) Existing large mines can continue to operate - if they have all their permits. However, large mines typically have 60 or more permits and many permits must be renewed every few years. Once a permit expires, the mine no longer has all its permits!
2) New mines cannot place waste rock, overburden, etc. within 1000 feet of a stream with anadramous fish. All four of Alaska's major metal mines are closer than that to a stream and it is hard to envision a new mine that could meet that test.
3) Metal mines are allowed if the area they affect is less than 640 acres. However, the area must include mining area, settling ponds, stream bypass, reclamation areas, facilities, airfield, roads to airfield, etc. With this definition in the initiative, many family placer mines would be forced to shutdown the next time they had to renew their permits.
4) The initiatives do not allow discharge of water with “any” constituent that could affect human health or fish. But no water is totally devoid of “any” such material…your tap water, the bottled water from the store, etc., no water can meet that test.

We want to use every opportunity possible to talk to groups of people and explain the initiatives and tell folks in person how they will shutdown the industry. Please call the AMA office if you know of a group that we could meet with on these initiatives. I mean any group you can think of, especially groups that do not have a business or mining background.

On the legal front, the Council of Alaska Producers (CAP) has filed notice of appeal with the Alaska Supreme Court on both of the initiatives. The briefs are due April 25. Oral arguments have been requested for June with a decision requested prior to July 10. We have no idea how the Supreme Court will rule so we must assume the worst and that means we continue full speed ahead telling every voter why the initiatives are so bad.

In the final days of the session the Legislature included funding for the Administration to use to educate the public with factual information about the impacts of the initiatives. Thus far the Administration has bent over backwards so as to not take sides in the issue but by taking this approach the Administration has not effectively defended the State's extremely rigorous permitting process. This funding by the Legislature is focused so the Administration will get engaged and defend itself. In response to the funding, Governor Palin stated. “This budget item did not originate from my office and it would not be our intention to influence a ballot initiative. If lawmakers decide to allocate public money for this, we will ensure the Department of Natural Resources provides objective, factual information about the impacts of mining-related initiatives for voters to consider. Alaskans deserve to hear the facts from their government.”

Regarding the on-going saga known as Kensington, the U.S. Forest Service has stated that it feels the newly proposed paste system for tailings storage will not require a supplemental EIS but only an EA (Environmental Assessment). This is due in part to the fact that footprint of disturbance will not change from that evaluated previously.

In the final days of the 25th Alaska State Legislature which ended April 13, most of the focus was on the operating and capital budgets. However, one extremely important bill did finally pass the Senate. That was House Bill 149 which will allow the State to receive primacy from the EPA for the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The regulated industries in Alaska have worked with the Department of Environmental Conservation for more than four years to get to this point. For the past two years I have been part of a NPDES Primacy Work Group that has met 16 times to review aspects of the issue and evaluate what was being done. The 24th Legislature passed a statute and provided funding for DEC to assume primacy but there were about five more minor, but none-the-less necessary, items that required changes to the statutes and those changes are in HB-149. Final vote on the bill was 15 to 3, with two absent.

With passage of HB-149, DEC now expects to submit the final primacy application to EPA by May 1. The next steps are then: EPA completeness review by June 1; EPA final review and approval May to Oct 2008. Implementation schedule: Phase I Authority to DEC for [domestic, timber, seafood] Oct 2008; Phase II Authority to DEC for [federal facilities, stormwater, pre-treatment] Oct 2009; Phase III Authority to DEC for [mining] Oct 2010; Phase IV Authority to DEC for [oil &gas, cooling water intake & discharge, munitions] Oct 2009.

DEC has done and continues to do an excellent job on this primacy issue and deserves a great round of thanks!

On a local level, the Mat-Su Borough's proposed ordinances on gravel mining are still a huge danger. One would forbid gravel mining closer than four feet above the water table and the other would allow deeper mining but it would require a very complicated and costly permit application and annual reporting process. We still have not been told why these ordinances are needed or what objective standards will be used to approve or deny a permit.

Away from the “maddening crowds”, several exploration drilling programs have already begun. Some other programs have been placed on hold until the whole Mining Shutdown Initiative situation is settled.

Probably the best news of the past month is that John Shively has been named Chief Executive Officer of the Pebble Partnership. This is good news for the project and for the entire mineral industry in Alaska. John worked as Chief of Staff to Governor Sheffield, VP at NANA during development of Red Dog, Commissioner of Natural Resources under Governor Knowles, and most recently as VP of Holland America. Our congratulations to John and to Pebble Partnership.

As a final note, our good friend Bill Mote, former Executive Director of the Northwest Mining Association, passed away in Spokane, WA on April 4. Bill became NWMA's first executive director in 1975 and helped build the Association into an effective voice for exploration and mining in the Northwest. He served NWMA for 19 years and laid the foundation for the excellent mining advocate that NWMA is today. Bill was a great friend of Alaska, AMA and of me and he will be missed. An obituary is included elsewhere in this issue of the Alaska Miner.

Steve Borell