Teck Resources hopes to break into ore late this year or early next at the Aqqaluk Deposit of zinc, lead and silver at the Red Dog Mine site near Kotzebue, said Jim Kulas, the company's environmental and public affairs manager. Mining the site could breathe decades of life into Red Dog, which is expected to run dry late next year.
Kulas said the new pit is close enough to the existing mine that their perimeters will eventually connect. The existing pit is about one mile across by two-thirds of a mile, and the new one will be about the same size, he said.
"We will fill the existing pit with the waste materials out of the new pit and cover it, re-vegetate it, and make it a natural landform. So there will only be one pit at the end of the day," Kulas said.
Teck in March received a wetlands permit from the Army Corps of Engineers allowing it to begin excavation in the new deposit, Kulas said. It will take about a month and a half to establish roads and other infrastructure at the site; then it could take most the rest of the year to remove soil and get down to ore-bearing rock, he said.
The mine is a main source of jobs and tax revenue in Northwest Alaska, and because a Native corporation -- NANA Regional Corp. of Kotzebue -- owns the property, the mine profits are shared with other Native corporations across Alaska under federal law. At least nine organizations in the Northwest Arctic have passed resolutions in support of new permits to allow Red Dog's expansion.
POLLUTION ISSUES
The decision on whether to expand to Aqqaluk had been uncertain since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in February removed some water-quality provisions from a permit after environmental groups and some Northwest Alaska villagers challenged it.
Except for those provisions, however, the new permit remains in effect and Teck is allowed to begin mining at the Aqqaluk deposit, said Ed Kowalski, head of the EPA's enforcement office in Seattle. Until the issues surrounding the contested provisions are resolved, the company will have to abide by the effluent limits in the last permit, issued in 1998, he said.
Red Dog has battled fines and lawsuits because of its water discharges ever since starting up two decades ago. The controversial criteria in the new permit would legalize discharges that have been problematic.
Because the new criteria didn't go into effect, Red Dog continues to be out of compliance with one parameter -- a limit on the total dissolved solids in its discharge water, Kulas said.
"We can't meet that permit limit and no, we won't be able to meet it in the mining of the Aqqaluk deposit, so we wanted to make sure we understood the implications of that before we made the go-ahead decision," Kulas said. "In these constructive discussions with the (EPA), we felt reassured that our inability to meet the old permit limit was not going to be a problem."
Kowalski said if the mine stays out of compliance it could face legal action, including fines or lawsuits, but the noncompliance itself won't affect the start of the new pit.
"Whether they're out of compliance with that permit is a separate issue," Kowalski said.
IS THE WATER HARMED?
Federal and state regulators have said it's OK to relax standards of an older permit because the mine's pollution discharges are not harmful and fish populations downstream have actually increased because the discharges contain a smaller percentage of harmful pollutants than the natural flow of water before the mine was built. The new permit would not increase the amount of pollution from the mine, they have said.
But opponents have said that recent research shows the mine's discharges could harm spawning grayling. And, they say, it's illegal for the EPA to relax the mine's previous permit.
"We never really opposed the Aqqaluk deposit, we just wanted EPA to protect our water like they ought to," said Native Village of Kivalina Vice President Enoch Adams Jr., who has sued the mine over water-quality violations in Red Dog Creek.
"Not only do we drink the water, but the fish that we subsist on all year round, we get them from the river," Adams said.
Vicki Clark is an attorney with the Anchorage-based environmental law firm Trustees For Alaska who has represented some groups disputing the permit. She said it isn't their intent to shut down the mine, just to protect the water quality.
"We want to see Red Dog comply with the more stringent requirements," Clark said. "I hope that EPA will do its job and protect human health and that Teck will do its best to comply with the requirements moving forward."
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