Crime & Justice

Second defendant agrees to guilty plea for Western Alaska mine pollution

BETHEL -- A second defendant in the Western Alaska pollution case involving the closed mine operated by XS Platinum Inc. has agreed to plead guilty.

An agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage on Wednesday says James Staeheli, of Cle Elum, Washington, knowingly allowed the discharge of pollution into salmon streams and failed to monitor the effluent. That was in violation of a federal Clean Water Act permit, according to the plea agreement.

Staeheli was an hourly plant operator at the Western Alaska mine starting in April 2010. A year later he was promoted to serve as the salaried process manager overseeing the mining operation. He has been assisting in the federal investigation, according to the agreement. He is scheduled to plead guilty to a single pollution discharge count on May 8 and is supposed to continue working with the federal investigation until he is sentenced.

Another Washington state resident, Robert Pate, pleaded guilty last month. He too has been cooperating and is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 2.

A trial is scheduled to begin this month against a third defendant, James Slade of Calgary, Alberta, who was chief operating officer for XS Platinum. On Wednesday, his attorneys filed several motions, including one seeking to dismiss the indictment against him.

The two top corporate officers, Australians Bruce Butcher and Mark Balfour, have yet to appear in the case. Arrest warrants were returned in February unused.

XS Platinum also is charged criminally as a corporation but appears to have dissolved and no longer exists, according to prosecutors. It appears to have no assets, no employees and no offices, prosecutors said in a March 25 filing.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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