Wrangell Mayor David Jack and Borough Assembly member Daniel Blake recently returned from the Alaska Municipal League (AML) Summer Legislative Conference held in Nome last week. The conference is a three-day event bringing together legislators, administrators and civic representatives from around the state.
First organized in 1950, the league is a voluntary, non-profit and non-partisan statewide organization of 162 boroughs, cities and unified municipalities that represents over 97 percent of Alaska's residents.
AML works together with the Alaska Conference of Mayors at such conferences to form a municipal consensus on a variety of state- and federal-level issues.
“It's an opportunity for them to speak about the areas they believe are important to the people,” Jack said.
“One thing that both Assemblyman Blake and I were concerned about were the mines in British Columbia,” he explained. In particular he is concerned with the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine project in British Columbia, Canada, which is nearing its final stages of completion.
The $5.3 billion project's scope raises particular concern in the region after the disaster at the Mount Polley mine near Likely, B.C., where a tailings breach earlier this month released contaminated material into the Fraser River watershed. The Canadian Ministry of Energy and Mines announced last week that a pair of reviews will begin, examining the causes of the disaster. The first is due for completion Jan. 15, 2015.
“They had a very similar operational plan,” Jack said of KSM and Mount Polley's retention systems. The KSM mine is said to be seven times larger than Mount Polley and is located near the Unuk River's headwaters.
Four other Canadian mining projects near the Stikine and other southeast Alaskan rivers are also in their planning stages. Imperial Metals, the owner and operator of the Mount Polley mine, is behind the open-pit Red Chris mining project being developed near Iskut, B.C., and is scheduled to begin operations in September. It, too, will utilize an earthen dam for its tailings pond.
“It doesn't give you much confidence,” Jack said. Should a similar catastrophe occur, he added that these dams “have the potential for wiping out our fisheries.”
The City and Borough of Wrangell is not alone in its concern about the upcoming developments across the border. A variety of southeastern municipalities, tribal associations, industry groups and environmental organizations have been requesting that the state of Alaska and U.S. State Department apply pressure on Canadian regulators to more closely scrutinize these mining projects.
Jack is looking forward to the upcoming Southeast Conference, not just to highlight development in Wrangell but also to discuss the risks Canadian mining projects may pose to Alaskan waterways and the livelihoods that depend on them.
“I think that's a very good venue to bring this up,” he said. “It should be a big concern for every southeast community.”
The 2014 SEC will be hosted in Wrangell at the Nolan Center from Sept. 16-18.
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