Couer d’Alene Alaska gold mine permit reinstated

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers on Thursday reinstated a permit needed for the
construction of a gold mine north of Juneau, but
environmentalists plan to fight the decision to allow waste to
flow into a natural alpine lake.

In November, the Corps suspended a permit to allow Coeur
d’Alene Mines Corp. to dump ore waste from the Kensington gold
mine into the lake after environmentalists said the discharge
would kill fish in the remote wetland.

The Kensington project is the first metal mine to take
advantage of a federal rule loosening restrictions on
mountaintop coal extraction. The rule now classifies discharge
milled ore waste — known as tailings — as benign fill and not
a pollutant.

The Idaho-based mining company said it will resume full
construction of the gold mine, expected to produce 100,000
ounces of gold annually starting in 2007.

“We will now focus on moving forward with the full-scale
construction of the mine,” Couer d’Alene Mines Chief Executive
Dennis Wheeler said in a statement.

Representatives of the environmental plaintiffs said they
will press on with their legal challenge to the permit, which
they say sets a dangerous precedent.

“What do we stand for? Alaska’s clean water or some
corporation’s bottom line?” Kat Hall of the Southeast Alaska
Conservation Council said in a news release.

Another attorney said the permit violates the basic
principles of the Clean Water Act of 1972, because it allows
the company to dump 210,000 gallons of tailings daily into the
lake.

“It will smother the lake. It will kill all of the fish and
nearly all of the aquatic life in the lake for at least the
lifetime of the mine, and that’s a completely unacceptable
impact,” said Tom Waldo, an attorney representing the
plaintiffs.

Coeur d’Alene Mines maintains lake disposal is the best of
all methods available for Kensington waste.

“You have a small, unproductive lake that is fairly remote,
not used for recreation, that does not really provide much
spawning activity,” said Coeur d’Alene spokesman Scott Lamb.

“In looking at all of the various options that were
available for disposal … this method was the one that was
deemed to have the least environmental impact.”