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United States Mining

Alaska requests greater involvement in oversight of large B.C. gold mine – by James Keller (Globe and Mail – August 23, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

VANCOUVER — The Canadian Press – The state of Alaska has taken the rare step of asking the Canadian government for greater involvement in the approval and regulation of a controversial mine in northwestern British Columbia amid growing concern that the project could threaten American rivers and fish.

Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources outlined its request in a letter this week to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which has been reviewing the proposed KSM gold and copper mine, owned by Seabridge Gold Inc. The project has already been approved by B.C.

“The state of Alaska has important obligations to our citizens relating to the protection of fish, wildlife, waters and lands that we hold in trust,” says the state’s letter, signed by three senior bureaucrats.

They request in the letter that the state be involved in the authorization and permitting process for the KSM mine, the development of enforcement provisions in those permits, and the development of monitoring programs for water quality and dam safety.

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Insight – Behind Indonesia mining deal, newly minted minister and U.S. mining legend – by RANDY FABI, FERGUS JENSEN AND MICHAEL TAYLOR (Reuters U.K. – August 24, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

JAKARTA – (Reuters) – As negotiations to resolve an increasingly bitter dispute over Indonesian mining rules teetered on the brink of collapse, the chairman of Freeport-McMoRan Inc (FCX.N) James “Jim Bob” Moffett flew to Jakarta for last-ditch talks.

Indonesia’s chief economics minister, Chairul Tanjung, said he had got to a point where he felt only talking directly to the 76-year-old U.S. mining legend might break a deadlock in the six-month row, which had already cost Southeast Asia’s top economy more than $1 billion and put thousands of jobs at risk.

In less than two hours the two men had reached an agreement, setting the stage to resume exports and restore badly needed government revenue to the world’s fourth most populous nation.

“I just convinced him that this was the maximum the government can give,” Tanjung said in an interview. “He believed me, I believed him and we shook hands. Very simple.”

Tanjung, one of Indonesia’s richest businessmen, was appointed minister in May and made reaching a deal to get mining exports going again a priority to revive an economy suffering its sharpest slowdown since the global financial crisis.

But a looming presidential election had made it even harder to reach a politically unpopular compromise with foreign miners.

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Donlin gold mine brings hope of jobs — and fear of destruction – by Lisa Demer (Alaska Dispatch News – August 23, 2014)

http://www.adn.com/

DONLIN GOLD WORK CAMP — On a remote ridge in the big, open space between Bethel and Anchorage, where the land and minerals are owned by Alaska Native corporations, developers want to cut deep into the earth to extract microscopic bits of gold.

The Donlin Gold project is moving quietly forward. Backers are seeking key government permissions and trying to secure the trust of local residents.

Developers say the mine’s design will be the safest, most stable possible. A wealth of good jobs would open up in the cash-starved Western Alaska region if Donlin is developed, project sponsors say.

Still, the nature of large-scale gold mining incites anxiety and doubt among people who depend on the land and water as their sources of food.

The mine site is 10 miles from the Kuskokwim River near a salmon-producing stream, Crooked Creek. The project would disturb rock and soils laden with arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals; use cyanide in the production of the gold; bring barges loaded with diesel and other supplies upriver daily in ice-free months; and create a 2-mile-long, 1-mile-wide open pit where the hilltop used to be.

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Returning Ely to its mining roots – Editorial (Ely Echo – August 24, 2014)

http://www.elyecho.com/

Ely’s mining history would awaken from a 47-year slumber under Twin Metals Minnesota’s $2.7 billion copper-nickel mining project that would create 850 jobs in the region.

There is no argument the minerals that lie below the Spruce Road will one day be mined and used for everything from cell phones to medical instruments to windmills. The only question is when this will happen.

Determining the when is like trying to win the lottery – there are many factors involved. Here are some of them:

1. Financial. Duluth Metals is now running the show at Twin Metals with a 60 percent ownership. Antofagasta, the big dog, has dropped down to a 40 percent stake and payment obligation. Can Duluth Metals pull together a financing plan to survive short term, and then a giant plan to build a $2.7 billion mining operation? Or is there another major player waiting to step in?

2. Technology/Environment. We have yet to hear anyone say they support this project no matter what the impact is to the environment. The question remains if there is technology available that can meet the state and federal requirements to build and operate the mining operation TMM proposes.

3. Political/Legal. PolyMet is the lead dog in the copper-nickel mining arena since it is closing in on getting permitted. But PolyMet seeks to build an open pit mine that will have no impact on the lightning rod known as the BWCA.

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Mine Tales: Mining railroads overcame obstacles – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – August 3, 2014)

http://tucson.com/

William Ascarza is an archivist, historian and author. Email him at mining@tucson.com

Created in 1910, the Tucson-Nogales Railroad supplemented a line established 20 years prior between Nogales and Guaymas.

At an elevation of 4,613 feet, Dragoon Railroad station — the highest point on the Southern Pacific line between Los Angeles and El Paso — also served as the junction of the Johnson, Dragoon and Northern Railroad.

The railroad supplanted the freight wagon and stagecoach as did its method of power generation. Steam, electric and diesel locomotives were employed in Arizona history for mining, passenger transport and irrigation projects for agriculture.

Standard, narrow and baby railroad gauges used at the mines in Arizona were based upon the width of the track: standard gauge (56ƒ inches), narrow gauge (less than 56ƒ inches) and baby gauge (20 inches). Standard-gauge railroads in Arizona became dominant in the early 20th century, though many narrow gauge railroads continued to service the mines.

Challenges facing railroads included rockslides, floods, Indian raids and steep gradients. In 1910, the Arizona Eastern Railroad connected the eight miles between Winkelman and Christmas.

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Mine Tales: Railroads spurred mining’s growth in Arizona – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – July 27, 2014)

http://tucson.com/

William Ascarza is an archivist, historian and author. Email him at mining@tucson.com

Railroad transportation proved indispensable to the development of the mining industry in Arizona, connecting it to lucrative markets in California and the Eastern states.

The arrival of the “iron horse” established towns and injected capital to advance mining interests through delivery of equipment and supplies while providing ease of ore transport to distant markets for refinement and profit.

Early talk of involving rail transportation in Arizona dates to shortly after the end of the Mexican-American War, when Congress financed surveys with the intention of establishing transcontinental railroad lines through what was then part of New Mexico Territory. Euphoric Manifest Destiny aspirations of the late 1850s included a railroad connecting mining operations around Tubac to Guaymas, Mexico.

This connection was deemed essential by William Wrightson, superintendent of the Santa Rita Mining Co.

Attempts to annex Sonora, Mexico, including a final expedition led by Henry Crabb in 1857, resulted in failure, as was the proposed rail line at the time. The Civil War, coupled with lack of financing, hindered rail in Arizona for the next two decades.

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Duluth PFS shows robust, high margin base/precious metals project – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – August 21, 2014)

 http://www.mineweb.com/

The latest PFS on the TMM project provides increasing confidence that the proposed underground mine remains hugely attractive in economic terms.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Duluth Metals, which is working on moving an enormous base and precious metals project to the development stage in a controversial part of Minnesota, USA, has just announced it has received an independent draft feasibility study prepared by a multi-company team led by AMEC.

The draft PFS, part of an NI 43-101 compliant technical report shows the economics of the proposed underground copper/nickel/pgm mine are supported by fundamentals showing a competitive cost position, high margins sustained over time, and capital efficiencies resulting from outstanding regional and local infrastructure and competitive advantages.

The study was carried out on a proposed underground project which involves mining only a relatively small portion of the company’s Twin Metals Minnesota (TMM) resource on the massive Duluth Complex in eastern Minnesota, and the overall project area should support an even bigger, far longer life operation.

The area is environmentally sensitive and Duluth is keen to demonstrate that a smaller project can be developed which meets all environmental criteria while keeping surface disruption to a minimum by underground mining and very strict environmental controls on waste disposal, processing and tailings storage.

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B.C. mining boom, recent tailings breach prompt environmental fears in Alaska – by James Keller (CTV News/Canadian Press – August 21, 2014)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — Heather Hardcastle has spent her life fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Taku River, which starts in a remote corner of northwestern British Columbia before dumping into the ocean near her home in Juneau, Alaska.

She was six years old when her parents bought a fishing boat. More than a decade ago, she became co-owner of Taku River Reds, a small commercial fishing outfit that ships salmon throughout the United States.

In recent years, however, Hardcastle’s attention has been focused farther upstream in B.C., where a cluster of proposed mining projects has fishermen, environmentalists, aboriginals and a handful of politicians in Alaska concerned about the potential impact on the environment in their state.

And those concerns have only been amplified by a recent mine tailings spill in central B.C., where the full impact from the disaster on aquatic life remains unclear.

“It’s one thing on paper to say that you have standards that are high, but it doesn’t matter when you have a disaster like this,” said Hardcastle, whose concerns prompted her to become involved with the environmental group Trout Unlimited.

“There’s a real lack of confidence and trust right now.”

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U.S. Mining Winning The Costs Race – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – August 13, 2014)

http://www.forbes.com/

Mining booms are nearly always driven by rising commodity prices but what’s happening in the U.S. today indicates that falling costs are the driving force behind a revitalized interest in all forms of resources, from oil and gas to gold.

Activist investors, sometimes criticized for being too aggressive, have spotted the value gap developing between international mining and oil operations and those in the country winning the low-cost race, the U.S.

Cliffs Natural Resources CLF -3.04% and Apache APA -0.67% Corporation have been targeted by activist funds demanding the sale of high-cost, low-profit, assets in Australia, with Cliffs under pressure to sell an iron ore mine in Western Australia, and Apache planning to sell a 13% stake in a big Australian liquefied natural gas project being developed by Chevron CVX -0.5% Corporation.

Both U.S.-based companies will probably re-invest the capital generated in U.S. projects in much the same way some industrial companies are shifting their international operations back to the U.S. because it has become the global go-to destination, in some cases surpassing the long-term low-cost leaders, China and Germany.

Gold Cheapest To Mine In The Americas

In the commodity world, the value-gap is best illustrated by that universal material gold, with the cost profile of one company demonstrating why the U.S. is a preferred destination for new mine developments.

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Appeals court OKs permits for U.P. mine – by John Flesher (Detroit News – August 13, 2014)

http://www.detroitnews.com/

Associated Press – Traverse City — The Michigan Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a decision by state regulators to allow construction of a nickel and copper mine in the Upper Peninsula backwoods, the latest development in a 12-year legal and political struggle.

A three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the Department of Environmental Quality was within the law to approve mining and groundwater discharge permits for the Eagle Mine in Marquette County. Kennecott Minerals Co. began the project but its present owner is Lundin Mining Corp., a Canadian company.

Environmental groups, a Native American tribe and a private hunting and fishing club have fought to prevent the mine from being built since Kennecott conducted exploratory drilling in 2002, saying it poses numerous ecological risks. The department issued the permits five years later, a decision upheld by an administrative law judge and a circuit court before the appeals court took the case.

“Today’s ruling validates the MDEQ’s thorough and extensive permitting review process, which ensures responsible development with strong environmental protections,” said Dan Blondeau, spokesman for the mining company.

A spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, one of the groups that challenged the permits, said no decision had been made about whether to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

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Regulate Canadian, Not American Metals Mine, Murkowski Says – by Alan Neuhauser (U.S. News and World Report – August 14, 2014)

 http://www.usnews.com/

The Alaska senator seeks greater environmental enforcement at a Canadian metals mine, but opposes regs at a similar mine in Alaska.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has called for greater oversight of a Canadian metals mine – even as she lambastes federal regulation of a similar proposed mining project in Alaska.

“It’s an irony, because the risks associated with Pebble Mine are precisely those that we have seen unfolding before our eyes over the past week in British Columbia,” says Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That is to say, a major containment dam failure resulting in significant off-site contamination in salmon habitats.”

Last week, a dam containing the wastewater pond for Canada’s open-pit Mount Polley mine ruptured, sending millions of gallons of potentially contaminated water spilling into a river along the Alaska border (Canadian officials lifted a ban on drinking tap water Tuesday). Later that week, Murkowski dashed off a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, urging him to impress upon Canadian leaders “the potential impacts that large-scale mining in Canada could hold” for the state’s fishing and tourism industries, as well as its indigenous population.

“The tailings pond breach at Mount Polley on August 4 has renewed the specter of environmental impacts from large-scale hardrock [sic] mineral developments in Canada that are located near transboundary rivers,” Murkowski wrote.

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Following B.C. disaster, Alaskans seek tougher review of Canadian mines – by Pat Forgey (Alaska Dispatch News – August 13, 2014)

http://www.adn.com/

JUNEAU — Following a massive mine waste spill in Canada, Alaska state and Canadian federal officials are being asked to do more to protect parts of Alaska downstream of several Canadian mines.

“That water belongs to us, too,” said Rob Sanderson, a Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska vice-president and co-chair of the United Tribal Transboundary Mining Workshop.

He’s most concerned about the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine in Canada east of Ketchikan, which he said is seven times the size of the Mount Polley Mine in interior British Columbia. The breach of the latter mine’s tailings dam contaminated the watershed of Canada’s important Fraser River.

“If that ain’t an eye opener down at Mount Polley, I don’t know what is,” Sanderson said of the KSM mine risks. “Could you imagine if they had a disaster like that at KSM if it was in full production, or even half production, it would be a disaster beyond words,” he said.

But state officials are defending provincial and federal regulators in Canada, and saying their environmental protection measures are as strong as those in Alaska or the United States.

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More than manure stinks here [Fertilizer minerals] – by Trent Loos (High Plains Journal – August 11, 2014)

http://www.hpj.com/

In the past two weeks I have been fortunate to be a part of two different meetings on the subject of soil health. One of them was on the East Coast and the other was a celebration of manure in Nebraska at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UNL) Manure Demonstration Day. They both made me think that we need to do a much better job of singing the praises of that plant food excreted by the 9 billion animals we produce every year.

On the eastern shore of Maryland at the Maryland Commodity Classic, Dean Cowherd with the National Resources Conservation Service of Maryland made a statement that truly sticks with me: “There are more microbes in one teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet.”

Wow! I think that is a mouthful when you think about healthy living things and how we manage them. Far too often we allow people to fall prey to the notion that “sterile” is better, and nothing could be further than the truth.

Then I headed to Lexington, Nebraska, where the folks at UNL put on a tremendous display of the benefits of applying the greatest source of plant food on the planet: animal manure. In a radio conversation with Amy Schmidt and Charles Shapiro, the comment was made, “And where would plants be without animal manure?”

That is a true story. Let’s just take quick look at the plant food requirements of U.S. agriculture.

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Canadian mine disaster raises tough questions about Minnesota nonferrous mines – by Aaron Brown (Minneapolis Star Tribune – August 7, 2014)

http://www.startribune.com/

Sometime in the middle of the night on Monday, Aug. 4, the dam holding together a tailings basin at a British Columbian copper and gold mine gave way, sending 1.3 billion gallons of tainted, sludgy water into local streams and lakes.

Officials tell residents in the closest town, Likely, B.C., not to use the water from several lakes and rivers near the Mount Polley Mine, including a precautionary ban stretching all the way to the well-known Fraser River. (And no, “Likely” is not a made-up name from a ham-handed eco-novel. It’s a real town named for an old mining boss named John A. Likely). Mount Polley is operated by Imperial Metals of Vancouver.

The CBC reports that Canadian and provincial officials now assess the full extent of the damage and how something like this even happened. Global News is reporting that Mount Polley Mine employees are saying that tailings pond breaches have happened before, just never to this extent. Meantime, the breach compromises the town’s drinking water and sidelines its tourism economy, which had co-existed with mining, for an indeterminate amount of time. Possibly a very long time.

Already, copper mining critics cite this disaster as Exhibit A that these mines threaten local ecosystems. Many here in Minnesota wonder: if this tailings pond breach can happen at an active mine in Canada, where regulations are similarly stringent to U.S. law, how on earth can we be confident in a tailings pond at a proposed nonferrous mine in northern Minnesota? After all, those tailings basins are supposed to last 500 years, according to PolyMet’s own Environmental Impact Statement estimates.

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Now Showing: Pebble Mine’s Disastrous Future at BC’s Mount Polley Mine – by Joel Reynolds (Huffington Post – August 7, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Joel Reynolds is the Western Director and a senior attorney in the Los Angeles office of NRDC.

In the early morning of August 4, 2014, a major breach occurred in an earthen dam built to contain millions of tons of mining waste — called “tailings” — at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine in central British Columbia. Now, three days later, an estimated 1.3 billion gallons of contaminated tailings have spilled from the breached pond, sweeping untold volumes of waste and debris into the salmon stream and lake systems in the region and potentially threatening the Fraser River system to the west.

Previously pristine fishing, swimming, and summer vacation destinations like Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, and Quesnel Lake — including drinking water sources for the surrounding communities and residents — are now ground zero for toxicity, government health warnings, and “clean-up” – if indeed such a thing is actually possible.

Right now, before our very eyes through horrifying YouTube video, we are witnessing the mine disaster that the communities of Bristol Bay have feared — their “worst nightmare” — from the massive Pebble Mine. It is the toxic time bomb explosion that all of us who’ve fought the Pebble Mine have predicted could happen.

It is the catastrophic impact that, in its Bristol Bay watershed assessment, the EPA described as foreseeable in the event of a “tailings storage facility failure” — in layman’s terms, a dam breach — a finding the Pebble Limited Partnership (and its sole remaining company Northern Dynasty Minerals) have resoundingly and repeatedly challenged as groundless, as bad science, as a violation of their “right to due process.”

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